As he did not wish to lose his clothes, he hid them in the Indian's bundle, which he passed over his rifle barrel; he then took the poor sorcerer's staff, and gaily set out, muttering to himself with an impudent smile—
"We shall soon see whether this mulbache really possesses the magic powers that are attributed to it."
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
A TRAIL IN THE AIR.
Travellers and tourists who have only seen European forests, cannot imagine the grand, majestic, and sublime view offered by a virgin forest in the New World. There are none of those glades four or five yards wide, stretching out before you, straight and stiff for miles, but everything is abrupt and savage. There is no prospect, for the eye cannot see more than thirty or forty paces at the most in any direction. The primitive soil has disappeared beneath the detritus of trees dead from old age, and which time, rain, and sunshine have reduced to dust.
The trees grow very freely, enveloped by thick lianas, which twine around the stems and branches in the strangest curves, dashing in every direction, plunging into the ground to reappear again a yard further on, and chaining the trees together for enormous distances. The wood varies but slightly in certain districts, and hence, one tree serves the repetition of all. Then again, a grass, close and thick like the straw of a wheat field, grows to a height of five and often six feet.
Suddenly immense pits open beneath the feet of the imprudent traveller, or bogs covered by a crust scarce an inch in thickness, which swallow up in their fetid mud the man who ventures to put a foot on them; further on, a stream runs silent and unvisited, forming rapids, and forcing a path with difficulty through the heaps of earth and dead trees which it collects and deposits on the banks. From this short description it may be understood that it is not so difficult as might be supposed to pass from one tree to another for a long distance.
In order, however, to explain this thoroughly to the reader, we will tell him what he is probably ignorant of: that in certain parts of the prairie this mode of travelling is employed, not, as might be supposed, to escape the obstinate pursuit of an enemy, but simply to get on the more rapidly, not to be obliged to cut a path with the axe, and run no risk of falling down a precipice, the more so as most of the trees are enormous, and their solid branches so intertwined, that they thus form a convenient flooring, at eighty feet above the ground.
Hence Red Cedar's proposition had nothing extraordinary in itself, when made to men who had probably tried this mode of locomotion before. But what would have been an easy and simple thing for the adventurers, became serious and almost impossible for a girl like Ellen, who, though strong and skillful, could not take a step without running a risk of breaking her neck, owing to her dress catching in every branch. A remedy for this must be found, and the three men reflected on it for an hour, but discovered nothing which offered the necessary security. It was Ellen again who came to their help, and relieved them from the trouble.