“Hold on a minute,” said Marcus, stopping by the side of a small, shallow pond they were passing; and, taking a stick, he began to stir up its muddy bottom.
“What in the world is he dabbling in that dirty water for?” inquired Kate.
“I guess he is hunting for frogs’ eggs,” said Ronald; “or, perhaps he’s going to make some pollywog soup.”
“Do you see, he is going to set the pond afire!” cried Kate, as Marcus drew some friction matches from his pocket.
Marcus continued his operations, without noticing the comments of his companions, and in a little while, he actually produced a faint yellow flame upon the surface of the water, to the astonishment of the company. He then explained to them that this was an experiment which he had learned while studying chemistry at the academy. When vegetable matter decays under water, a gas called light carburetted hydrogen is formed, which may be burned. On stirring up the bottom, the gas escapes, and rises to the top in bubbles, and may be collected in jars, or set on fire upon the surface of the water. This gas, he said, was the terrible “firedamp,” which caused such tremendous explosions in coal mines, before Sir Humphrey Davy invented his safety lamp, to protect the miners from these disasters. He told them, also, that he had seen it stated in a newspaper that on one of our Western rivers, when the water was very low, the steamboats had to shut down their furnace doors for several miles, and allow no torches to be lighted at night, for fear of “setting the river on fire!” Frequently boats that did not use these precautions at this particular place, have found themselves engulfed in flames, greatly to the alarm of the passengers, and sometimes setting the steamers on fire. In some instances, the passengers have come very near leaping overboard, before the officers could convince them that there was no danger; an act that would be almost literally “jumping from the frying-pan into the fire.”
The party now resumed their course, and after skirting a swamp, and threading their way thro’ a tangled growth of young birches and pines, and breaking a path through the sharp, bristling stubble of a rye field, they reached the foot of the mountain. The eminence was clothed with that dress of unfading green from which this range takes its name,[[3]] being covered with spruce, fir, hemlock, and other evergreens, to the summit. They began the ascent by a narrow, steep and winding path, which, however, had the appearance of being much used.
[3]. The range was named Verd Mont by the early French settlers, which means in English, Green Mountain. When the people declared themselves a free and independent State, in 1777, they adopted the French name as that of their Commonwealth, contracting it by the omission of the d.
“I should think a good many people came up here, by the looks,” remarked Oscar.
“Not many, except Gooden’s folks,” replied Marcus.
“Who is Gooden?” inquired Oscar.