THE 
 
 I PES MOKE 
 CARR-Y 
 
 QH81 
 T2 
 
 LESTOH 
 TAYLOR 
 
QUp & 1L Bill ffitbrarg 
 
 Nortlj (Earoltna 8>tat? 
 Imwraiig 
 
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 This book was presented by 
 
 THE FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY 
 
 woC5^ 
 
THIS BOOR IS DUE ON THE DATE 
 INDICATED BELOW AND IS SUB- 
 JECT TO AN OVERDUE FINE AS 
 POSTED AT THE CIRCULATION 
 DESK. 
 
 100M/1-77 
 
The 
 
 PIPESMOKE 
 CARRY 
 
 h 
 
The 
 
 PIPE SMOKE 
 CARRY 
 
 By BERT 
 LESTON 
 TAYLOR 
 
 DECORATIONS 
 Sy C-B- FALLS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE REILLY AND 
 
 BRITTON COMPANY 
 
 1912, 
 
Copyright, 1912 
 
 by 
 
 The Reilly & Britton Co. 
 
TO TIFFANY BLAKE 
 
 You too have come the forest way 
 
 That wound among the ancient trees 
 
 And crossed the open places gay 
 
 With asters bending to the breeze ; 
 
 And light the burden that you bore 
 Along the frank and smiling road 
 
 That led you to the lonely shore 
 
 Where Rapture's very self abode. 
 
 You too have known the many moods 
 Of streams that babbled as they ran 
 
 Of far, unravished solitudes 
 
 Beneath the primal spell of Pan; 
 
 Have halted, reverent, on a hill 
 
 And felt what speech cannot express — 
 The "incommunicable thrill" 
 
 Of unexpected loveliness. 
 
 You too, when owls were on the wing, 
 Have wakened in the windless wood 
 
 And hearkened to the murmuring 
 Of waters under leafy hood; 
 
 Have heard a wakeful sparrow call, 
 
 And seen the bees of heaven swarm, 
 
 And watched the waning firelight fall 
 Upon a sleeping comrade' s form. 
 
 B. L. T. 
 
rj^ELL me where is fancy bred, 
 
 Or in the heart or in the head? 
 
 How begot, how nourished? 
 Reply, reply. 
 
 It is engendered in the eyes, 
 
 With gazing fed; and fancy dies 
 
 In the cradle where it lies. 
 
 — The Merchant of Venice 
 
Divine in hookahs, glorious in a pipe. 
 
 'TpHERE is a certain brand of tobacco that 
 ■** is burned in great quantities by the men 
 of the wood. The name of it need not be 
 written here, since it is known to those who 
 know the forest; nor need its qualities as a 
 weed be brought into question. As to this 
 doctors have disagreed, one physician main- 
 taining it to be the best tobacco manufac- 
 tured, another holding as stoutly that it is 
 not a tobacco at all, but a compound of great 
 villainy. My opinion, were it invited, would 
 strike somewhere 'twixt these two. 
 
 Odors quicken the memory, bring up swift- 
 ly scenes and happenings of the past. The 
 scent of wallflower may set before the inward 
 eye an old-fashioned garden and a white 
 cottage with faded-green blinds, placed 
 among elms and maples. Mignonette may 
 evoke the ghost of "an old, old love, long 
 dead." The smoke of a Havana cigar may 
 recall a plaza with its gay throng in a city of 
 the Antilles. Thus, the pungent odor of that 
 certain tobacco (the name of which Lord 
 Byron, had he striven for alliteration, might 
 
mim 
 
 Divine in hookahs, glorious in a pipe. 
 
 ^TpHERE is a certain brand of tobacco that 
 ■*• is burned in great quantities by the men 
 of the wood. The name of it need not be 
 written here, since it is known to those who 
 know the forest; nor need its qualities as a 
 weed be brought into question. As to this 
 doctors have disagreed, one physician main- 
 taining it to be the best tobacco manufac- 
 tured, another holding as stoutly that it is 
 not a tobacco at all, but a compound of great 
 villainy. My opinion, were it invited, would 
 strike somewhere 'twixt these two. 
 
 Odors quicken the memory, bring up swift- 
 ly scenes and happenings of the past. The 
 scent of wallflower may set before the inward 
 eye an old-fashioned garden and a white 
 cottage with faded-green blinds, placed 
 among elms and maples. Mignonette may 
 evoke the ghost of "an old, old love, long 
 dead." The smoke of a Havana cigar may 
 recall a plaza with its gay throng in a city of 
 the Antilles. Thus, the pungent odor of that 
 certain tobacco (the name of which Lord 
 Byron, had he striven for alliteration, might 
 
have mentioned in the verse quoted) has 
 power to body forth, as no other or better 
 tobacco can, the pictures in the Pipesmoke 
 Carry. 
 
 Home-bound from the land of firs, I slip 
 into the packsack an unbroken package of 
 this wonder-working weed, which, set alight 
 on winter evenings, pictures more truthfully 
 than the camera the roads of summer. Tree 
 and rock and falling water and winging fowl 
 are caught and prisoned by the film of gela- 
 tine, but the Spirit of the Woodland, dancing 
 on ahead and beckoning to a still fairer pros- 
 pect at the next turn of the road or bend of 
 the stream, eludes the camera's eye. So, if 
 you are a lover of the wild, come fill a pipe. 
 The tobacco is strong and housewives vow it 
 is unfragrant, but none other rings such 
 pleasing pictures. 
 
 And while you smoke, here is the map of a 
 country you will delight to journey in. Take 
 then the pack, or the canoe — either is less 
 than a feather's weight -and let us set for- 
 ward into the green mysteries. 
 
AND the Spring comes slowly up this way. 
 
 — Christabel 
 
T X THEN Summer is dead and the stream 
 * * is mute, and the snows lie deep across 
 the trail, or when the False Spring pleasantly 
 deludes us into thinking that Winter is over 
 and gone — one has only to fill a briar bowl, 
 and wreathing rings disclose the Pipesmoke 
 Carry, which flings up-hill from the lake-edge 
 and down-hill to the marge of new waters. 
 Thistledown is not less ponderable than 
 canoe and pack, nor are town streets 
 smoother or more free of foot -snares than 
 this phantom trail. 
 
 There is not in all the wilderness a fairer 
 carry than the Pipesmoke one, for it is a com- 
 posite of many well -remembered roads. It 
 winds through breathless groves where "the 
 pine tree drops its dead" and sun-drenched 
 opens where the choric popples sway and 
 sing, through cedar swamp and alder thicket 
 (strangely passable), and wild meadowland 
 whereon the dwarf rose grows. Now it 
 breaks through the brush to glimpse the 
 brawling river, and now it halts upon a hill- 
 top for a long look into the Valley of Silence. 
 And all along the way are flashes of fur and 
 
feathers, catches of bird song, a scent of 
 twinflower, an endless tinkle of brook water. 
 
