Everything, in
short, has the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It is
idyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentality, there is nothing
feeble about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of work, made
to last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like a trivial
bun: we might record on them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient
civilization; and future generations would doubtless turn them up as
Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are what the primitive man
wants.
Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from our
conflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impression
of isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisoners
of the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. The
trees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand,
- mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the great
galleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs
and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness are
outlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in the
glare of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments and
religion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamount
encounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales of
great prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We
hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, and
the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of the
loon.
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