216 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER . 
eastern flank of Chocorua as can be won any¬ 
where. All that I had imagined yesterday as 
I stood on those far ramparts was now made 
real. Here was the ruffled water, the pine- 
capped headlands, the guardian ledges; there 
was the stern fortress lifting its rock face and 
ragged outlines high against the sky. As the 
mists hurried over the peak, they suggested 
smoke from cannon fired from this Gibraltar 
of nature. Here and there spruces, standing 
in the clouds upon the edge of the precipice, 
looked like the dim forms of men guarding the 
heights. 
As the water was very low, a narrow pebbly 
and rocky strip of beach offered an easy way 
round the lake. I followed it through the east¬ 
ern coves to the northern shore, where the slip¬ 
pery ledges, one above another, hung over me. 
Many boulders of large size and odd outlines 
lay upon the shore, with the waves raised by the 
south wind splashing against them. Here the 
beach failed me, and I had to force my way 
westward through the woods and undergrowth 
to the outlet of the pond. Considering that the 
lake was about a mile square, the stream which 
escaped from it was singularly small. I crossed 
it with a single stride. At high water it is 
probably much larger, for a dozen or more great 
logs pushed far up on the rocks show that the 
