About their waists were their ammunition belts, with pouches well stocked. Their large knapsacks contained blankets, moccasins, and various other necessaries of a camper’s outfit, including heavy knitted jerseys for chill days and nights, and rubber boots reaching high on the legs for wear in wading and traversing swampy tracts.
About twenty-four hours later they dropped off the rattling, jingling stage-coach which bore them over the latter part of their journey, at the flourishing village of Greenville, on the borders of the Maine wilds.
Here they were greeted by a view, the loveliness of which made the English boys, who had never looked on it before, experience strange heart-leaps.
A magnificent sheet of water nearly forty miles long and fourteen broad lay before them, studded with islands, girt with evergreen forests and wooded peaks. Under the rays of the setting sun its bosom was shot with arrows of pale, quivering gold. Banners of gold and flame-color floated over the crests of the hills, flinging streamers of light down their emerald sides.
“Fellows, there is Moosehead Lake; and I guess you’ll find few lakes in America or elsewhere that can beat it for beauty,” said Cyrus, with a patriotic thrill in his voice, for he had a feeling that he was doing the honors of his country.
His English comrades were warm with admiration, and here, in view of the forest-land which was their El Dorado, tingled with anticipation of the unknown.
The three rested that night at Greenville, and began their tramping on the following morning. They trudged a distance of seven miles or so to the camp of Ebenezer Grout, which, as Garst knew, was situated between Squaw Pond and Old Squaw Mountain, the latter being one of the finest peaks near Moosehead Lake.
“Uncle Eb” was an old acquaintance of Cyrus’s, a dusky, lively woodsman, who spent a great part of the year in his lone bark hut, with his dog Tiger for company. He subsisted chiefly on what he brought down with his rifle, and sometimes earned three dollars a day for guiding tourists up Old Squaw or through the adjacent forests.
