KTAADN. 
69 
some twenty feet, and then climbed through the green 
tower, lost to our sight, until he held the topmost spray 
in his hand.* McCauslin, in his younger days, had 
marched through the wilderness with a body of troops, 
under General Somebody, and with one other man did all 
the scouting and spying service. The General’s word 
was, “ Throw down the top of that tree,” and there was no 
tree in the Maine woods so high that it did not lose its 
top in such a case. I have heard a story of two men 
being lost once in these woods, nearer to the settlements 
than this, who climbed the loftiest pine they could find, 
some six feet in diameter at the ground, from whose 
top they discovered a solitary clearing and its smoke. 
When at this height, some two hundred feet from the 
ground, one of them became dizzy, and fainted in his 
companion’s arms, and the latter had to accomplish the 
descent with him, alternately fainting and reviving, as 
best he could. To Tom we cried, Where away does the 
summit bear ? where the burnt lands ? The last he 
could only conjecture ; he descried, however, a little 
meadow and pond, lying probably in our course, which 
we concluded to steer for. On reaching this secluded 
meadow, we found fresh tracks of moose on the shore of 
the pond, and the water was still unsettled as if they had 
fled before us. A little farther, in a dense thicket, we 
* “ The spruce-tree,” says Springer in ’51, “ is generally selected, 
principally for the superior facilities which its numerous limbs af¬ 
ford the climber. To gain the first limbs of this tree, which are from 
twenty to forty feet from the ground, a smaller tree is undercut and 
lodged against it, clambering up which the top of the spruce is 
reached. In some cases, when a very elevated position is desired, 
the spruce-tree is lodged against the trunk of some lofty pine, up 
which we ascend to a height twice that of the surrounding forest.” 
To indicate the direction of pines, he throws down a branch, and 
a man at the ground takes the bearing. 
