There Is No Trail Through Hunter's Pass, Which, As I Have Intimated,
Is The Least Frequented Portion Of This Wilderness.
Yet we were
surprised to find a well-beaten path a considerable portion of the
way and wherever a path is possible.
It was not a mere deer's
runway: these are found everywhere in the mountains. It is trodden
by other and larger animals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts.
It bears marks of having been so for a long period, and probably a
period long ago. Large animals are not common in these woods now,
and you seldom meet anything fiercer than the timid deer and the
gentle bear. But in days gone by, Hunter's Pass was the highway of
the whole caravan of animals who were continually going backward; and
forwards, in the aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between Mud
Pond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now the procession of
them between the heights of Dix and Nipple Top; the elk and the moose
shambling along, cropping the twigs; the heavy bear lounging by with
his exploring nose; the frightened deer trembling at every twig that
snapped beneath his little hoofs, intent on the lily-pads of the
pond; the raccoon and the hedgehog, sidling along; and the
velvet-footed panther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting the
path with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an overhanging
tree ready to drop into the procession at the right moment. Night and
day, year after year, I see them going by, watched by the red fox and
the comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black cat, - the
innocent, the vicious, the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold,
the chattering slanderer and the screaming prowler, the industrious
and the peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter, - just as
it is elsewhere.
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