my journey. Before long, however, the rain increased again, and I
took refuge in a barn. The snug, tree-embowered farmhouse looked
very inviting, just across the road from the barn; but as no one
was about, and no faces appeared at the window that I might judge
of the inmates, I contented myself with the hospitality the barn
offered, filling my pockets with some dry birch shavings I found
there where the farmer had made an ox-yoke, against the needs of
the next kindling.

After an hour's detention I was off again. I stopped at Baxter's
Brook, which flows hard by the classic hamlet of Harvard, and tried
for trout, but with poor success, as I did not think it worth while
to go far upstream.

At several points I saw rafts of hemlock lumber tied to the shore,
ready to take advantage of the first freshet. Rafting is an
important industry for a hundred miles or more along the Delaware.
The lumbermen sometimes take their families or friends, and have a
jollification all the way to Trenton or to Philadelphia. In some
places the speed is very great, almost equaling that of an express
train. The passage of such places as Cochecton Falls and "Foul
Rift" is attended with no little danger. The raft is guided by two
immense oars, one before and one behind. I frequently saw these
huge implements in the driftwood alongshore, suggesting some
colossal race of men. The raftsmen have names of their own. From
the upper Delaware, where I had set in, small rafts are run down
which they call "colts." They come frisking down at a lively pace.
At Hancock they usually couple two rafts together, when I suppose
they have a span of colts; or do two colts make one horse? Some
parts of the framework of the raft they call "grubs;" much depends