The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
As we oozed along the overgrown trail, dripping still with last night's
rain, drops would alight upon our necks and trickle down our backs. A
wet spine excites hunger,--if a pedestrian on a portage, after voyaging
from sunrise, needs any appetizer when his shadow marks noon. We halted,
fired up, and lunched vigorously on toasted pork and trimmings. As pork
must be the Omega in forest-fare, it is well to make it the Alpha. Fate
thus becomes choice. Citizens uneducated to forest-life with much pains
transport into the woods sealed cans of what they deem will dainties be,
and scoff at woodsmen frizzling slices of pork on a pointed stick. But
Experience does not disdain a Cockney. She broods over him, and will
by-and-by hatch him into a full-fledged forester. After such incubation,
he will recognize his natural food, and compactest fuel for the lamp of
life. He will take to his pork like mother's milk.
Our dessert of raspberries grew all along the path, and lured us on to a
log-station by the water, where we found another _bateau_ ready to
transport us over Lakes Weelocksebacook, Allegundabagog, and
Mollychunkamug. Doubters may smile and smile at these names, but they
are geography.
We do not commit ourselves to further judgment upon the first than that
it is doubtless worthy of its name. My own opinion is, that the scenery
felt that it was dullish, and was ashamed to "exhibit" to Iglesias; if
he pronounced a condemnation, Umbagog and its sisters feared that they
would be degraded to fish-ponds merely. Therefore they veiled
themselves. Mists hung low over the leaden waters, and blacker clouds
crushed the pine-dark hills.
A fair curve of sandy beach separates Weelocksebacook from its neighbor.
There is buried one Melattach, an Indian chief. Of course there has been
found in Maine some one irreverent enough to trot a lame Pegasus over
this grave, and accuse the frowzy old red-skin of Christian virtues and
delicate romance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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