 The while the pipesmoke wreaths these 
 pleasant pictures, one may tell himself that 
 he is in no haste for riches and leisure and 
 freedom to range the forest whenever the 
 gods may call; the forest spell is not some- 
 thing that passes with youth. Age modifies 
 most opinions, one's pleasure in this or that 
 may wane, there are poets and music-makers 
 of our youth and there are poets and music - 
 makers of our later years; but the forest, 
 like a certain magic melody or phrase, is for 
 all time — never less wonderful than at the 
 moment when it made its first appeal. 
 
 The visions which the Lady Nicotine 
 vouchsafes to me contain the lyric note, 
 never the epic. In the plexus of my pipe- 
 smoke trails there are no towering mountains, 
 no awesome passes ; the few hills are low and 
 fir-clad. One cannot be intimate with a 
 mountain, for mountains are less companion- 
 able than the stars; with a hill it is different. 
 Even the poets have not been drawn to close 
 communion with the peaks; Byron alone 
 seems to have exhibited energy in mountain- 
 eering. To some natures the mountains 
 speak as nothing else, not even the sea, can 
 speak ; but the poets for the most part have 
 found their inspiration in the murmuring 
 wood, the running brook, the wayside flower, 
 the homely countryside. 
 
y HE South sang like a nightingale 
 To thaw her glittering dream. 
 
 — The Young Princess 
 
DEEP as the sleep of the Princess Aurora, 
 untroubled as her gentle slumbers, that 
 waited but the wakening kiss of Spring and 
 Love, is the sleep of the northern woods. We 
 may not break it when Spring is months 
 away, but we may fill again a briar bowl, and 
 pipesmoke wreaths will body forth dim for- 
 est aisles, and songful coverts, and pleasant 
 water courses. 
 
 There is one pipesmoke trail which memo- 
 ry most frequently retraces ; perhaps because 
 the journey was unpremeditated, because so 
 little was expected and so much returned. I 
 was watching two woodlanders loading their 
 packs for a fortnight's cruise through the 
 green places ; ninety pounds to the pack, and 
 no wrinkle in the brown canvas — a work- 
 manlike job. An invitation to accompany 
 them as far as their first camp was accepted. 
 I tossed blankets and a few other necessaries 
 into a sack, and we were off. That was a 
 dozen years ago, and I have forgotten the 
 names and the faces of my companions, but 
 not the old lumber road that pitched straight 
 
up from the shore of the Big Water to the 
 crest of the ridge ; the singing stream on the 
 other side, along the bank of which wound 
 the now narrow trail; and the clearing to 
 which we came at sundown, keen for supper 
 and a pipe. 
 
 In this open place stood a long-abandoned 
 house of logs, our lodging for the night, and 
 at the foot of the clearing the little river 
 spread into a pool, every detail of which 
 memory still keeps unblurred: the curve of 
 the banks, the fallen tree beneath which lay 
 the larger trout, the swaying plant where the 
 stream narrowed again and the current 
 quickened, the arching alders, and the back- 
 ground of firs veiled by the gathering mists of 
 a midsummer night. 
 
 "We feel," Emerson wrote, "that every 
 one of those remarkable effects in landscape 
 which occasionally catch and delight the eye, 
 as for example a long vista in woods, trees on 
 the shore of the lake coming quite down to 
 the water, a long reach in a river, a double or 
 triple row of uplands or mountains seen one 
 over the other, and whatever of the like has 
 affected our fancy, must be the rhetoric of 
 some thought not yet detached for the con- 
 scious intellect." 
 
^Y^HE gauger walked with willing foot, 
 
 And aye the gauger played the flute; 
 And what should Master Gauger play 
 But Over the Hills and Far Away ? 
 
 Whene'er I buckle on my pack 
 And foot it gaily in the track, 
 
 pleasant gauger, long since dead, 
 
 1 hear you fluting on ahead. 
 
 — A Song of the Road 
 
^TOT long ago I happened on the sugges- 
 -*-^' tion that "a little anthology or two are 
 indispensable companions for one's summer 
 jaunts," and it was formerly my practice, 
 when loading a pack, to slip the "Golden 
 Treasury" between the blanket folds; but 
 I found — and you may agree — that one can- 
 not be confidential with his favorite poet in 
 such a large and varied company; a thin 
 volume of the bard beloved may prove more 
 profitable. And if I add that congruity 
 should be preserved it is because of a scene 
 that rises before me as I write — a wild shore 
 on the sands of which sprawls an over -stout 
 friend in a vividly-pink shirt bursting at the 
 neck-band, and borrowed trousers several 
 sizes too small for him. He is reading 
 "Pelleas and Melisande." 
 
 Books concerning the forest are better 
 read in winter, or in a tardy spring, when 
 the longing for the pack and the trail is 
 sharpest. Many men of many minds have 
 told us of the pleasure in the pathless soli- 
 tudes. This one discloses a sentimental 
 interest in wood and hill and cloud ; that one 
 
joys in matching against nature his own un- 
 conquerable soul, in taming the jungle with 
 an axe; a third is a brother of the angle; a 
 fourth a poet. I am but a Lantern Bearer, 
 moved by that spirit of adventure which dis- 
 covers itself in a preference for fresh woods 
 over old, for untrodden ways over blazed 
 trails, for distant unwhipt waters over rivers 
 near and known. 
 
 Stevenson, in an essay of extraordinary 
 charm, has symbolized this spirit of adven- 
 ture in a group of lads crouching in the cold 
 sand of the links "under the huge windy 
 hall of the night and cheered by a rich steam 
 of toasting tinware. To the eye of the 
 observer they are wet and cold and drearily 
 surrounded, but ask themselves and they are 
 in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the 
 ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern." 
 To one who has not the secret of the lanterns, 
 he says, the scene upon the links is meaning- 
 less. So the wilderness wayfarer will find 
 naught but toil and discomfort on the trail 
 unless "deep down in his fool's heart he 
 knows he has a bull's-eye at his belt and 
 exults and sings over the knowledge." There- 
 fore am I a Lantern Bearer, stirred by the 
 knowledge of a bull's-eye at my belt and of 
 the tune the Gauger fluted on the Road to 
 Anywhere. 
 
"O UT now the North wind ceases. 
 
 The warm South- West awakes, 
 The heavens are out in fleeces, 
 And earth's green banner shakes. 
 
 — Tardy Spring 
 
TJTOW one travels on the Pipesmoke trail ! 
 "** A A pinch of tobacco will take me twenty 
 miles. "Here," say I to another Lantern 
 Bearer, as we pore over the chart of some 
 wild township, " here we shall be by nightfall; 
 and here" — five squares away — "by late 
 afternoon of the following day." Five 
 squares — pooh ! a knight's move on the chess- 
 board; we may do even better. To be sure, 
 there is no trail, but we travel like the moose, 
 stepping lightly over windfalls and making 
 no account of cedar jungle, tamarack bog, or 
 rushing river. My maps represent, many of 
 them, land that I shall never set foot in, but 
 they are pin-pricked with pipesmoke camps 
 and overrun with pipesmoke trails. And the 
 squares holding for me the greatest fascina- 
 tion are those that disclose only white paper 
 — townships unsurveyed, uncharted as the 
 perilous seas on which the magic casements 
 open. 
 
