The rods were unjointed and laid away, and such a string of trout as we had, is rarely seen outside of the Saranac woods.  We procured fresh grass in which to lay our fish, and green boughs to cover them, and floated on down the stream, entering the Rackett at nine o’clock.  The Rackett is a most beautiful river.  To me at least it is so, for it flows on its tortuous and winding way for a hundred or more miles through an unbroken forest, with all the old things standing in their primeval grandeur along its banks.  The woodman’s axe has not marred the loveliness of its surroundings, and no human hand has for all that distance been laid upon its mane, or harnessed it to the great wheel, making it a slave, compelling it to be utilitarian, to grind corn or throw the shuttle and spin.  It moves on towards the mighty St. Lawrence as wild, and halterless, and free, as when the Great Spirit sent it forward on its everlasting flow.  The same scenery, and the same voices are seen and heard along its banks now as then; and, while man, in his restlessness, has changed almost everything else, the Rackett and the things that pertained to it when the earth was young, remain unchanged.  But this will not be so long.  Civilization is pushing its way even towards this wild and, for all agricultural purposes, sterile region, and before many years even the Rackett will be within its ever-extending circle.  When that time shall have arrived, where shall we go to find the woods, the wild things, the old forests, and hear the sounds which belong to nature in its primeval state?  Whither shall we flee from civilization, to take off the harness and be free, for a season, from the restraints, the conventionalities of society, and rest from the hard struggles, the cares and toils, the strifes and competitions of life?  Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the constitution.  I would make it a forest forever.  It should be a misdemeanor to chop down a tree, and a felony to clear an acre within its boundaries.  The old woods should stand here always as God made them, growing on until the earthworm ate away their roots, and the strong winds hurled them to the ground, and new woods should be permitted to supply the place of the old so long as the earth remained.  There is room enough for civilization in regions better fitted for it.  It has no business among these mountains, these rivers and lakes, these gigantic boulders, these tangled valleys and dark mountain gorges.  Let it go where labor will garner a richer harvest, and industry reap a better reward for its toil.  It will be of stinted growth at best here.