170 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



ture. The fur that remained (for it was not hair) 

 was tipped with red. My reader doubtless knows 

 that the common rat is an importation, and that 

 there is a native American rat, usually found much 

 farther south than the locality of which I am writ- 

 ing, that lives in the woods, — a sylvan rat, very 

 wild and nocturnal in his habits, and seldom seen 

 even by hunters or woodmen. Its eyes are large 

 and fine, and its form slender. It looks like only 

 a far-off undegenerate cousin of the filthy creature 

 that has come to us from the long-peopled Old 

 World. Some creature ran between my feet and 

 the fire toward morning, the last night we slept in 

 the woods, and I have little doubt it was one of 

 these wood-rats. 



The people in these back settlements are almost 

 as shy and furtive as the animals. Even the men 

 look a little scared when you stop them by your 

 questions. The children dart behind their parents 

 when you look at them. As we sat on a bridge 

 resting, — for our packs still weighed fifteen or 

 twenty pounds each, — two women passed us with 

 pails on their arms, going for blackberries. They 

 filed by with their eyes down like two abashed nuns. 



In due time we found an old road, to which we 

 had been directed, that led over the mountain to 

 the West Branch. It was a hard pull, sweetened 

 by blackberries and a fine prospect. The snowbird 

 was common along the way, and a solitary wild 

 pigeon shot through the woods in front of us, recall- 

 ing the nests we had seen on the East Branch, — 



