the rest of our companions, and we started off. We had nothing to eat, and seven weary miles were to be measured before we could reach the nearest clearing. What with the night I had passed, and that seven miles' tramp on an empty stomach, I was completely knocked up. The clear morning air could not revive me-my rifle seemed to weigh fifty pounds-my legs a hundred and fifty, and I pushed on, more dead than alive. At length we emerged into a clearing, and there, in a log hut, sat our teamster, quietly eating his breakfast. The day before, he had started through the forest; but becoming frightened at the wildness and desolation that increased at every step, had turned back-choosing to leave us to our fate rather than run the risk of making a meal for wolves and bears. I could have seen him flogged with a good will, I was so indignant. Hungry, cross, and weary, we sat down to breakfast, and then stowed ourselves away into a lumber wagon, and rode thirty miles to our respective stopping-places. The little settlement seemed like a large village to me, and the inhabitants the most refined I had ever met.

Several days' rest here has restored me, and I begin to feel my system rally, and am conscious of

A BREAKFAST WELL EARNED.

105

strength and vitality to which I have been a stranger for six months.

I shall remain here a few days, and then start for the lake region-the only land route to which is a rude road ending at Long Lake. The Adirondack chain subsides away there into more regular ridges-it is, however, wilder than the region I have left, and we shall have to rely for food on what we ourselves can catch and kill.

Yours truly,

XII.

▲ THUNDER STORM-A SOLUTION OF LIFE.

BACKWOODS, July 12.

DEAR E-

THUNDER storms are not particularly pleasant things in the woods, but you are now and then compelled to take them. I have just passed through one, and, like all grand exhibitions of nature, they awaken pleasure in the midst of discomfort. I have never witnessed anything sublime, even though dangerous, that did not possess attractions, except standing on the deck of a ship in the midst of a storm, and looking off on the ocean. The wild and guideless waves running half-mast high, shaking their torn plumes as they come-the turbulent and involved cloudsthe shrieks of the blast amid the cordage, and groans of the ship, combine to make one of the most awful scenes in nature. Yet I loathe it and loathe my

A THUNDER STORM.

107

self as I stand er try to stand, reeling to and fro, holding on to a belaying pin or rope, for support. But give me firm footing, and I love the sea. I don't believe Byron ever thought of writing about it till he got on shore. The idea of a man thinking, much less making poetry while he is staggering like a drunken man, is preposterous.

But I like to have forgot myself-I was reclining on the slope of a hill the other day, near a lake, from which I had a glorious view of the broken chain of the Adirondack. From the ravishing beauty of the scene, my mind, as it is wont, fell to musing over this mysterious life of ours-on its strange contrasts and stranger destinies, and I wondered how its selfishness and sorrow, blindness and madness, pains and death, could add to the glory of God; or how angels could look on this world without turning away, half in sorrow and half in anger, at such a blemished universe, when suddenly, over the green summit of the far mountain, a huge thunder-head pushed itself into view. As the mighty black mass that followed slowly after, forced its way into the heavens, darkness began to creep over the earth. The song of birds was hushed-the passing breeze paused a moment, and

then swept by in a sudden gust, which whirled the leaves and withered branches in wild confusion through the air. An ominous hush succeeded, while the low growl of the distant thunder seemed forced from the deepest caverns of the mountain.

I lay and watched the gathering elements of strength and fury, as the trumpet of the storm summoned them to battle, till at length the lightning began to leap in angry flashes to the earth from the dark womb of the cloud, followed by those awful and rapid reports that seemed to shake the very walls of the sky. The pine trees rocked and roared above me

-for wrath and rage had taken the place of beauty and placidity—and then the rain came in headlong masses to the earth. Keeping under my shelter of bark, I listened to the uproar without, as I had often done under an Alpine cliff in the Oberland, waiting for the passage of the storm. In a short time its fury was spent, and I could hear its retiring roar in the distant gorges. The trees stopped knocking their green crowns together, and stood again in fraternal embrace, while the rapid dripping of the heavy rain drops from the leaves, alone told of the deluge that had swept overhead. I stole forth again, and but for