OCTOBER 5, 1916 



"be Nomad 



believe it or not, but the 

 believes it— the story that 

 <sn of Rheims refuse to 

 into the cellars, when 

 to fall, because they 

 s and mice. By a 

 ly be killed. But 

 That is altogether 

 or mouse is all 

 *.he creature is 

 '-leologian say? 

 mething like 



escending. 

 ot where 

 Till fall 

 cellar 

 ome 

 »ree 

 the 

 ►o, 



his mouth and go through all the j 

 of barking violently, but never a 

 issued forth. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



KATAHDIN 



To the Editor of the Transcript: 



Gratifying- as it is to learn in Allen Cham- 

 berlain's account of a recent trip of the 

 Appalachian Club to Mt. Katahdin that "A 

 Long Lost Mountain" has 'been found, his 

 article is somewhat misleading in the as- 

 sumption that this same mountain has not 

 long been the Objective and abode of many 

 lovers of nature and prospecting scientists. 



The wonderful South Basin was lirst 

 made easily attainable from the east in 

 1900 by a party of botanists inder the lead- 

 ership of Dr. Kennedy o.f Milton, who 

 built a trail accessible to horses within five 

 miles of the Basin and who erected a sub- 

 stantial log camp which served for several 

 years as a cony shelter for an ever increas- 

 ing number of campers who followed them. 

 Rhodora, the Journal of the New England 

 Botanical Club of June, 1901, gives inter- 

 esting accounts of the trip by the various 

 members of the expedition. Another narty 

 of entomologists visited the mountaii the 

 following year, one of its members discov- 

 ering a new species of butterfly (Chionabas 

 Katahdin) described in Entomological News, 

 Oct. 1, 19001. In 189S and 1901 Professor 

 M. H. Harvey visited the mountain giving 

 extensive scientific information in the "Uni- 

 versity of Maine Studies, No. 5," Decem- 

 ber, 1903. 



One of Boston's most notable artists visit- 

 ed the mountain at this time, painting its 

 impressive features and elusive moods with 

 the skill of a master. Katahdin is never 

 likely to pose for a more successful or sym- 

 pathetic interpreter of her majestic charms. 



Captain Rogers, late proprietor of Lunk- 

 soos Camp at East Branch Crossing, who 

 built the trail and cabin for the Kennedy 

 party in 1900, improved the trail in suc- 

 ceeding years until campers could ride into 

 the South Basin on horseback. For several 

 years numberless people found their way 

 over this trail, at time3 as many as two- 

 score of campers lodging together on the 

 shores of Chimney Pond. Indeed, the moun- 

 tain would never have been lost and found 

 again had it not been for the disastrous forest 

 fires which ravished the Maine wilderness 

 in the summer of 1905, which not only ob- 

 literated the trail so laboriously prepared 

 by Rogers, but rendered the country inter- 

 vening between the settlement and the 

 mountain so nearly impenetrable that even 

 that intrepid woodsman abandoned the pro- 

 ject which had promised permanent profit to 

 him. Many years after, that disaster a second 

 fire burned over the trail, consuming the ob- 

 structing blow-down and making the build- 

 ing of the present trail an easy task. 



All honor to the Appalachian Club for 

 exploring, extolling, and again making ac- 

 cessible the wonders of this greatest of 

 Eastern mountain peaks, but the mountain 

 was never lost to the memory of the many 

 who had followed the trail of the Kennedy 

 party, and its temporary isolation and re- 

 discovery was accountable to an act of 

 God and not to the apathy of local guides 

 and camp keepers or those who knew it of 

 old. . G. B. Fox 



Boston, Oct. 5. 