 At one side of a blank square a lake leaves 
 off most tantalizingly ; at another side a 
 stream emerges from nothingness ; the sources 
 of the River Alph are not more mysterious. 
 
I recall with what a thrill of anticipation I 
 grasped the hand of a timber cruiser who had 
 "looked pine" in a certain unmapped town- 
 ship that had especially fired my imagina- 
 tion. He was a rough man, he swore as 
 terribly as the English army in Flanders, and 
 the lantern dangling from his arm, as he 
 leaned against a frontier bar, was not sym- 
 bolical of a recondite pleasure, but a light to 
 none too steady feet. But this man had 
 been in Sixty -two -six — or whatever the 
 mystic number was — and in my eyes he 
 became, therefore, a person of uncommon 
 interest. His recollection of the topography 
 of Sixty-two-six was disappointingly hazy. 
 There was perhaps a plateau here and very 
 likely a swamp there, this stream did not 
 amount to much and that lake was a "lone- 
 some hole " — what did it matter ? Nothing, 
 of course — to a man who is marking pine for 
 destruction. 
 
 Every Lantern Bearer good and true must 
 be a lover of maps and share the passion for 
 atlas voyaging. And I am sure that if a 
 good chart of the Narrow Vale were to be 
 had we should, when the summons came, 
 fare forward on the last long carry with a 
 lighter step and a braver heart. 
 
(~\H tell her, swallow, thou that knowest each, 
 That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
 And dark and true and tender is the North. 
 
 — The Princess 
 
f" HAVE never experienced a desire to follow 
 •*• the meridian over the rim of the southern 
 horizon ; the wonders of the tropics make no 
 appeal to a temperament wholly northern. 
 In imagination I may have journeyed on the 
 Orinoco, and watched the Southern Cross 
 rise, and sauntered in the plazas of Latin- 
 American cities; but I have never asked 
 first-hand acquaintance of these things. 
 Polaris, not Acrux, is my star; a white- 
 throated sparrow singing in a hazel bush is 
 more to me than all the brilliant birds of 
 Brazil, a patch of twinflower dearer than the 
 flora of the Amazon. So I follow the merid- 
 ian north, and as the world of men moves 
 with me, each year will likely find me loading 
 pack or canoe in a fresh outpost of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The picture that rises now is a long, roof- 
 less platform marking the terminus of the 
 railway, a straggle of wooden houses on a 
 treeless hill, the inevitable sawmill and the 
 inevitable saloon, women hanging out 
 clothes, hulking men-folk lounging in the sun, 
 and a host of yellow-haired children. Yester- 
 
day the town was not; to-day, the saloon- 
 keeper, glowing with civic pride, calls our 
 attention to the march of rough-shod prog- 
 ress. Where the ancient wood came down 
 to the water, now stands a mighty sawmill; 
 where Pan once piped, Bacchus now tends 
 bar. The saloon-keeper inquires whether 
 we noticed his residence on our way to the 
 store; it was the one with the red roof. 
 How could we have missed so notable a 
 habitation ! 
 
 Midway of the afternoon we are ready to 
 depart. The canoes are dropped into the 
 stream and the cargoes nicely adjusted; we 
 push out among the lilypads, and steal away 
 as silently as the storied sons of Araby, and 
 the old thrill comes with the first dip of the 
 paddle. Our camp for the night is distant 
 seven miles, but we need not hurry; there is 
 no wind, the smoke of the sawmill rises 
 straight as the stacks that belch it, the waters 
 are still, the sky is free of cloud. We follow 
 the river a mile or so, and one by one the 
 splotches of frontier civilization drop behind. 
 Then — the open lake, the north rim of the 
 world, and the shining Road to Anywhere. 
 
^HEN follow you, wherever hie 
 
 The traveling mountains of the sky, 
 Or let the streams in civil mode 
 Direct your choice upon a road. 
 
 For one and all, or high or low, 
 Will lead you where you wish to go; 
 And one and all go night and day 
 Over the hills and far away! 
 
 — A Song of the Road 
 
Mil 
 
 T^XCEPT for an occasional exclamation, as 
 -*— ' the panorama of solitude unrolls, there 
 is little talk during the first hour of a cruise. 
 One is absorbed in " savoring the moment," 
 as Arnold Bennett would say. The five 
 senses are busy transmitting new-old im- 
 pressions, and the mind is occupied in record- 
 ing them. You scan the sky for a circling 
 hawk or eagle, the while your ears take in the 
 loon's alarum; his keen vision has marked 
 you a mile and more away. You breathe 
 long columns of the tonic air, and dip the 
 paddle deep for the delight of feeling the 
 water ripple against your wrist. Your guide, 
 too, is silent. He is wondering what sort of 
 " tourist" you may be; every one who comes 
 to these woods merely for pleasure is a 
 "tourist." He is speculating whether you 
 will ask more of him than he purposes to 
 give; whether you expect him to be a wood- 
 land Savarin; and whether you will weary 
 him with the stock questions. And you per- 
 mit him to speculate. 
 
 Presently my pilot, in mid-lake, trails his 
 paddle and inquires: "By the way, sir, 
 
where might we be going ? " — a not unnatural 
 question. I answer that I had thought of 
 going due north, but that it doesn't matter; 
 all roads lead to camp. 
 
 For one and all, or high or low, 
 Will lead you where you wish to go. 
 
 Certain things are to be considered — the 
 size of the lakes, the condition of their shores 
 (forest fires have left broad lanes of desola- 
 tion), and the chance of head -winds on the 
 home trail. Circumstances alter courses, 
 and have since earliest days of navigation; 
 so circumstances are taken account of, and 
 we decide for the north-east. 
 
 "He travels the fastest who travels alone" 
 does not apply to literal voyaging through 
 unfamiliar territory. If one's time is limited, 
 a guide is indispensable, for with the best of 
 maps one will wander from the course, and 
 the camping grounds are few and scant. And 
 with the best of maps, again, one will look 
 long for the fissures in the green walls that 
 round these loon-haunted lakes of the north- 
 land. One swings his canoe aloft and passes 
 in, and the green gate closes after. And 
 whoso would follow may inquire his way of 
 the kingfisher, at the Sign of the Sapless 
 Bough. 
 
T^OR oft, when on my couch I lie, 
 In vacant or in pensive mood, 
 
 They flash upon that inward eye 
 Which is the bliss of solitude; 
 
 And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
 
 And dances with the daffodils. 
 
 — Daffodils 
 
\K 7E have ploughed a straight furrow 
 * * through Carp Lake. Its ramparts are 
 so cruelly burned that the usual inclination 
 to paddle close to the shore is absent, al- 
 though once we turn in to photograph a 
 huddle of burnt birches standing by the 
 waterside. When we come to the north-east 
 carry we find it green with young woods and 
 tall grasses, but it is disfigured by the aban- 
 doned shacks of a mining company, the 
 stark ugliness of which nature is doing her 
 best to modify. Thus we are in the best of 
 mind -states to appreciate an abrupt reveal - 
 ment of beauty, and such a revealment is 
 encountered as we foot the trail to Emerald 
 Lake. 
 
