alone over the foam, while we, springing ashore, raced through the thick
of the forest, tore through the briers, and plunged through the punk of
trees older than history, now rotting where they fell, slain by Time the
Giganticide. Cancut then had us at advantage. Sometimes we had laughed
at him, when he, a good-humored malaprop, made vague clutches at the
thread of discourse. Now suppose he should take a fancy to drop down
stream and leave us. What then? Berries then, and little else, unless we
had a chance at a trout or a partridge. It is not cheery, but dreary, to
be left in pathlessness, blanketless, guideless, and with breadths of
lake and mountain and Nature, shaggy and bearish, between man and man.
With the consciousness of a latent shudder in our hearts at such a
possibility, we parted brier and bramble until the rapid was passed, we
scuffled hastily through to the river-bank, and there always, in some
quiet nook, was a beacon of red-flannel shirt among the green leaves
over the blue and shadowy water, and always the fast-sailing Cancut
awaiting us, making the woods resound to amicable hails, and ready again
to be joked and to retaliate.

Such alternations made our voyage a charming olla. We had the placid
glide, the fleet dash, the wild career, the pause, the landing,
the agreeable interlude of a portage, and the unburdened stampede
along-shore. Thus we won our way, or our way wooed us on, until, in
early afternoon, a lovely lakelet opened before us. The fringed
shores retired, and, as we shot forth upon wider calm, lo, Katahdin!
unlooked-for, at last, as a revolution. Our boat ruffled its shadow,
doing pretty violence to its dignity, that we might know the greater
grandeur of the substance. There was a gentle agency of atmosphere
softening the bold forms of this startling neighbor, and giving it
distance, lest we might fear it would topple and crush us. Clouds, level
below, hid the summit and towered aloft. Among them we might imagine the