I delight in sitting on a rock in one of these upper fields, and seeing the sun go down behind Panther.  The rapid-flowing brook below me fills all the valley with a soft murmur.  There is no breeze, but the great atmospheric tide flows slowly in toward the cooling forest; one can see it by the motes in the air illuminated by the setting sun:  presently, as the air cools a little, the tide turns and flows slowly out.  The long, winding valley up to the foot of Slide, five miles of primitive woods, how wild and cool it looks, its one voice the murmur of the creek!  On the Wittenberg the sunshine lingers long; now it stands up like an island in a sea of shadows, then slowly sinks beneath the wave.  The evening call of a robin or a veery at his vespers makes a marked impression on the silence and the solitude.

The following day my friend and I pitched our tent in the woods beside the stream where I had pitched it twice before, and passed several delightful days, with trout in abundance and wild strawberries at intervals.  Mrs. Larkins’s cream-pot, butter-jar, and bread-box were within easy reach.  Near the camp was an unusually large spring, of icy coldness, which served as our refrigerator.  Trout or milk immersed in this spring in a tin pail would keep sweet four or five days.  One night some creature, probably a lynx or a raccoon, came and lifted the stone from the pail that held the trout and took out a fine string of them, and ate them up on the spot, leaving only the string and one head.  In August bears come down to an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries.  But the creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine.  He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a witless head.  They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down if you do not look out.  Of a summer evening they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented.  The most annoying animal to the camper-out in this region, and the one he needs to be most on the lookout for, is the cow.  Backwoods cows and young cattle seem always to be famished for salt, and they will fairly lick the fisherman’s clothes off his back, and his tent and equipage out of existence, if you give them a chance.  On one occasion some wood-ranging heifers and steers that had been hovering around our camp for some days made a raid upon it when we were absent.  The tent was shut and everything snugged up, but they ran their long tongues under the tent, and, tasting something savory, hooked out John Stuart Mill’s “Essays on Religion,” which one of us had brought along, thinking to read in the woods.  They mouthed the volume around a good deal, but its logic was too tough for them, and they contented themselves with devouring the paper in which it was wrapped.  If the cattle had not been surprised at just that point, it is probable the tent would have gone down before their eager curiosity and thirst for salt.