TROUTING ON JESSUP’s RIVER. 505 
have saved us, strong wagon and all, from a sudden return 
to our original atoms. I soon got tired of this, and sprang 
out with my gun, determined to foot it ahead, in the hope 
of seeing a partridge or red squirrel. 
The wagon, with its thundering rumble, was soon left 
behind, and for several miles I tramped on alone through 
the oppressive stillness of those old spruce and hemlock 
forests, which line the road upon the hill-side and down steep 
shaded valleys. It was then I observed the extraordinary 
stillness, which I found characterized the woods there, in 
whatever direction I had penetrated. 
I wondered for some time what was the cause, and what 
it was I missed so much, until I discovered the almost total 
absence of the different varieties of squirrel. Then I under- 
stood at once. 
These creatures are the great enliveners of forest scenery, 
and we unconsciously as much expect to hear them rattling 
over the dry leaves—their rustling leap from bough to bough 
—the pattering of nuts they are unhusking over head—their 
saucy chattering and defiant bark—or to see their graceful 
forms leap across the path—dart up and around the standing 
trunks or along the dead logs, as we do, to see the trees 
themselves, or hear the winds murmur through their leaves. 
Every where, except in the tropics, they are ever-present 
and more essential to the complete characteristics of forest 
scenery, than even the birds themselves. This is particularly 
the case at the north, where the varieties of the birds are 
neither so abundantly musical or large as in the Middle 
States. I never saw woods before through which you might 
walk all day, from day to day, for weeks, and most probably 
not see or hear the sound of a single squirrel. 
I had spent much time in the woods, and had not been able 
to reconcile myself to this strange want, which impressed me, 
even before I heard the cause, with something like a funeral 
desolation—with the shadow of a feeling like that which we 
