less, and shone rosy with answering light. All smiled benignant, and we shivered acquiescent. Our teeth, indeed, chattered, but our hearts bounded; and we went back to our partridges in bliss.

That day was such a day as one dreams of for the great days of history. What had we done to deserve such love from Pomola, when scarcely a previous visitor had seen his home in sunshine? But now it seemed as if every cloud that lingered on the earth's surface was cleared away to the antipodes, and this one bright epoch allotted to Katahdin and to us.

We ran rather than walked, a quarter of a mile through the woods, and came out at the foot of the great slide. Oh! what a place. One broad gray furrow up the mountain side; that was the slide. Fancy a dozen gray walls of crumbling stone, each steeple-high, piled one on the other, up into the sky; that was the mountain. We felt like standing off a little, lest the peak itself should totter over upon our heads. We sat down to meditate. Then we got up, to climb.

All I can say is that we did climb, and got to the top somehow. I have an indistinct recollection that the summit looked about half a mile off, vertically, from the bottom-a mile when half way up-and two miles afterwards; that the ridges, which looked from below near to the summit, looked from above close to the base; that the people above us seemed to be hung on pegs, and the people below us to be balanced upon the tops of trees; that sometimes we were tugged along by gentlemen, and sometimes offered to help gentlemen along; that it was very pleasant to stop and roll stones down, but not quite so pleasant to start again, and drag ourselves up; that finally when we got near the top among the blueberry and cranberry beds, it seemed an absolute embargo on further progress; at least, till we had eaten over the whole berry garden, covering perhaps an acre and a half. But how delicious that long repose was, to cling to the side of the mountain by the bushes (for it really amounted to that), nibble the minute morsels of aromatic nourishment, which the bears had left for us, facing round sometimes, from the berries, to look at the universe. Among this vegetation, grew low and

stunted evergreen bushes, that would, we were assured, have been trees further down; but we did not need to clamber over the tops of these, as other explorers had done on a different side of the mountain. On this side it was bare enough, and there was no obstacle but the trifling one of perpendicularity. In our weakness we found that sufficient; but nevertheless, I have an impression, that the first on top was a woman. At any rate, the ascent took

three hours.

The top of the mountain can be depicted at a single stroke, to any well instructed woman. Merely fancy the rim of a teacup, five miles round, with a piece broken out of one side. Beside this, the whole is jagged and uneven; nibbled, in truth, by a thousand or two of hungry winters. So that after we had once reached the edge on the southeast, we spent an hour more in climbing a mile further along. higher, and still higher, up one dark, sharp cliff, and down another, with views right and left, and often at liberty to tumble off either way, at our pleasure. Dark, bare, inhospitable, impenetrable granite; if there is anything solid in the material globe, we thought we had found it at last. It was more impressive than the vast pile of broken fragments, which forms the summit of Mount Washington; and it is singular, that though not volcanic, it closely resembles in size, shape, and proportions the only volcanic crater I ever saw.

How strange it was to be lifted, at a gigantic height, with a narrow pedestal beneath one's feet, sheer up into the blue dome of heaven; but very kindly that blue dome received us, so simple in coloring, so sublime; one soft white bar of cloud encircling the whole heavens near the horizon, and nothing else to mar the absolute and perfect hue. Such simplicity of coloring, blue sky, white cloud, and beneath, one sea of green; only, here and there lay noble lakes-scattered fragments of the skymirror-Milnocket, with its thousand isles, "the crystal Ambijejis,” Chesuncook, and the rest. To the southeast, Lake Katahdin lay delicately couched amid its long, evergreen branches, and we thought that had we wings as eagles we could make one dip into its pale soft waters, and then swoop homeward. The forest trees had not the look of vast size that we expected; but the dens

ity was beyond expression. "It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there." Only we were startled to see, below us, two faint dimples in the woods at the very base of the mountain. One, Stacy assured us, was where the young trees had been cleared for our last night's camp another marked a spot where he himself had camped for a longer time. So unconsciously do we leave our mark in the universe. Afterwards they showed us "the farm”—a dot of brighter green in the remote distance-and something white, which they stoutly asserted to be the village of Patten.

