In the Land of Canaan. 
My friend Fritz, having been long in city 
pent, came up in the latter part of June. With 
his arrival, following a quadrangular corres¬ 
pondence which had lasted through the winter 
and spring, our party was complete. 
We were willing and ready to start, and the 
expedition got under way the next morning. 
In a chill fog before the dawn we set forth, 
bound for the Land of Canaan, Vermont. The 
Parson held the reins, and his little brown 
Morgans, the apples of his eyes, the winners 
of many blue ribbons, at the county fair—gentle¬ 
man’s drivers they were—dashed out upon the 
open country road with all the energy of eager¬ 
ness. 
In the surrey were four men and one dog; 
namely, the Parson, the Professor, Fritz, I and 
Bingo. The last named was included in the 
load because he was a Dachshund and not 
built for pedestrianism. The surrey also con¬ 
tained, where some of our feet should have 
been, the various paraphernalia of hunting, fish¬ 
ing and camping—all of the luxuries and some 
of the necessities. I will not attempt to de¬ 
scribe, or even to enumerate, the articles which 
comprised our outfit of prospective comfort and 
convenience. The entire list may be found, 
where we found it, in Halley’s “Camp Guide 
for First Campers,” a remarkable literary effort 
offering plentiful advice as to what to take on 
a camping trip, saying little or nothing as to 
how to make use of it. 
On trotted the Parson’s Morgan span. At 
midday no Canaanitish earmarks had been ob¬ 
served, so we revised our pre-conceived idea of 
Canaan and resolved to seek information at the 
next village. The next village proved to be a 
small and more or less scattered collection of 
farmhouses. The Parson lightly applied the 
whip and with a grand flourish the Morgan 
span swept into somebody’s front yard. The 
Parson’s “Whoa!” brought a woman in kitchen 
clothes out to the ivy-twined stoop. The Pro¬ 
fessor alighted, removed his hat and made his 
most graceful bow. Bingo leaped to the ground 
and emitted a few officious barks, as if he be¬ 
longed to a committee of introduction. 
“I beg your pardon,” said the Professor, “but 
will you tell us if this is Canaan?” He spoke 
amicably, for the woman eyed him with stern¬ 
ness and suspicion. He paused for reply, which 
was made with great deliberation and obvious 
pity. 
“Land sakes! no, this ain’t Canaan. Canaan’s 
’most as big as Thomasville. I been there once. 
There’s a store there and the Congo church. 
You can’t miss it.” 
The Professor mopped his brow with his hand¬ 
kerchief, a white, linen handkerchief which the 
woman eyed with evident disfavor. The Pro¬ 
fessor ventured once more: “Would you mind 
if we had some water from the well?” 
“Wall, no, it’s free, the water is. But if you 
folks is dry I got some milk in the buttery.” 
This unexpected and generous invitation con¬ 
siderably relieved the tension. The Parson, 
Fritz and I alighted, and the four of us stood 
around and drank milk that would have been 
denominated cream on a menu card. The house¬ 
wife poured from a big blue pitcher and the 
cup was passed from hand to hand. Meanwhile 
Bingo chased the hens. 
“Who’s goin’ to pay for this here milk?” de¬ 
manded the lady of the blue pitcher presently, 
and added, “The water’s free as air.” 
The Parson, the Professor and Fritz looked 
first at the thrifty housewife, then at the ground, 
and then at me. I paid, after which I drew 
some water at the pump and gave it to Bingo. 
Our hostess nervously offered a few more 
words of conversation as we departed. 
“I—I see you got your fishal tackin’—tickle— 
fishin’ tackle—with you. Goin’ fishin’, ain’t ye?” 
We answered “Yes” in chorus and said 
“Good-bye.” 
The Parson appeared troubled. “I hope she 
didn’t think we were dead-beats,” he said, and 
Fritz remarked, “I was just going to pay for 
the milk when she mentioned it.” 
Canaan we found an hour later. Canaan was 
our jumping-off place. It consisted mostly of 
a general store, meaning a department store, 
and a box-shaped wooden meeting-house, 
painted white but showing the marks of fifty 
years of New England weather. The Parson 
engaged a Canaanite to take care of the Mor¬ 
gans for a fortnight and gave detailed instruc¬ 
tions as to the amount of hay and oats to put 
in their mangers. The Canaanite suggested a 
different ration, but the Parson only replied 
that he “would make an oat of it.” The Profes¬ 
sor, who was standing by, accused the Parson 
of having fetched his little joke too far. 
