THE ADIRONDACKS 73 
counted for its warmth to the hand, which surprised 
us all. 
Birds of any kind were rare in these woods. A 
pigeon hawk came prowling by our camp, and the 
faint piping call of the nuthatches, leading their 
young through the high trees, was often heard. 
On the third day our guide proposed to conduct 
us to a lake in the mountains where we could float 
for deer. 
Our journey commenced in a steep and rugged 
ascent, which brought us, after an hour’s heavy 
climbing, to an elevated region of pine forest, years 
before ravished by lumbermen, and presenting all 
manner of obstacles to our awkward and incum- 
bered pedestrianism. The woods were largely pine, 
though yellow birch, beech, and maple were com- 
mon. ‘The satisfaction of having a gun, should any 
game show itself, was the chief compensation to 
those of us who were thus burdened. A partridge 
would occasionally whir up before us, or a red 
squirrel snicker and hasten to his den; else the 
woods appeared quite tenantless. The most noted 
object was a mammoth pine, apparently the last of 
a great race, which presided over a cluster of yel- 
low birches, on the side of the mountain. 
About noon we came out upon a long, shallow 
sheet of water which the guide called Bloody-Moose 
Pond, from the tradition that a moose had been 
slaughtered there many years before. Looking out 
over the silent and lonely scene, his eye was the 
first to detect an object, apparently feeding upon lily- 
