After toiling up the zigzag path awhile longer, the party came to an open, level space, and found themselves within a few rods of Gooden’s cabin, a small, rude structure, built of rough logs, with a large chimney at one end, on the outside. Several children were playing around the house, and the father himself was just coming in from a hunting excursion up the mountain, with his gun on his shoulder, and his dog by his side. Seeing the party approaching, Mr. Gooden went into the house and shut the door. Marcus had often visited the family, on errands of kindness, but knowing the morose and suspicious disposition of the father, and his antipathy to company, he concluded not to stop at the cabin. Exchanging a few words with Jake and Sally, the two oldest children, who stood staring at the strangers, Marcus passed on, with his party, through a path still more intricate and difficult.
“You said something about spruce gum—what do they do with it?” inquired Oscar.
“They sell it,” replied Marcus. “A man comes round here every summer, who makes it his business to collect spruce gum. He buys all the gum that is offered him, and he hires boys to gather it for him, paying them so much a pound. This gum is cleaned, and sent to the cities, where it brings a good price.”
“Well, if everybody was like me, the spruce gum trade wouldn’t be worth much,” said Kate. “I don’t see why anybody wants to chew the nasty stuff, especially a young lady. How it looks, to see your jaws going the whole time! There are some girls in the academy that always have their mouths full of gum. I think it’s real disgusting.”
“Chewing gum isn’t quite so bad as chewing tobacco, but it is a foolish and disgusting habit, as you say,” observed Marcus.
The party continued their ascent up the steep and slippery side of the mountain, occasionally halting a few minutes to take breath. Some of them began to question whether there was any top to it, as each turn of the zigzag path, which promised to land them at the summit, only revealed as they advanced a still higher point beyond. But at length the top, the very “tip-top,” as the boys called it, was reached. Instead of a sharp, sky-scraping ridge, they found the summit to be a broad and nearly level plain, composed mostly of solid rock, and almost bare of vegetation. But what a view did it present! A dozen villages scattered among the valleys, with their nestling houses and white spires; the rich meadows of the Winooski and its tributaries, with their thrifty farms; the cattle and sheep “upon a thousand hills;” the dark and extensive patches of forest, in which the woodman’s axe has never yet resounded; the chain of mountain sentinels, drawn up in lines, conspicuous among which were the Camel’s Hump, and the distant Mansfield Mountain, with its “Nose,” “Lips” and “Chin;” the broad and peaceful expanse of Lake Champlain, with a faint outline of the Adirondack Mountains looming up beyond;—such is a very imperfect sketch of the scene that for a long time engrossed the attention of the whole party.
After the party had rested themselves, and gazed at the extensive prospect as long as they wished, Oscar proposed to erect a monument on the summit that would be visible from their house, and would commemorate their ascent of the mountain. The proposal was readily agreed to by all, and they immediately set about gathering the necessary materials. All the movable stones on the summit were soon collected in a heap, but Marcus expressed a doubt whether there were enough to form a pile that would be visible below.
“If we only had an axe,” said Oscar, “we could cut down a tree, and strip off all the branches but a few at the top; and then we could set the tree on the summit, and pile the stones about it to keep it in place.”
“Has anybody got any string about him?” inquired Otis.