BIRCH BROWSINGS 169 
At an early hour we reached the rock where we 
had parted with the guide, and looked around us 
into the dense, trackless woods with many misgiv- 
ings. To strike out now on our own hook, where 
the way was so blind and after the experience we 
had just had, was a step not to be carelessly taken. 
The tops of these mountains are so broad, and a 
short distance in the woods seems so far, that one 
is by no means master of the situation after reach- 
ing the summit. And then there are so many spurs 
and offshoots and changes of direction, added to the 
impossibility of making any generalization by the 
aid of the eye, that before one is aware of it he is 
very wide of his mark. 
I remembered now that a young farmer of my 
acquaintance had told me how he had made a long 
day’s march through the heart of this region, with- 
out path or guide of any kind, and had hit his 
mark squarely. He had been barkpeeling in Cal- 
likoon, —a famous country for bark, — and, having 
got enough of it, he desired to reach his home on 
Dry Brook without making the usual circuitous jour- 
ney between the two places. To do this necessi- 
tated a march of ten or twelve miles across several 
ranges of mountains and through an unbroken for- 
est, —a hazardous undertaking in which no one 
would join him. Even the old hunters who were 
familiar with the ground dissuaded him and pre- 
dicted the failure of his enterprise. But having 
made up his mind, he possessed himself thoroughly 
of the topography of the country from the aforesaid 