Then the basin, or crater, lay on our right, encircled by the vast rim along which we picked our way. It was exciting to hear, that descent into it was absolutely impossible, and it could only be approached by the gap aforesaid on the eastern side. It was exciting to roll stones over precipices, whither even our agile guides could not fellow; and hear the sharp rattle and crash from depth to depth. Yet it did not look bare in that great basin; for its area of two hundred acres is mostly overgrown with bushes, among which, however, great slides track themselves in heaps of desolation, and great square blocks of granite suggest shuddering fancies of the time when, in the dead of winter, perhaps, those giant masses crashed and rebounded from above.

On the south side of this basin, there is a deep, narrow indentation, through which the winds rush fearfully, it is said, when Pomola's cloud factory within is in active operation. This must be passed, and much hard clambering up and down, if we would go still further, and we saw there was one point of rock, some two miles distant, that was somewhat higher than that on which we stood; but we had done enough, fortune had favored us, and why should we tempt her more? had done it; we had ascended Katahdin, and the reality was more than our dreams.

We

Only Fanny was dissatisfied; she and Mr. Wildfire wished to go further yet. The latter had heard of a spring of good water two miles ahead, and he wanted "just to step along and try a taste of it." We were quite in a condition to appreciate good spring water, but McClane, with gallant labor, had just brought us a small pailful from nearly

that distance in a different direction, and we thought that "just to step along" over two miles of rugged granite cliffs, at a height of six thousand feet, was a step too far. However, there was more reason in his remark than is apparent to those who do not know the taste of mountain springs; and when we saw Mr. W. clamber on before us, through the aforesaid gully, bareheaded, his long hair and poncho waving in the fierce wind, which even then blew there, his gun slung over his shoulderclimbing straight up cliffs where a civilized cat would have lost eight of her lives, and gazing round at us half way, with wild, triumphant eyes, we really felt ashamed not to go where he did, though, I dare say, we should all have been at the north pole by this time, if we had once undertaken to follow. We resisted, brought Fanny back, wrote our names on a paper, and put it in a phial, which Stacy hid somewhere in this corner-stone of the globe; and then resolutely went down.

First, however, we came suddenly upon the one inhabitant of the regionPomola's sole incarnation; but here I must draw upon the epic again :

"Bristling, bouncing, black and big,
There bolted forth a queer quill-pig'
He had for one pen the mountain side,
And a thousand more were stuck in his side.
Stacy drove him from rock to rock,
With sometimes a poke, and sometimes a
knock-

Stirring him up with good-will hearty
For the benefit of the stranger party."

three in the morning; and it was pleasant to pause where Avalanche Brook distilled itself-a series of tiny dropsfrom the shelter of a rock-fragment, in the very middle of the great slide. We could see also the tracks of other brooks in wooded ravines along the mountain, and the scars of other, but smaller, slides.

. Before sunset, we had reached our camp of the preceding night. We damsels were allowed to render some aid in stewing the delicious cranberries, of a more sweet and spirited flavor than their lowland cousins, which made a sumptuous sauce for our toujours perdrix. Our supply of spoons being limited, we had little wooden ones, clean and pure as our birch-bark platters. It was observed that the tin cup aristocracy" (which was the obnoxious epithet given to the possessors of those conveniences, all aristocracy, however, being, as Theo. said, founded essentially on tin) had gradually diminished in number; even the precious cup on which Fanny's initials had been engraved with a jack-knife, disappearing at last in Avalanche Brook. Many, indeed, were the jokes made around that evening's fire (though they were never a rare commodity with us); the glorious weather, the day's enjoyment, the success, the absence of discomfort or accident-all raised our glee to the highest point, and it found vent in words and acts of harmless merriment, which the cold world shall never, never know from me. But poor H. never had such hard work to send us to bed, as that night, though we had a tent over our heads, and no more smoke in our faces than was good for us. At last, however, we all had our eyes shut, and we five slept like the "seven."

