262 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
could not easily have distinguished a bear there by his 
color. Great shells of trees, sometimes unburnt without, 
or burnt on one side only, but black within, stood twenty 
or forty feet high. The fire had run up inside, as in a 
chimney, leaving the sap-wood. Sometimes we crossed 
a rocky ravine fifty feet wide, on a fallen trunk ; and there 
were great fields of fire-weed (Epilobium angustifolium ) 
on all sides, the most extensive that I ever saw, which 
presented great masses of pink. Intermixed with these 
were blueberry and raspberry bushes. 
Having crossed a second rocky ridge, like the first, 
when I was beginning to ascend the third, the Indian, 
whom I had left on the shore some fifty rods behind, 
beckoned to me to come to him, but I made sign that I 
would first ascend the highest rock before me, whence I 
expected to see the lake. My companion accompanied 
me to the top. This was formed just like the others. 
Being struck with the perfect parallelism of these sin- 
. gular rock-hills, however much one might be in advance 
of another, I took out my compass and found that they 
lay northwest and southeast, the rock being on its edge, 
and sharp edges they were. This one, to speak from 
memory, was perhaps a third of a mile in length, but 
quite narrow, rising gradually from the northwest to the 
height of about eighty feet, but steep on the southeast 
end. The southwest side was as steep as an ordinary 
roof, or as we could safely climb; the northeast was an 
abrupt precipice from which you could jump clean to the 
bottom, near which the river flowed; while the level top 
of the ridge, on which you walked along, was only from 
one to three or four feet in width. For a rude illustra¬ 
tion, take the half of a pear cut in two lengthwise, lay it 
on its flat side, the stem to the northwest, and then halve 
