FOLLOWING A LOST TRAIL. 
Of the many roads which start northward 
from Bearcamp Water, every one is either 
warded off by the Sandwich range into the Saco 
or into the Pemigewasset valley, or else smoth¬ 
ered in the dark forest-clad ravines between the 
mountain ridges. From Conway on the east to 
Campton and Thornton on the west, there is no 
rift in the mountain wall through which travel 
flows. There was a time, however, before the 
Civil War, when near the middle of the great 
barrier the human current found an outlet 
southward from the upper end of Swift River 
intervale to the Bearcamp Valley. Sitting by 
the fireside of a sturdy Albany farmer as the 
December moonlight gleamed upon the level 
snows of the intervale, I heard stories of the 
lumbermen’s journeys through those dark and 
narrow passes. Great spars and masts, the 
farmer said, had been hauled out of the valley 
under the frowning cliffs of Paugus, and carried 
safely to the level fields of Sandwich. Then 
there arose a storm such as old men know but 
once in a lifetime, and the passes were filled 