Off we plunged, down the brookside, next morning, after the gentlemen had fired at a mark a little, while loiterers were getting ready. The same clear, invigorating morning air, the same merry chase of pure water-drops. As Cœur de Lion, in the Talisman, would have given the best year of his life for that one half hour beside the desert spring, so do I now look back upon that foaming water. I remember foreseeing this, as I sat once that morning, all alone, waiting for the others to overtake me-sitting between great masses of rock, rounded smoothly by the crystal stream which poured from one aqua

marine basin into another, and looking through a gap of trees upon fair Katahdin Lake, and a soft blue hill beyond it. And yet, I thought, people travel to Scotland and to Switzerland who have never been here, and who have no more personal experience of a hemlock bed than of the bed of the Atlantic.

We crossed Roaring Brook once more, and dined that day by a nameless woodland pond; and at night, our be loved "Lake-camp" received us again after our ten-mile walk, and we called it home. We loved it all the more, because we had a foreboding that it would be our last night in the woods; and so it proved. As Stacy predicted, we easily accomplished, next day, the thirteen forest miles that had been two days' work before, and did it, warm as the day was, in a style that delighted him. "In fact," he added, "I've been in the woods with a good many young gentlemen, who would have given out before they got to Hunt's to-day, warm as the weather was, too." Even the taciturn McClane expressed his decided satisfaction; and as for Ben, he said: "I've got a little memorandum book; I don't often put anything down in it; but I shall put this day down, sure."

So we crossed the Wissaticook again, this time without accident, and so we once more divided with our feet the great golden-rods and asters, strolling leisurely, staff in hand, through the sunny wood-path, that September afternoon; and so we came to the East Branch once more, out into the open clearing, opposite Hunt's; and there lay the solid farm-house upon the bank, and there were the whole family out to see; and there was the batteau beached upon the sand, and McClane waiting to paddle us over. In we sprang, the batteau was pushed from the shore, it traversed the swift black current, we were landed opposite, and our life in the woods was

over.

I shall make short work of the remainder; how delighted good Mrs. Hunt was that we had done the jaunt more quickly than women had done it before; how strange it seemed to us to sit on chairs again, and use cups and saucers; how delicious were the breadcakes, and the potatoes, and the milk; how gay we all were, till we had to dance at least; how our only minstrel was a wild Irishman, who played and sang "The girl I left behind me,"

thrumming with his fingers a clattering accompaniment on a dust-pan; how we thought there never was such inspiriting music, and tired each other down with the wildest of Virginia reels before the great kitchen-hearth. This I never can describe, though it was certainly the wildest scene I ever witnessed, and seemed more like a highland bothie than anything in New England. Happily, in this case, the excitement was all teetotal, and came pure from the happiest of happy hearts. That night we slept as well as we could be expected to do, in real beds, and the next day we all went down the Penobscot in two batteaux, and were almost happier than on any previous day, paddled steadily along the smooth swift canal between drooping trees, seeing no human being except a silent man in a birch canoe, and two girls paddling across to their father's clearing. Sometimes, however, coming to rapids where we passengers had to get out, while two in each batteau guided it magically among great rocks and through narrow passages where it seemed no floating thing could pass without shipwreck. Having only three regular voyageurs, H. went as the fourth, and said it was the most exciting thing he ever did, and like standing on the back of the most spirited horse, and he said, also, that it was perfectly superb to see the consummate skill with which McClane, in the bow of the boat, would guide it among white, whirling

torrents, and round sharp angles of threatening rock, where it seemed madness to venture. We got, with difficulty, some dinner at a queer little settlement called Nickatow, and the last part of the way was almost dangerous. It grew late, and there were bad shoals and rapids, or "rips" to pass, and both our comrades and our guides were weary; so we rowed races for a stimulus, and composed saucy verses, and hurled them at each other, and at last, when it was quite dark, we glided out upon the deeper waters of the main Penobscot, and soon after were landed beneath overhanging alders, and walked up through a hushed and star-lit lane, mysteriously, into the little village of Mattawamkeag, and to its large and lighted tavern. There we took leave, not without very genuine signs of true regard on both sides, of our friendly and manly guides. There some of our own party, also, must leave us, and hasten on at midnight. We had one last gay evening in our woodland-dress; and there the history of those bright days must close.

