sun rise from the summit, but the heavens grew darker every moment, warning us to find shelter for the night. About 5 o'clock we left the top and went helter-skelter down the precipitous sides. After going at a break-neck pace for several miles over rocks, along ravines and through the bushes, Sth shouting at every leap "go-in-down," we at length stopped and began to peel bark to cover us for the night, for we were twelve miles from a clearing, and it was getting dark. Soon the axe resounded through the forest, and tree after tree came to the earth to furnish us fuel. "Every man must pick his own bed," cried our guide; for he had his hands full to erect a shanty. Our knapsacks were laid aside, and we scattered ourselves among the balsam trees with knife in hand to cut boughs to sleep on. The mossy ground was damp, and I picked me a thick couch and stretched myself upon it while supper was preparing. Our fire was made of logs more than twenty feet long, and as the flames arose and caught the spruce trees they shot up in pyramids of flames, crackling in the night air like so many fire-crackers. One dry tree took fire, and I asked if it might not burn in two during the night and fall on us. Cheney walked around it to ascertain the way it leaned, then quietly seating himself said, "yes, it will burn in two, but it will fall t'other way." I must confess, this cool reply was not wholly satisfactory, for burning trees sometimes take curious whims, however, there was no help, and so I lay down to sleep. The storm which had been slowly gathering soon commenced, and all night long the rain fell, but the good fire kept crackling and blazing away, and I was so completely fagged out that I slept deliciously. I awoke but once, and then enjoyed such a long and hearty laugh, that I felt quite refreshed. The immense logs in front of us, became in time a mass of lurid coals sending forth a scorching heat. Hence, as we lay packed together like a row of pickled fish, those in the centre took the full force of the fire. First a sleeper would strike his hand upon his thigh and roll over-then give the other a slap, dreaming, doubtless, of being boiled like a turkey, till at length the heat waked him up, when he rose and shot like an arrow into the woods. The next went through the same operationthe third, and so on, till all but the two "outsiders," of which I was one, were in the woods cooling themselves off in the rain. Not a word was spoken for some time, for they were not fairly awake, but as one began to ask another, why he was out there in the dark, the answers were so honest and yet so droll, that I went into convulsions. If you had heard them comparing notes as I did, back of the shanty, your sides would have ached for a fortnight. And then the sheepish way they crawled back one after another, looking in stupid amazement at me rolling and screaming on the balsam boughs, would have quite finished a soberer man than you. The tramp of twelve miles, next morning, was the hardest, for the distance, I ever took. Stiff and lame, with nothing to excite my imagination, I dragged myself sullenly along, and at noon reached the Iron Works. "Oh, but a weary wight was he, When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree." SAGACITY OF THE HOUND- -THE INDIAN PASS-PRECIPICE TWO THOUSAND FEET HIGH. BACKWOODS, July 6. DEAR H : THE famous Indian Pass is probably the most remarkable gorge in this country, if not in the world. On Monday morning, a council was called of our party, to determine whether we should visit it, for the effects of the severe tramp two days before, had not yet left us, and hardly one walked without limping-as for myself, I could not wear my boots and had borrowed a pair of large shoes. But the Indian Pass I was determined to see, even if I remained behind alone, and so we all together started off. It was six miles through the forest, and we were compelled to march in single file. At one moment skirting the margin of a beautiful lake, and then creeping through thickets, or stepping daintily across a springing morass, we picked our way until we at length struck a stream, the bed of which we followed into the bosom of the mountains. We crossed deer paths every few rods, and soon the two hounds Cheney had taken with him, parted from us, and their loud deep bay began to ring and echo through the gorge. The instincts with which animals are endowed by their Creator, on purpose to make them successful in the chase, is one of the most curious things in nature. I watched for a long time the actions of one of these noble hounds. With his nose close to the leaves, he would double backwards and forwards on a track, to see whether it was fresh or not-then abandon it at once, when he found it too old. At length, striking a fresh one, he started off; but the next moment, finding he was going back instead of forwards on the track, he wheeled, and came dashing past on a furious run, his eyes glaring with excitement. Soon his voice made the forest ring; and I could imagine the quick start it gave to the deer, quietly grazing, it might have been, a mile away. Lifting his beautiful head a moment, to ascertain if that cry of death was on his track, he bounded off in the long chase and |