honest, weather-worn
passer-by who paused before our door, and every moment on the point
of resuming his way, yet stood for an hour and recited his
adventures hunting deer and bears on these mountains. Having
replenished our stock of bread and salt pork at the house of one of
the settlers, midday found us at Reed's shanty,--one of those
temporary structures erected by the bark jobber to lodge and board
his "hands" near their work. Jim not being at home, we could gain
no information from the "women folks" about the way, nor from the
men who had just come in to dinner; so we pushed on, as near as we
could, according to the instructions we had previously received.
Crossing the creek, we forced our way up the side of the mountain,
through a perfect _cheval-de-frise_ of fallen and peeled hemlocks,
and, entering the dense woods above, began to look anxiously about
for the wood-road. My companions at first could see no trace of it;
but knowing that a casual wood-road cut in winter, when there was
likely to be two or three feet of snow on the ground, would present
only the slightest indications to the eye in summer, I looked a
little closer, and could make out a mark or two here and there. The
larger trees had been avoided, and the axe used only on the small
saplings and underbrush, which had been lopped off a couple of feet
from the ground. By being constantly on the alert, we followed it
till near the top of the mountain; but, when looking to see it
"tilt" over the other side, it disappeared altogether. Some stumps
of the black cherry were found, and a solitary pair of snow-shoes
was hanging high and dry on a branch, but no further trace of human
hands could we see. While we were resting here a couple of hermit
thrushes, one of them with some sad defect in his vocal powers which
barred him from uttering more than a few notes of his song, gave
voice to the solitude of the place. This was the second instance in
which I have observed a song-bird with apparently some organic
defect in its instrument. The other case was that of a bobolink,
which, hover in mid-air and inflate its throat as it might, could
only force out a few incoherent notes. But the bird in each case
presented this striking contrast to human examples of the kind, that
it was apparently just as proud of itself, and just as well
satisfied with its performance, as were its more successful rivals.

After deliberating some time over a pocket compass which I carried,