“I like these old woods,” said a gentleman, whom I met on the Rackett last year; “I like them, because one can do here just what he pleases.  He can wear a shirt a week, have holes in his pantaloons, and be out at elbows, go with his boots unblacked, drink whisky in the raw, chew plug tobacco, and smoke a black pipe, and not lose his position in society.  Now,” continued he, “tho’ I don’t choose to do any of these things, yet I love the freedom, now and then, of doing just all of them if I choose, without human accountability.  The truth is, that it is natural as well as necessary for every man to be a vagabond occasionally, to throw off the restraints imposed upon him by the necessities and conventionalities of civilization, and turn savage for a season,—­and what place is left for such transformation, save these northern forests?”

The idea was somewhat quaint, but to me it smacked of philosophy, and I yielded it a hearty assent.  I would consecrate these old forests, these rivers and lakes, these mountains and valleys to the Vagabond Spirit, and make them a place wherein a man could turn savage and rest, for a fortnight or a month, from the toils and cares of life.

We entered TUPPER’S LAKE towards six o’clock, and saw our white tents pitched upon the left bank, some half a mile above the outlet, where a little stream, cold almost as icewater, comes down from a spring a short way back in the forest.  This lake, some ten miles long, and from one to three in width, is one of the most beautiful sheets of water that the eye of man ever looked upon.  The scenery about it is less bold than that of some of the other lakes of this region.  The hills rise with a gentle acclivity from the shore; behind them and far off rise rugged mountain ranges; and further still, the lofty peaks of the Adirondacks loom up in dim and shadowy outline against the sky.  From every point and in every direction, are views of placid and quiet beauty rarely equalled; valleys stretching away among the highlands; gaps in the hills, through which the sunlight pours long after the shadows of the forest have elsewhere thrown themselves across the lake; islands, some bold and rocky, rising in barren desolation, right up from the deep water; some covered with a dense and thrifty growth of evergreen trees, with a soil matchless in fertility; and some partaking of both the sterile and productive; beautiful bays stealing around bold promontories, and hiding away among the old woods.  These are the features of this beautiful sheet of water, which none see but to admire, none visit but to praise; and it lies here all alone, surrounded by the old hills and forests, bold bluffs, and rocky shores, all as God made them, with no mark of the hand of man about it, save in a single spot on a secluded bay, where lives a solitary family in a log house, surrounded by an acre or two, from which the forest has been cleared away.

“Will somebody tell me,” said Smith, as we sat on the logs in front of our tent after supper, smudging away the musquitoes with our pipes, “will somebody tell me what we came into this wilderness among these musquitoes, and frogs, and owls for?  Mind you, I am not discontented; I enjoy it hugely; but what I want to know is why I do so?  I desire to understand the philosophy of the thing.”