 White birches and asters, in a marvelous 
 profusion! The poet who could not but be 
 gay in the jocund company of a host of golden 
 daffodils, could not but be tranquilly joyful 
 in the sweet and serious company of this host 
 of silver birches. So thickly set are the 
 slender boles, I know the camera can make 
 nothing of them, that the record will suggest 
 a bamboo forest; nor can it give a better 
 
account of the asters, shoulder high and 
 matching the birches in exuberance. A 
 shimmering radiance floods the grove, in 
 which splendor the sun has less share than 
 common, for its direct rays fall only on the 
 tops of the trees; and the warm air is fragrant 
 with the breath of the flowers. Knowing 
 the camera's limitations, I should have got 
 out my notebook and had a try with words; 
 but making notes is something I am always 
 going to do and never doing, trusting instead 
 to memory, which seldom preserves details. 
 A rememberable carry, notwithstanding. 
 The snows lie thick upon it now, and the 
 leafless masts of the birches cast bluish 
 shadows across a whiteness which shames 
 their own. Their lovely companions, the 
 asters, are withered and gone. But Spring 
 will pass that way again, and following in her 
 steps, some other traveller will come upon 
 the radiant grove, where, standing rapt amid 
 the flowers, he may thank the Creator for 
 the gift of vision and for the inward eye that 
 has the power to call up a vanished glory. 
 
f^H fair enough are sky and plain, 
 
 ^ But I know fairer far; 
 Those are as beautiful again 
 That in the water are; 
 
 The pools and rivers wash so clean 
 The trees and clouds and air, 
 
 The like on earth was never seen, 
 And oh that I were there. 
 
 — A Shropshire Lad 
 
H&H 
 
 TNNOCENT of introspection, with none of 
 ■** the Shropshire Lad's desire to "dive and 
 drown," Narcissus gazed into the silver pool 
 that reflected his incomparable countenance. 
 He was an extremely comely youth, but the 
 . mirror flattered him a bit, as it flatters every- 
 thing in nature. You have coasted, on a 
 windless afternoon, along the high shore of 
 lake or river, and marked how clean the 
 water washed the trees and clouds and air. 
 Fair enough are silver birches, mossy ledges, 
 and bushes bearing scarlet berries; but 
 "those are as beautiful again that in the 
 water are." 
 
 Sundown on Cypress Lake. A lean note- 
 book mentions merely that the date was 
 August 18, 1911, and that the weather was 
 still; but one does not forget so marvellous 
 a stillness. The last zephyr has expired, and 
 nature seems not even to breathe. It is not 
 the calm that precedes the storm, for then 
 nature seems uneasy, and the lifeless air is 
 charged with omens. Now a luminous 
 peace envelops the woodland. The arches 
 of the forest aisles are motionless as those of 
 
a cathedral; not a line wavers. The glass 
 of the lake doubles every object, from the 
 nearest water grasses to the timbered wall of 
 the farther shore. An islet opposite our 
 camp, with its sprinkle of firs and popples, 
 becomes as beautiful again. A school of 
 minnows are jumping, a spray of silver. A 
 gull, high enough to catch the sun, sails by on 
 lazy wing; its double sails below. A loon 
 calls up the lake, and this and the snapping 
 of our camp-fire are the only sounds. 
 
 No less mysterious than these stillnesses 
 are the first moments when nature wakens 
 from her sleep. The popple leaves, first to 
 respond, begin to quiver, soon to dance; the 
 water laps against the shore; the clouds 
 bestir themselves, and like a fleet that has 
 weighed anchor they set sail for other scenes. 
 
 Whereby was known that we had viewed 
 The union of our earth and skies 
 Renewed: nor less alive renewed 
 Than when old bards, in nature wise, 
 Conceived pure beautv given to eves, 
 And with undvingness imbued. 
 
f~^OME hither, come hither, come hither; 
 
 Here shall he see 
 
 No enemy 
 But winter and rough weather. 
 
 — As You Like It 
 
TX7IND-BOUND! A potent phrase, on 
 " " the sound of which gather in the mind's 
 eye an odd company of forest adventurers. 
 There are "tourists" with their guides and 
 canoemen, lumberjacks on their way to this 
 slaughtering place or that, Indians, prospec- 
 tors, camp cooks, and tugmen, an English 
 army officer who has exchanged the sword 
 for a roll of maps and is inspecting his majes- 
 ty's woodland, Canadian rangers — alert, 
 good-tempered fellows, with a shrewd eye for 
 contraband — east-bound and west -bound, 
 they are gathered on a neck of land separat- 
 ing Birch Lake from Basswood, waiting the 
 west wind's pleasure. 
 
 And chiefly I recall our camp-fire after 
 nightfall on the lee of the hill, to which draws 
 his majesty's First Ranger in that part of the 
 Dominion, a tall and graceful young man, to 
 whose pleasant face a smile comes quickly. 
 'Twixt him and our guide there is much talk 
 of maps and trails, to which I can listen by 
 the hour. This carry (or portage, as they 
 call it) is but a lift-out, that one is a back- 
 breaker; if one go by Pine Portage he shall 
 
see fine waters and woodland; if he go by 
 Mud Lake he shall find nothing of account. 
 And of all the lakes in this great labyrinth 
 there is none like to— But that is a secret 
 to be guarded, for as yet the " tourists" have 
 not found their way thither, and next sum- 
 mer, or the summer after, it shall be our 
 destination. 
 
 Summer and winter these rangers are on 
 the move, in canoe or on snowshoes ; and 
 save that their vocation is to maintain the 
 law instead of to break it, their lives are as 
 romantic as those of the bygone archers of 
 Sherwood Forest ; or so it seems to us whose 
 lives are spent in towns, and who adventure 
 into the wilderness only in the friendly sea- 
 son. We hear of hardships endured; his 
 majesty's First Ranger is reminded of the 
 "longest hike" of his experience, a double- 
 quick from a certain lake to Fort Francis. 
 This draws a chuckle from our guide. "And 
 I," vouchsafes the latter, "was just one day 
 ahead of you." 
 
 The ranger laughs good-naturedly. The 
 feud, whatever it may have been, was in the 
 day's work, and is now forgotten. The 
 tobacco is passed, and the embers of the 
 camp-fire stirred, and the unwearied west 
 wind whips them into flame. 
 
N 
 
 O weather is ill 
 If the wind be still, 
 
 — English Proverb 
 
TO be able to sit with one's back against a 
 tree and wait, a week if must be, for a 
 drop in the wind, does not argue possession 
 of a special kind of temperament, for I have 
 two friends that are unlike as can be, whose 
 capacity for sitting still is unlimited. All 
 that either asks is a dry corner of the tent and 
 a supply of tobacco, and the North -East may 
 slant a deluge or the South -West crack its 
 cheeks. My patience falls short of theirs. I 
 can wait if only rain delays; but a wind that 
 blows day in and day out puts me on edge, 
 and I marvel that searchers for the Southern 
 Pole could face a ceaseless gale and keep their 
 wits. 
 
