of the desert, crafty, cringing, abject in
cities, when he mounts his Arab steed and is off to the burning sands,
becomes dignified and courteous. Liberty and power are his. They
elevate him for the time in the scale of existence.

John was a superb rider. From his first trial, he had sat on
horseback, firm and kingly.

He and Caesar apparently indulged in common emotions on this morning of
their departure from home. They did not it is true "smell the battle
afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting," but they
smelt the wilderness, the wild, the fresh, the free, and they said ha!
ha! And so they sped on their long journey.

The young man made a partial acquaintance with lumbering operations at
Bangor; had his sublime ideas of the nobility of the aborigines of the
country somewhat discomposed by the experience of a day spent in the
Indian settlement at Oldtown; found a decent shelter at Mattawamkeag
Point, and, at last, with an exultant bound of heart, struck into the
forest.

The only road through this solitary domain was the rough path made by
lumbermen, in hauling supplies to the various camps, scattered at
intervals through the dense wilderness, extending seventy-five miles,
from Mattawamkeag Point to the British boundary.

Here Nature was found in magnificent wildness and disarray, her hair
quite unkempt. Great pines, shooting up immense distances in the sky
skirted the path and flung their green-gray, trailing mosses abroad on
the breeze; crowds of fir, spruce, hemlock, and cedar trees stood
waving aloft their rich, dark banners; clusters of tall, white
birches, scattered here and there, relieved and brightened the sombre
evergreen depths, and the maple with its affluent foliage crowned each
swell of the densely covered land. Here and there, a scarlet tree or
bush shot out its sanguine hue, betokening the maturity of the season
and the near approach of autumn's latest splendor. Big boulders of
granite, overlaid with lichens, were profusely ornamented with crimson
creepers. Everything appeared in splendid and wasteful confusion.
There were huge trees with branches partially torn away; others, with
split trunks leaning in slow death against their fellows; others,
prostrate on the ground; and around and among all, grew brakes and
ferns and parasitic vines; and nodded purple, red, and golden berries.

The brown squirrels ran up and down the trees and over the tangled
rubbish, chirping merrily; a fe