After a lunch of crackers and cheese and 
canned goods on the veranda of the general 
store—all the natives came out to see us eat— 
we shouldered our packs and sallied boldly 
into the big woods. Bingo, like Satan, came 
also. 
We followed an abandoned tote-road—terribly 
abandoned—for about seven miles. Our bur¬ 
dens became heavier than we could bear. The 
day grew dusky. We decided to go no further. 
We were too weary to erect a shelter according 
to Mr. Plalley’s specifications, and agreed with 
alacrity to sleep under the starry canopy of 
heaven. Alas, as shall be told, we did not fulfill the 
agreement—as to sleeping. Mr. Halley had 
written that a mossy slope would prove an ex¬ 
cellent out-door bed, so we carefully selected 
such a spot in a grove of young evergreens. We 
opened our luggage and extracted the blankets 
and the food materials, then proceeded to get 
supper, a supper that was fearfully and wonder¬ 
fully made. 
First we built a campfire, or rather a bonfire. 
In our culinary operations we each assumed a 
professional air which would have accorded 
better with the professions which we pursued 
in non-vacation life; and each displayed a some¬ 
what startling lack of adeptness in the art of 
woodland cookery. To make toast we tossed 
slices of bread into the coals and poked them 
out again with sticks. On the advice of Mr. 
Halley we had brought numerous pounds of 
salt-pork to be our mainstay of subsistence; 
and some of it we cooked by impaling chunks 
on spruce rods sharpened at the ends to serve 
as spits, and holding the meat in the midst of 
the flames. The Parson insisted on making the 
coffee. He set the pot in the center of the fire. 
The solder melted and the beverage vanished 
in steam. In the process of getting that supper 
we blackened our faces, scorched our skins, 
swallowed quantities of smoke, and damaged 
our tempers, but our appetites remained unim¬ 
paired. The dog refused to eat any of the salt- 
pork, so we fed him on doughnuts imported 
from Canaan. 
After supper we piled more wood on the bon¬ 
fire, spread the blankets on the mossy slope 
close by, lighted our pipes with brands snatched 
from the burning, sat. down in positions sug¬ 
gestive of Romans, Turks and Indians, and 
talked awhile. The flickering firelight danced 
in and out among the shadows of the forest. 
Rabbits scampered near, emitting strange, 
squeaky noises. Now and then one of them 
would hop into view and as quickly hop out 
again. The dog, oppressed by the mystery of 
the forest-night, curled up against the Parson 
and moaned and whimpered. Presently Fritz 
startled us with a command for silence. “Sh!” 
he whispered, stage-fashion. “There’s a rabbit 
on that knoll.” 
Sure enough, a dimly white shape of small 
proportions was to be seen moving slowly 
along the outer edge of the firelight. Fritz 
reached for a club and rose to his feet. The 
white object on the knoll had now become 
stationary. Fritz advanced cautiously, his heavy 
club raised. The club fell. Instantaneously a 
loud crash, as of a rifle volley, smote the still¬ 
ness. The air became thick with broken glass 
and preserved prunes, whizzing toward all 
points of the compass. 
“By the Great Horn Spoon!” ejaculated the 
Parson. . “There goes my jar of prunes.” The 
Parson was exceedingly fond of prunes. 
Bingo had risen to his feet. He began to 
howl dismally, and the sound, mingled with 
shouts of laughter from the human contingent, 
echoed uncannily among the trees of the ancient 
forest. By-and-by we replenished the fire, 
rolled ourselves in our blankets, stretched 
wearily on the mossy bed, and fell asleep. 
There is a limit to the softness of a bed of 
moss, and after a few hours we reached it. The 
moss, we learned, covered a rock with nubbins 
on it; and the nubbins, as time went on, 
emerged gradually but persistently from their 
secret places. To add to the horrors of the 
night, we found that our couch sloped down to 
a pool of water, the incline being sufficient to 
cause our bodies slowly but surely to demon¬ 
strate the infallibility of Newton’s laws of gravi¬ 
tation. When we felt the water percolating 
among our toes we climbed back to our orig¬ 
inal position on the moss-covered rock. This 