 Prisoners of "this fierce angel of the air," 
 on the lee shore of Basswood Lake, we turn 
 in, the third night, to the shrill music of his 
 pipes, but in the darkest hour I wake to find 
 the music gone; hushed even the topmost 
 choir of the pines. 
 
 Argent Westward glows the hunt, 
 East the blush about to climb. 
 
 A break for liberty is resolved on. The tent 
 
is struck, breakfast is a small matter, and 
 before our fellow -prisoners on the shore have 
 roused themselves we are speeding west- 
 ward as fast as bending blades of ash can 
 send us. But in one stride the morning 
 overtakes us; the javelins of the sun shower 
 all around, striking fire from the gray rocks 
 and drawing red from the burnt fir-tops on 
 the nearer shore; the mist -phantoms, turned 
 purple by the pelting sun-rays, scurry across 
 the face of the waters. The day is up. 
 
 From what quarter may we expect the 
 wind ? We have not long to speculate. The 
 West is announced by a band of silver far up 
 the lake, marking its first contact with the 
 plane. The silver spreads, ripples grow to 
 waves, and before another mile is covered the 
 whitecaps are running. We keep on, spite of 
 aching wrists and shoulders, until the water 
 begins to come over the bow, when we give 
 up the tussle, and wonder whether we can 
 make the nearest island without swamping. 
 This interesting question goes unanswered, 
 for a large launch has come up behind us. 
 Distress signals are promptly responded to, 
 the cargo is transferred, and from our "egg- 
 shell pinnace" we step aboard what seems, 
 by comparison, an ocean liner. 
 
THIS was a day that knew not age. 
 
 — The South-Wester 
 
A SKY without a trace of vapor, a sunlit 
 ***■ beach, a blue plane of water, roughened 
 to purple where the puffy off-shore wind 
 whips it; a cluster of fishermen's houses, and 
 back of these the forest. In this memory 
 picture are the things that the Spaniard 
 Sorolla delights to portray; strong sunlight, 
 and wind, and a surface joy of living. The 
 sunlight is everywhere; it floods even the 
 forest, exorcising the spell of it, dissipating 
 the enchantment. And it wraps, in a blan- 
 ket of genial warmth, two lotus-eaters lazing 
 by the waterside, waiting for the wind to 
 drop, that they may put forth in their cockle- 
 shell. 
 
 We are as far from the world of men and 
 affairs, my companion and I, as if the roll of 
 the planet had pitched us off into space. If 
 we prefer a planet's shell it is because the 
 beach beneath us has caught and stored the 
 rays of the sun, because a few miles of atmos- 
 phere has colored them, because the wood- 
 land has yielded its odors to their keeping. 
 We are not conscious of a stronger bond with 
 this particular footstool of the Almighty. It 
 
is blazing sunlight. w Thought, introspection, 
 shadow and mystery, are absent. 
 
 But the voyage at "gathered eve," the 
 five-mile paddle along the shore to our camp 
 on the magic Brule — this returns us to the 
 world of men, of the makers of song, the 
 dreamers of shining dreams. Color is every- 
 where; our paddles drip it. Araby the 
 Blest never harbored odors more grateful 
 than those the land breeze brings to us. As 
 the fires of the sunset pale, a song sparrow 
 sings, slowly and plaintively, two measures 
 of an exquisite melody, and then is silent, 
 though we wait for more of his music. The 
 forest is dark ; the enchantment has returned. 
 Shadow and mystery, and the thoughts that 
 elude expression — these are with us now. 
 . . . And these are the things one misses 
 in the paintings of the Spaniard. 
 
nnffE great brand 
 
 Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon. 
 And flashing round and round, and whirr d 
 
 in an arch, 
 Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, 
 Seen where the moving isles of winter shock 
 By night, with noises of the Northern Sea, 
 So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur: 
 But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm 
 Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
 And caught him by the hilt, and brandish 'd him 
 Three times, and drew him under in the mere. 
 — The Passing of Arthur 
 
■Ml 
 
 IDLE speculation goes very well with pipe- 
 smoking, which Schopenhauer pronounced 
 a substitute for thought. Supplied with this 
 substitute, I have speculated, idly enough, 
 upon what sort of world this might be with- 
 out the printed, painted and carven products 
 of man's imagination. How would a land- 
 scape present itself devoid of every fanciful, 
 poetical association ? Perhaps as the meta- 
 physical ''thing in itself," or as near to it 
 as we could come. "Landscape," said 
 Amiel, "is a state of mind." 
 
 German metaphysics suggests a tarn, and 
 this poetical word recalls a moonlit "state 
 of mind," in which I and another found our- 
 selves one midsummer night that followed a 
 sundown of almost supernatural beauty. 
 Our camp was pitched, and is now pitched in 
 the pipesmoke, at the mouth of the Brule, 
 and when, supper is done and the beds laid 
 we venture, the moon riding high, to ex- 
 plore the river — silent in the last deep reach 
 of its journey, but songful in the spreading 
 shallows. A dozen strokes of the paddle 
 bring us to the rapids, lovely in the silvery 
 
light, and we digress through a narrow grassy- 
 channel into a circular lagoon. Thrice we 
 round this, then lay the canoe against the 
 rushes and sit motionless. 
 
 The tarn, or more strictly lagoon, is walled 
 by the forest, and it pleases us to fancy it of 
 a great depth. The rim of it is all in shadow, 
 with a pale inner ring of sagittaria; the 
 moon's light, thickened by a mist, falls upon 
 the middle of the pool. It was from such a 
 magic mere that the "arm clothed in white 
 samite" rose, bearing the brand Excalibur. 
 And on a bridge of moonbeams we cross the 
 centuries and stand with Arthur and Merlin 
 by " a fair water." And — 
 
 "Lo, said Merlin, ponder is the sword that I 
 spake of. What damsel is that? said Arthur. 
 That is the Lady of the Lake, said Merlin; and 
 within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair 
 a place as any on earth and richly beseen, and 
 this damsel will come to thee anon, and then 
 speak ye fair to her, and she will give thee that 
 sword." 
 
 In our childhood we play with blocks, and 
 in our later years we build bridges of moon- 
 beams. What sort of world would it be with- 
 out them ? 
 
MY eyes make pictures when they are shut. 
 
 — Day Dream 
 
/^VER the desk hangs a blueprint, the 
 ^^ white rectangles representing building 
 lots; several of these spaces are marked 
 "Sold." One has only to express approval 
 of this lot as against that one, and the 
 magic word "Sold" is written across it. 
 No money changes hands — none that I 
 know of. I remark that the upper lots seem 
 more desirable for residential purpose than 
 the lower, and the Judge (as they call him) 
 becomes alert. He draws the curtain of 
 his desk, locks it carefully, and rises. "I 
 have a little surveying to do up there, 
 anyway," he says. ''Glad of the walk," 
 say I ; and we set forth, the Judge carrying 
 a small axe and tape, and a stout staff which 
 he holds before him, tapping like a blind 
 man. 
 
