One of the woodsmen had told me of a waterfall on a trout stream of considerable size which emptied into a lake near by us, and, in the hope of finding a subject in it, I took the boat one afternoon and began to follow the course of the stream up from the mouth.  After a half mile of clear and navigable water it became so clogged with fallen trees that more lifting than paddling was required, and, as its course was extremely tortuous, I occasionally got out and examined the vicinity of the stream bed and the course above, if, perchance, there might be better navigation beyond.  On one of the digressions I suddenly came on the stream running back on its previous course and parallel to it.  Instantly, in the twinkling of an eye, the entire landscape seemed to have changed its bearings,—­the sun, which was clear in the sky, it being about three o’clock, shone to me out of the north, and it was impossible to convince myself that my senses deceived me, or accept the fact that the sun must be in the southwest, the general direction from which the stream was flowing, and that, to get home again, I must turn my back to it, if I had lost my boat, as seemed certain.  Then began to come over me, like an evil spell, the bewilderment and the panic which accompanied it.  Fortunately, I recognized this panic from the experiences I knew of, and was aware that if I gave way to it I was a lost man, beyond any finding by the woodsmen, even if they attempted to track me.

Fresh wolf tracks were plenty all along the bank of the stream; panthers and bears abounded in that section, and the wilderness beyond me was never explored, and hardly penetrable, so dense was the undergrowth of dwarf firs and swamp cedars.  I had one terrible moment of clear consciousness that if I went astray at that juncture no human being would ever know where I was, and the absolute necessity of recovering my sense of the points of compass was clear to me.  By a strong effort of the will, I repressed the growing panic, sat down on a log and covered my face with my hands, and waited, I had no idea how long, but until I felt quite calm; and when I looked out on the landscape again I found the sun in his proper place and the landscape as I had known it.  I walked back to my boat without difficulty and went home, and I never lost my head again while I frequented the wilderness.  I grew in time to know the points of the compass, even when the sky was covered, and often came home from my excursions after sunset without confusion, but I know that I then owed my escape from the most terrible of deaths entirely to my presence of mind, and this I probably owed then, and always, to that supreme confidence in the protection of a superior power which never deserted me.