shall relate, I trust that I shall have a better excuse for killing
a moose than that I may hang my hat on his horns. We reached Monson,
fifty miles from Bangor, and thirteen from the lake, after dark.

At four o'clock the next morning, in the dark, and still in the rain,
we pursued our journey. Close to the academy in this town they have
erected a sort of gallows for the pupils to practise on. I thought
that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such
exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder
their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air.
The country about the south end of the lake is quite mountainous,
and the road began to feel the effects of it. There is one hill which,
it is calculated, it takes twenty-five minutes to ascend. In many
places the road was in that condition called _repaired_, having just
been whittled into the required semi-cylindrical form with the
shovel and scraper, with all the softest inequalities in the middle,
like a hog's back with the bristles up, and Jehu was expected to
keep astride of the spine. As you looked off each side of the bare
sphere into the horizon, the ditches were awful to behold,--a vast
hollowness, like that between Saturn and his ring. At a tavern
hereabouts the hostler greeted our horse as an old acquaintance,
though he did not remember the driver. He said that he had taken
care of that little mare for a short time, a year or two before, at
the Mount Kineo House, and thought she was not in as good condition
as then. Every man to his trade. I am not acquainted with a single
horse in the world, not even the one that kicked me.

Already we had thought that we saw Moosehead Lake from a hill-top,
where an extensive fog filled the distant lowlands, but we were
mistaken. It was not till we were within a mile or two of its south