 Our way follows the sweep of the beach 
 for a quarter mile; then we thread a fringe 
 of firs and strike up the hill. The Judge 
 pauses. "These are the lots you prefer," 
 he says. "Ah, yes. And what do you call 
 the street?" I inquire, looking southward. 
 "St. Paul Avenue," he replies. 
 
I fill a pipe while the Judge drives a few 
 more survey stakes. There is much on St. 
 Paul Avenue to admire. The thoroughfare 
 is gay with fireweed, for one thing, and there 
 are asters, and the red and purple berries of 
 summer flowers, and now and then flashes 
 of feathers and trills of sparrow song. Un- 
 disturbed by our presence a porcupine is 
 leisurely stripping the leaves from a fire- 
 weed. Below to the east lies the Big Water, 
 unruffled as a forest pool. Two crescents of 
 sand define the shore, and between the 
 crescents sprawls the village; on the right 
 the frame dwellings of the Norse fishermen, 
 on the left the log cabins and tepees of the 
 Chippewas. "I shall have to move my 
 office up here, as everything down there" — 
 the Judge waves his arm — "will be wanted 
 for docks and warehouses." 
 
 We wind down the hill. "There's a boat 
 up to-night," I say. ''Would you mind giv- 
 ing this letter to the purser?" He accepts 
 the commission almost eagerly, and jots 
 down in a crowded memorandum book a 
 record of the transaction. The Judge always 
 meets the boat. North-bound and south- 
 bound, it puts in four times a week; and 
 rain or clear, fog or starlight, the Judge is 
 first on the wharf, staff and lantern in 
 hand. "Somebody on the boat might want 
 to see me about a lot," he explains. 
 

 
 H, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt, 
 Sweet Alice with eyes so brown ? 
 
 — Ben Bolt 
 
TDIPESMOKE through pipesmoke. The 
 •*■ long narrow hotel bar-room is fogged 
 with it. Against the bar lean a picturesque 
 crew of lumberjacks, timber cruisers and 
 Indians, waiting for the night boat. A tall 
 woodlander, with lighted lantern dangling 
 on arm, is standing treat for the crowd, and 
 the bar is awash with beer, tall beakers of 
 which the landlord serves with a careless 
 hand. In the corner stands a music box of 
 the slot variety; the revolving disc tinkles 
 forth the pensive ballad of "Ben Bolt"; 
 and when the tune ends, Dave the Keeper 
 of the Light drops in another coin, and the 
 ballad begins again. It is the tune he likes 
 best in all the world; so he tells a French - 
 Canadian whom he has persuaded to listen. 
 "You bet, you bet, you bet," says Frenchy, 
 sympathetically. Both are bemused with 
 beer. 
 
 I have been talking trails and rivers with 
 one of the cruisers, and when I step out of 
 the fog of pipesmoke for a breath of fresh 
 air, I find another sort of fog abroad. It 
 has rolled in from the lake in great volume 
 
and swallowed everything; the lighthouse 
 light is obliterated. The door opens and 
 one of the woodlanders comes out, followed 
 by a tinkle of "Ben Bolt," which is begin- 
 ning another round. "There ain't no music 
 in them boxes," says the woodlander scorn- 
 fully. And he mentions an unknown vio- 
 linist who passed that way during the winter, 
 and to whose playing he listened while lying 
 sick upstairs in the hotel . ' ' That was music, ' ' 
 says he; and I wonder whether it was. 
 
 Suddenly through the fog comes a ques- 
 tioning blast from a steamer's whistle. 
 "She's out pretty well," I remark. "Ran 
 by," says the woodlander. "And Dave 
 ain't got his bell going ! Wonder how much 
 longer the Cap'n is going to stand for that 
 sort of thing." He opens the door and hails 
 the recreant Keeper of the Light. "Hey, 
 Dave! Start your bell! Boat's outside in 
 the fog — pretty nigh the reef, too!" Dave 
 lurches forth and vanishes in the fog, and 
 presently the sound of oars tells that he is 
 pulling for the light. 
 
 It is an anxious hour for the folks aboard 
 the steamer, and for the master of the boat, 
 who fears the rocky, lichen-frosted shore. 
 But he is a taciturn man, and he makes only 
 one comment: "Why don't Dave hang his 
 fog bell on the saloon? Then I'll know where 
 to steer." 
 
"pv.4 Y of the cloud in fleets ! dag 
 
 Of wedded white and blue, that sail 
 Immingled, with a footing rag 
 In shadow sandals down our vale. 
 
 — The South-Wester 
 
■»ta*tf 
 
 '"pHE pipesmoke, to my fancy, now takes 
 *** the form of clouds, above a picture of 
 unbroken solitude. September is only a few 
 days old, but she wears the vesture of 
 October. The fire-swept slopes of Pine 
 Mountain are clad in scarlet and gold, and 
 there are splashes of these gay colors in 
 the pattern of the circling green. Overhead, 
 our poet's wedded white and blue, the cloud 
 in fleets — the low-lying stratus streaming 
 like pennons from the blackened staffs of 
 dead and distant trees. 
 
 Here, leaving the rude wagon road, leads 
 off another pipesmoke carry; pipesmoke 
 truly, for path or blaze there is none — one 
 steers by the sun and the "lay of the land." 
 Four miles of ridges and ravines lie between 
 me and the high burnt hill, by the farther 
 slope of which Atagi of the Rembrandt vis- 
 age has told me I shall find the magic Brule. 
 The blessed toil of those four generous 
 miles ! Thickets of hazel and maple belt the 
 hills, and tangles of alder edge the small 
 streams that drain the ravines; and to the 
 last of these I come with no little satis- 
 faction. A brook washes the base of the 
 
high burnt hill, and along the nearer bank 
 courses a well-worn moose trail. This pres- 
 ently leaps the stream and pitches up the 
 hill, and I toil after. It is a stiff climb for 
 moose or man, but the reward, like all 
 rewards worth while, is at the summit. 
 
 One really vibrates but once to the shouts 
 of the Valkyries or the lovely music of "Am 
 stillen Herd" ; successive hearings do not 
 bring that first "incommunicable thrill. " 
 So, from this hilltop, I shall never see again 
 precisely what I see this day of wedded 
 white and blue, never feel again the lump in 
 throat and starting tear which the sudden 
 revealment of exquisite beauty produces. 
 
 Below me lies the Valley of the Brule, 
 a perfect picture of solitude, transcending 
 every beauty imaged for it. Here the river 
 widens into a lake, and one arm, reaching in 
 parallel with the stream, forms a long narrow 
 peninsula, in the swamp of which a few dead 
 trees stand weirdly. Five miles to the west 
 and half as many to the east the valley is 
 open as a map; and where the river is in 
 view lies the roselight of the afterglow. 
 
 As I lean my pack against the giant 
 boulder that hangs upon the brow of the hill, 
 and look long into the Valley of Silence, there 
 comes the regret the lone wayfarer knows — 
 the regret that another is not there to share 
 the glory of the place and murmur an 
 "Amen!" to his fervent "God be praised! " 
 
/^vA^L Y at gathered eve knew we 
 The marvels of the day. 
 