After the story comes the moral. We proved the truth of the prediction we overheard, that it would give us "better fun than a trip to Saratogue," and our moral is, that there is more real peril to bodily health in a week of ball-room than in a month of bivouacs. Our health and strength improved from beginning to end, nor did any ill consequence follow.

"DER Herr scheint unglücklich zu

seyn:"-the gentleman seems to be unhappy;-said, in an audible whisper to her male companion in the public room of the Erbprinz in Weimar, a stout, comely woman of five and thirty. Women are so charged with sympathy. In a tone half pleasant, half pitying she spoke, and made, I think, her words purposely audible to him who was the object of them; judging, perhaps, that knowledge of the proximity of interest would be a comfort. She judged rightly; for it was sheer loneliness that, from the bosom of a young man seated on the sofa, had brought up the sigh which awakened her curiosity and her good feelings.

Just a week previously, I had set out from Göttingen, in company with a Scotch fellow-student, Weir. My intelligent friend parted from me in Gotha, on a foot-excursion; and I, after spending two or three days at Gotha, in that state of half ennui, half restlessness, familiar to young men idling without acquaintance in a strange place, had, early on the morning of Sunday, the 27th of March, 1825, started alone, in a hired carriage, and, halting midway at Erfurt, to visit Luther's cell in the convent of the Augustines, had arrived at Weimar about noon; my purpose being to stop there a day or two, see Goethe, if I could, and then go on to Leipsic and Dresden.

The feeling of loneliness which came over me on losing my companion, grew daily while I continued at Gotha, had been cultivated in the solitary drive of six hours, and now, in noiseless, secluded Weimar, with no social prospects to dispel its gloom, it reached a crisis in the sigh above-mentioned. The relief brought by this exhalation of heartgriping melancholy, seconded by the womanly comment thereon, was completed by the tickling fingers of the ridiculous, which, simultaneously with the arrival to my ears of the lady's words, were mirthfully thrust into my ribs.

To the fat lady I was grateful for her kindly succor; and, as a return, I determined to give her tender heart the solace of knowing that my "unhappiVOL. VIII.-17

9. H. Calvent

In a

ness" was not of a Wertherian hue. At the same time I wished to spare her delicacy the embarrassment of learning, from any too palpable act or movement, that I had overheard her remark. few moments, therefore, rising from my hypochondriacal position-viz., bent forward with elbows on knees, and face buried in hands-I discharged from my countenance all trace of dismal thoughts, and, walking springingly across the room, smiled out of the window; so that her benignant eye could in a twinkle perceive that in my features there was no suicide.

After dinner (which at the public table of the Erbprinz was served at half past one), learning that Goethe dined at two, I waited till a quarter past three, and then walked to his house in the Frauenplatz (woman's place), not two hundred yards from the hotel. I had no letter, and, knowing that Goethe refused to admit unlabeled visitors, I rang the bell with misgivings. The servant said, the Herr Geheimerath (the Privy councilor) had not yet risen from table. There," cried I vexedly to myself as I turned away, "by my impatience I have forfeited the at best doubtful chance of seeing the great man.

ca."

66

The

To

I

summons of his waiter from the diningroom to the door, he will feel as an intrusion on his privacy and comfort, and be thereby jarred into an inhospitable mood." I walked into the park, enlivened on a sunny Sunday afternoon with Weimar's quiet denizens. wards four I was again ringing Goethe's bell. The servant asked my name. gave him my card on which I had written, aus Washington, AmeriMy home being near the capital, I availed myself of this to couple my name with that of the sublime manhonored by all the hundred millions in Christendom-the presenting of which to the imagination of a great poet might, I hoped, suddenly kindle an emotion that would plead irresistibly in my behalf. The servant quickly returned and ushered me in. I ascended the celebrated wide, easy Italian staircase. On the threshold I was about to pass, my eye fell pleasantly on the hospitable SALVE, inlaid in large mosaic letters. The door was opened before me by the servant, and there, in the