that I ever came across is Thoreau's remark on returning Dr. Kane's
"Arctic Explorations" to a friend who had lent him the book--"Most of
the phenomena therein recorded are to be observed about Concord."
In thinking of John Burroughs, however, the thought of the author's
mountain home as the material and heart of his books does not come
so readily to consciousness. For most of us who have felt the
charm, of his lyrical prose, both in his outdoor books and in his
"Indoor Studies," were familiar with him as an author long before we
knew there was a Slabsides--long before there was one, in fact, since
he has been leading his readers to nature for fifty years, while the
picturesque refuge we are now coming to associate with him has been
in existence only about fifteen years.

Our poet-naturalist seems to have appropriated all outdoors for
his stamping-ground. He has given us in his limpid prose intimate
glimpses of the hills and streams and pastoral farms of his native
country; has taken us down the Pepacton, the stream of his boyhood;
we have traversed with him the "Heart of the Southern Catskills,"
and the valleys of the Neversink and the Beaverkill; we have sat
upon the banks of the Potomac, and sailed down the Saguenay; we
have had a glimpse of the Blue Grass region, and "A Taste of Maine
Birch" (true, Thoreau gave us this, also, and other "Excursions"
as well); we have walked with him the lanes of "Mellow England";
journeyed "In the Carlyle Country"; marveled at the azure glaciers
of Alaska; wandered in the perpetual summerland of Jamaica; camped
with him and the Strenuous One in the Yellowstone; looked in awe and
wonder at that "Divine Abyss," the Grand Canon of the Colorado; felt
the "Spell of Yosemite," and idled with him under the sun-steeped
skies of Hawaii and by her morning-glory seas.