MUD POND—LOOKING EAST FROM END OF CARRY.
Our guides told how, during some months of the year, they had dragged their boats two-thirds of the way across, remarking that the only “dry” part this year, was the temperate way in which they were treated.[C] The canoes on the guides’ shoulders were the last loads to cross, and, as it was now 6 P. M., one can make some estimate of the work done, seeing we had only accomplished two miles that day.
[C] The use of ardent spirits in the woods ought never to be allowed by either sportsmen or guides. There is enough stimulant and health in the pure air, the piney woods, and clear cold water of the streams, to satisfy any one, while the indulgence often places the sportsman’s life in jeopardy. The awkward turn of the paddle in swift water, or the careless handling of a gun by your partially intoxicated guide, may at any moment bring disaster to your canoe or death to yourself, while the selection of a guide should always be a matter of the greatest importance, as he has the faculty of making your camp-life happy or miserable. A friend of the author started to camp in the Adirondacks sometime since, but discovering in his guide’s “kit” a bottle of liquor, and, being unable to obtain the refusal of its use, took the fellow a three days’ tramp back to the settlement, and hired another guide, rather than take his chances with the first one. Scientific analysis has long since exploded the health giving properties of ardent spirits, and in Arctic explorations the line has been drawn between the vitality of men who drank water or coffee. As regards using stimulants in the woods, I say in the language of Mark Twain—“don’t! DON’T!! DON’T!!!”
“This is the way I long have sought
And mourned because I found it not.”
Launching our canoes on Mud Pond, some two miles in width, of uninteresting scenery, we bent our remaining energies to the reciprocating paddle, and were soon on the other side, and canoeing the sluggish waters of Mud Pond stream. Its mouth was clogged by great weather-beaten logs, which necessitated the laborious use of our axes before forcing a passage into Chamberlin Lake. The sun was hardly half an hour above the horizon, as we crossed this beautiful lake two and a half miles to the opposite shore, and camped on its white pebbly beach at the foot of a farm. This was the only one of three habitations which we saw on our trip, and the delight which we experienced was as great as the recovery of a lost trail in the woods by the tourist mentioned in the following incident. A brother angler, while treading a lonesome path in this very neighborhood, found one day a piece of birch bark nailed to a tree on which was inscribed these familiar lines—
“This is the way I long have sought