The Wilderness 51 
which we are speedily lost. It shuts out 
our world as it shuts out sunlight and we 
vanish in it as in a crypt whose roof is sup- 
ported by columnar trunks of yellow birch 
and hemlock. Once entered, it closes around 
us, absorbs and impresses its mood upon us. 
We find ourselves without apparent cause 
walking stealthily. There is good reason for 
this, however, in the mere power of suggestion 
exerted by a vast and encompassing silence. 
Moreover, there exist in civilised man, sub- 
conscious memories of the life of his savage 
ancestors. From his wild progenitors, to 
whom some wilderness was home, an inher- 
itance has come down to him, both of mind 
and body. In the wilderness, then, we re- 
turn to our ancestral home—the earliest home 
of man—the memory of which was lost long 
before the beginning of history, but’ which 
inheres still in the cryptic depths of the sub- 
conscious mind of the race and, like an ances- 
tral ghost, arises and flits before us in the 
depths of the forest. 
Early in June we left our camp on Raquette 
Lake and pursuing the devious waterways 
which are the arteries of the North Woods, 
arrived at Long Lake, where another camp 
awaited us. Crossing Raquette and thence 
