70 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
seemed to be still on their trail. It was a small meadow, 
of a few acres, on the mountain side, concealed by the 
forest, and perhaps never seen by a white man before, 
where one would think that the moose might browse and 
bathe, and rest in peace. Pursuing this course, we soon 
reached the open land, which went sloping down some 
miles toward the Penobscot. 
Perhaps I most fully realized that this was primeval, 
untamed, and forever untameable Nature , or whatever 
else men call it, while coming down this part of the 
mountain. We were passing over “ Burnt Lands/’ 
burnt by lightning, perchance, though they showed no 
recent marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred stump, 
but looked rather like a natural pasture for the moose 
and deer, exceedingly wild and desolate, with occasional 
strips of timber crossing them, and low poplars springing 
up, and patches of blueberries here and there. I found 
myself traversing them familiarly, like some pasture run 
to waste, or partially reclaimed by man; Hut when I 
reflected what man, what brother or sister or kinsman of 
our race made it and claimed it, I expected the propri¬ 
etor to rise up and dispute my passage. It is difficult to 
conceive of a region uninhabited by man. We habitu¬ 
ally presume his presence and influence everywhere. 
And yet we have not seen pure Nature, unless we have 
seen her thus vast and drear and inhuman, though in 
the midst of cities. Nature was here something savage 
and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the 
ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made 
there, the form and fashion and material of their work. 
This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out 
of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man’s garden, 
but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pas- 
