sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive
evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the
sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. He who rides and keeps the
beaten track studies the fences chiefly. Near Bangor, the fence-posts,
on account of the frost's heaving them in the clayey soil, were not
planted in the ground, but were mortised into a transverse horizontal
beam lying on the surface. Afterwards, the prevailing fences were
log ones, with sometimes a Virginia fence, or else rails slanted
over crossed stakes,--and these zigzagged or played leap-frog all
the way to the lake, keeping just ahead of us. After getting out of
the Penobscot Valley, the country was unexpectedly level, or
consisted of very even and equal swells, for twenty or thirty miles,
never rising above the general level, but affording, it is said, a
very good prospect in clear weather, with frequent views of Katadin,--
straight roads and long hills. The houses were far apart, commonly
small and of one story, but framed. There was very little land under
cultivation, yet the forest did not often border the road. The stumps
were frequently as high as one's head, showing the depth of the snows.
The white hay-caps, drawn over small stacks of beans or corn in the
fields, on account of the rain, were a novel sight to me. We saw
large flocks of pigeons, and several times came within a rod or two
of partridges in the road. My companion said, that, in one journey
out of Bangor, he and his son had shot sixty partridges from his
buggy. The mountain-ash was now very handsome, as also the
wayfarer's-tree or hobble-bush, with its ripe purple berries mixed
with red. The Canada thistle, an introduced plant, was the
prevailing weed all the way to the lake,--the road-side in many
places, and fields not long cleared, being densely filled with it as
with a crop, to the exclusion of everything else. There were also
whole fields full of ferns, now rusty and withering, which in older