 — The South-Wester 
 
*ja <£ 
 
 SUNDOWN and striding shadows. An 
 evening of rare beauty descends on the 
 valley; moonlight, and the mist rising from 
 the river; a forest as enchanted as Undine's 
 encircles me. The ban of silence that the 
 day imposed is lifted from the Brule, which 
 babbles of unravished solitudes and mys- 
 teries. Always this river has bewitched me. 
 Even now, seen through pipesmoke, its 
 charm is as potent as on that blessed morn- 
 ing when first I looked on it, a brown flood 
 flecked with the foam of countless falls and 
 rapids. 
 
 Supper and the pipe contemplative, and 
 the pleasant recapitulation of the obstacles 
 surmounted in the day's work. This is the 
 chief joy of a woodland voyage; and the 
 harder the day, the deeper the peace that 
 broods over the camp-fire. One would not, 
 indeed, unless the need were urgent, retrace 
 some arduous trails; but before the cedar's 
 blaze their thorns are forgiven and forgot, 
 and one chooses to remember only the cloud 
 in fleets, the autumn finery of the hills, the 
 flash of wings, the wayside pool and flower. 
 
Into the weaving of this gay tapestry some 
 sober threads of thought may come. A man 
 may reflect that his life is made up of many 
 carries; that he sets out with a brave array 
 of companions, who fall away with the years ; 
 and that middle age finds him footing the 
 trail with a single comrade, sharing with her 
 the good and the ill, the rough and the 
 smooth, the sunlight and the shadow, the 
 heat of the day and the cool of the evening. 
 Then, if heaven be so unkind, he must make 
 the last and longest carry alone. Happy the 
 man who has so ordered his life that he can 
 go this solitary way serene and unafraid. 
 
 Now darkens even the western skyline. 
 The mists rise and the stars show in the 
 river. I am glad that I know the names of 
 many of these stars. The tent -opening 
 frames the Chair of Cassiopeia, and I fall to 
 thinking of 
 
 That starred Ethiop queen, that strove 
 
 To set her beauty's praise above 
 
 The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended. 
 
 An owl hoots across the lake, a muskrat 
 splashes in the river, the brook brawls under 
 the hill. 
 
 All's well in the valley. 
 
nr^HE wind has teeth, the wind has claws, 
 
 All the wind's wolves through woods a re loose, 
 The wild wind's falconry aloft. 
 
 — Hard Weather 
 
n^HERE are pictures that bite deep in the 
 -*■ memory, and rise long afterward with 
 scarcely a line expunged. Such a picture 
 the pipesmoke rings: a wet wisp of a tent 
 swung in a huddle of young popples against a 
 background of dead jack-pines, fire-killed 
 and waiting for the wind. Whenever it 
 blows a full gale, as the sailors say, I see that 
 weird array of blackened masts — waiting for 
 the wind. 
 
 All the night and all the day it has rained. 
 The woods are saturated, every leaf is 
 charged. Globules of water hang from the 
 points of the pine needles, and the young 
 balsams and spruces are white with standing 
 rain. Rotted trees turn to muck under- 
 foot, while overhead the forest waits but a 
 touch to discharge a deluge. The camp-fire 
 burns despite the downpour, for the fuel is 
 jack-pine and the flame is roofed. 
 
 A sudden light gleams in the west and 
 broadens till the blue appears. The east 
 begins to gild, and across a field of azure the 
 low, thinned clouds drive like smoke ; the 
 South-Wester shows its teeth and claws. 
 
Arcturus burns like a topaz through the pop- 
 ples, whose slim boles bend before the blasts, 
 the entire grove as one tree. Have we not 
 known people who bow their heads to the 
 gale of adversity, nor raise them till the 
 storm is past? 
 
 Crash! One of the dead trees falls; an- 
 other, and another. I can hear each dis- 
 charge of the tempest as it comes down the 
 narrow valley. It sweeps around the river 
 bend, preluded by the boom of falling trees, 
 and the next instant it is about my ears, 
 bending the popples, scattering the fire- 
 brands, and dying away down the river. 
 But even the giant wings of the South- 
 Wester are dusted with the powders of Pop- 
 py land, and my last memory of that wild 
 night is the yellow disc of the rising moon, 
 glimpsed through the storm-parted portals 
 of my canvas lodging. Safe among the 
 bending popples, I fall asleep to the rude 
 music of dead trees falling on the hill, and 
 the deepening voice of the rushing river. 
 

 ~\rOU must love the light so well 
 "*■ That no darkness will seem fell. 
 Love it so you could accost 
 Fellowly a living ghost. 
 Whishf the phantom wisps away, 
 Owns him smoke to cocks of day. 
 
 — The Woods of Westermain 
 
THEY tell of mariners who fought with 
 death on whom fell afterward "the 
 Fear," and some such awe of the forest deep 
 may have come to those who, within its 
 shadows, have been at grips with death and 
 all but lost the issue ; for there are accidents 
 by trail and river which must be reckoned 
 on when we put forth into the green and 
 blessed silence, and that is one of several 
 reasons for woodsmen traveling in pairs. 
 Nature is as savage as she is beautiful; we 
 must keep the upper hand. 
 
 The woodland has always used me kindly, 
 and such fear as I confess to is as foolish as a 
 child's dread of the dark. Too much imagi- 
 nation is at bottom of it — an explanation 
 offered by an experienced mountaineer, who 
 told me that he never scaled a peak without 
 experiencing acute pangs of terror. Imagi- 
 nation it may be — or a too -lively fancy, which 
 when the wind is in the fir-tops peoples with 
 fantastic shapes the "shadowed leagues of 
 slumbering sound," and as odd a company 
 draw up to the edge of the firelight as ever 
 thrust themselves upon the temerarious 
 
youth, in the Grimm marchen, who set out 
 to learn what fear was. Queer folk out of 
 the pages of Hoffmann are among the visi- 
 tors, and there runs through my head that 
 old tale of Fouque's, and the river, only a 
 pebble's-toss away, begins to rise. It cov- 
 ers the boulders, it creeps up the bank, it 
 hisses through the brush, until the entire 
 valley heaves with frothy waves, milk-white 
 in the moonshine. I hear the despairing 
 cries of Bertalda and the Knight, and see the 
 grinning face of the malicious Kiihleborn. 
 
 Then I rise, with a little shiver, to stir the 
 fire; and with its leaping flames the flood 
 subsides and the wraiths depart. More 
 surely to dismiss them, I leave the circle of 
 firelight and go down to the river, which at 
 a place that I shall always remember runs 
 still and deep — scarcely "lapping with low 
 sounds by the shore." The moon, an hour 
 risen, stands upon a fringe of pointed firs; 
 its beams define a sharp bend in the stream, 
 beyond which sounds faintly the murmur of 
 rapids. The peace that passes understand- 
 ing lies upon the wild. No ghostly train 
 intrudes. No darkness can seem fell. 
 
n^NE sun draws out of hazel lea res 
 A smell of woodland wine. 
 
 I wake a swarm to sudden storm 
 At any step's advance. 
 
