CHAPTER III 
THE WILDERNESS 
URELY the prevailing spirits of the 
North Woods are water-loving nymphs, 
its chief flora, aquatic. A wilderness it 
is, not alone of trees, but of lakes, ponds, and 
streams, whose highroads are waterways and 
whose byroads, swamps and carries. In a 
sense Adirondack Wilderness is a more fitting 
appellation than Adirondack Mountains, for 
the impression upon the mind, of wilderness 
par excellence, far outweighs any impression 
of hill country as such. Forest, it is not, 
for to those who know the Pacific Slope— 
where flourish, or rather decline, the most 
splendid forests in the world—the word sug- 
gests the idea of amplitude, of majesty, with 
which there is nothing commensurate in the 
Eastern States and which only the giant 
conifers, the vast perspective, the rugged 
topography of the West can satisfy. The 
same is true of mountains, for to a Western 
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