162 WAKE-ROBIN 
that halt on the summit, where we cooked and ate 
our fish in a drizzling rain; nor, again, that rude 
log house, with its sweet hospitality, which we 
reached just at nightfall on Mill Brook. 
In 1868 a party of three of us set out for a 
brief trouting excursion to a body of water called 
Thomas’s Lake, situated in the same chain of moun- 
tains. On this excursion, more particularly than 
on any other I have ever undertaken, I was taught 
how poor an Indian I should make, and what a 
ridiculous figure a party of men may cut in the 
woods when the way is uncertain and the mountains 
high. ; 
We left our team at a farmhouse near the head 
of the Mill Brook, one June afternoon, and with 
knapsacks on our shoulders struck into the woods 
at the base of the mountain, hoping to cross the 
range that intervened between us and the lake by 
sunset. We engaged a good-natured but rather 
indolent young man, who happened to be stopping 
at the house, and who had carried a knapsack in 
the Union armies, to pilot us a couple of miles 
into the woods so as to guard against any mistakes 
at the outset. It seemed the easiest thing in the 
world to find the lake. The lay of the land was 
so simple, according to accounts, that I felt sure I 
could go to it in the dark. ‘Go up this little 
brook to its source on the side of the mountain,” 
they said. “The valley that contains the lake 
heads directly on the other side.” What could be 
easier! But on a little further inquiry, they said 