 — Outer and [nner 
 
MANIFOLD are nature's moods, as seen 
 in the turn of a stream, the curve of a 
 cataract, the banking of hills at a lakehead ; 
 — and one may not anticipate these moods. 
 One may view, through rings of pipesmoke, 
 places that he has never actually seen, and 
 when he comes to visit these places they are 
 not in the least as fancy pictured them. This 
 is a common experience, but it is not so com- 
 mon to find reality transcending anticipa- 
 tion. 
 
 For several years my winter meditations 
 have focused on the confluence of the River 
 Brule and a smaller stream -a fascinating 
 point on the map; and now, after a week of 
 arduous travel, I am within an hour's march 
 of the goal. There remains less than a mile 
 of burnt land, but this is strewn with hazel 
 thickets -nature in one of her most trying 
 moods. Much has been said by anglers in 
 depreciation of the alder, but for the culti- 
 vating of patience there is no better environ- 
 ment than a thicket of hazel. When stung 
 smartly on one cheek you learn to turn the 
 other; and you learn to disengage yourself 
 
and pack, without objurgation, from the de- 
 taining tentacles of a plant that rivals the 
 devil-fish. None the less, you have a defin- 
 ite opinion of Corylus; you feel that you 
 could barely be civil to a young woman 
 named Hazel, or to any of the sex with hazel 
 eyes. Happily the sun is in the vineyard, 
 making woodland wine, and the air would 
 revive a Sisyphus. Clearing the last thicket 
 I enter the cool wood again, and presently 
 come to the climax of my inland voyage. 
 
 The picture is more beautiful than that I 
 imaged on the long winter evenings when, 
 map in hand, I footed the pipesmoke trail. 
 Where the filtered tribute of the little river 
 merges with the clean brown of the Brule is 
 set an island, rising well above the flood and 
 crowned with pointed firs. Curled fallen 
 leaves of birch and ash inlay the surface of 
 the stream with "patines of bright gold." 
 And the broad pool glitters like steel in the 
 sunlight. 
 
 Nature now in one of her most romantic 
 moods, and I have my reward for many days 
 of toil. 
 
O WEET as Eden is the air, 
 ^ And Eden-sweet the ran. 
 No Paradise is lost for them 
 Who foot by branching root and stem, 
 And lightly with the woodland share 
 The change of night and day. 
 
 — Woodland Peace 
 
^s$* 
 
 WALT WHITMAN should have done 
 the Song of the Pack ; I know of none 
 to do it now — so well. We have minstrels 
 who will sing you a song of the open road, 
 and acceptably; but Whitman would have 
 voiced the joy of toil, the joy of putting 
 down a foot and feeling a weight to lift, and 
 the deep satisfaction in lifting it ; the pleas- 
 ure in physical fatigue, in thirst and sweat, 
 and the clean dirt of the trail. You may 
 fight your pack, as Sindbad fought the Old 
 Man of the Sea, and fling it off at sundown 
 with a great sigh of deliverance, but you will 
 take it up again in the morning without a 
 thought of travail past; and when the new 
 year comes, "reviving old desires," your 
 shoulders will itch, as mine itch now, for the 
 pull of the leathern bands. 
 
 Now, through the pipesmoke, is seen a 
 river crossing; a simple passage when the 
 stream is low, but this day it is swollen with 
 many rains, and races shoulder deep. A raft 
 is the one solution, and all the forenoon is 
 devoted to its construction ; slow work when 
 one has to fashion wooden spikes and rob 
 
the spruce for thongs. Not a dead stick 
 stands among the green for rods around ; all 
 that offers is live balsam, and when the work 
 is done I am reminded of the boat that Rob- 
 inson Crusoe built. True, I can launch my 
 craft, but there is so little buoyancy in the 
 green balsam that it will not bear both man 
 and pack. One must swim; so pushing the 
 precious cargo into the current, I follow with 
 the motive power, and save for a few collis- 
 ions with mid -stream boulders the voyage is 
 accomplished without mishap. 
 
 The raft, having served its purpose, is dis- 
 missed with a kick, as so many of us are 
 dismissed on this pleasantest of possible 
 planets, and I enter the brush again. I had 
 hoped to follow the Brule to its mouth, but 
 I have made slow progress, due to almost 
 continuous rain, and I am undecided whether 
 to go on with the winding river, which will 
 mean several more days of hard travel, or to 
 strike south-west across the more open coun- 
 try to the shore of the Big Water. A patter 
 of raindrops at evening decides the question. 
 
 I am up before the sun. Breakfast over 
 and the tent folded, I have a last look at the 
 magic Brule; then the compass is consulted 
 and S.W. marked by a dead tree on the 
 nearest hill, and the final march is begun. 
 
TV /YOSTL Y divinest harmony, 
 
 The lyre, the dance. We could believe. 
 A life in orb and brook and tree 
 And cloud: and still holds Memory 
 A morning in the eyes of eve. 
 
 — The South-Wester 
 
/ T S HERE yet floats a ring or two of pipe- 
 -*- smoke, through which is visioned forth 
 as long a trail as ever I footed in a day's 
 work, or likely shall again — a trail that began 
 in the mist of dawn and ended in the dusk of 
 evening. Twelve miles, as the crow might 
 do it, but the crow carries nothing on his 
 back; and who shall measure a trail where 
 track there is none ? Who shall take account 
 of hill and gulley, of zigzags where the best 
 footing lies, of swamps and thickets circled, 
 of the thousand little obstructions in a road 
 that's run by compass ? 
 
 And who shall take account of the thou- 
 sand little thrills of such a fling through the 
 greenwood? There are days, like sym- 
 phonies, of such "heavenly length" that 
 recollection of the morning's little happen- 
 ings is dim at eventide ; they might be a part 
 of yesterday. So many are these little hap- 
 penings that unless one has gone forth with 
 pencil and notebook he shall not recall them 
 singly; they are the notes in the symphony. 
 Yet one does not forget the certain glory of 
 an autumn day. The eyes of evening keep 
 
the blue of morning's sky, and I march with 
 Memory over the road again, through the 
 windless wood, over the burnt hilltops, and 
 across the open places gay with fireweed and 
 asters. I linger at the little brook where 
 tea was brewed and luncheon eaten. What 
 colors there were in the sluggish current 
 beneath the arching alders! — browns that 
 shaded from fawn to the deepest tints of 
 Rembrandt's palette, with milky bars of 
 gray-green that seemed to swim below the 
 surface. How fadeless some impressions 
 are? One needs no written record. 
 
 And the coming out from the pathless 
 woods, at sundown, to the lonely shore of 
 Kitchigami. The great lake lies, a rose- 
 flushed plane, under a dome of rose and blue, 
 and over the headland stands one large star. 
 A flock of cedar waxwings flit about me 
 unafraid, and six loons, like stately galleys, 
 go sailing by into the west. Solitude and 
 silence, yet di vines t harmony, to which a 
 sparrow adds a rill of plaintive song. 
 
yw\r>' 
 
North Carolina State University Libraries 
 
 QH81 T2 
 PIPESMOKE CARRY 
 
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