58 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 
enjoyed the picture of the distance, we were filled 
with something like despair at the foreground. 
On three sides of us the “harricane” extended 
as far as the nature of the ground permitted us 
to see. Westward, along the ridge, in the direc¬ 
tion in which lay our trail of the morning, it 
reached for half a mile at least, and through it 
we must go, unless, indeed, we preferred to re¬ 
trace our steps into the Swift River valley and 
regain our path by such an ignominious circuit. 
Seen from above, that half-mile of forest wreck 
looked like a jack-straw table of the gods. 
Thousands of trees, averaging sixty or seventy 
feet in height, had been uprooted and flung to¬ 
gether u every which way.” They were flat upon 
the ground, piled in parallel lines, crossed at 
right angles, head to head, root to root, twisted 
as though by a whirlwind, or matted together as 
they might have been had a sea of water swept 
them from hill-crest to valley. Boulders of 
various sizes lay under the wreck, and, to make 
its confusion more distracting, saplings, briers, 
and vines flourished upon the ground shaded 
and enriched by the wasting ruin. 
It took more than an hour to climb and tum¬ 
ble over half a mile of this tangle. Any one 
who has watched an ant laboriously traversing 
a stubble-field or a handful of hay, crawling 
along one straw, across some, under others, and 
