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The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in the distance; but we found it bristling with obstructions, dead balsams set thickly together, slashes of fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos; and when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge to the general slope, we exchanged only for more disagreeable going. The slope for a couple of thousand feet was steep enough; but it was formed of granite rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not be determined, and at short intervals we nearly went out of sight in holes under the treacherous carpeting. Add to this that stems of great trees were laid longitudinally and transversely and criss-cross over and among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good deal of work needs to be done to make this a practicable highway for anything but a squirrel….

We had had no water since our daylight breakfast: our lunch on the mountain had been moistened only by the fog. Our thirst began to be that of Tantalus, because we could hear the water running deep down among the rocks, but we could not come at it. The imagination drank the living stream, and we realized anew what delusive food the imagination furnishes in an actual strait. A good deal of the crime of this world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the unlicensed play of the imagination in adverse circumstances. This reflection had nothing to do with our actual situation; for we added to our imagination patience, and to our patience long-suffering, and probably all the Christian virtues would have been developed in us if the descent had been long enough. Before we reached the bottom of Caribou Pass, the water burst out from the rocks in a clear stream that was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roaring brook that issues from the Pass to the south. It is a stream full of character, not navigable even for trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, cascades, flumes, and pools that would delight an artist. It is not an easy bed for anything except water to descend; and before we reached the level reaches, where the stream flows with a murmurous noise through open woods, one of our party began to show signs of exhaustion.

This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the day before,–his imagination being in better working order than his stomach: he had eaten little that day, and his legs became so groggy that he was obliged to rest at short intervals. Here was a situation! The afternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven miles of unknown wilderness to traverse, a portion of it swampy, in which a progress of more than a mile an hour is difficult, and the condition of the guide compelled even a slower march. What should we do in that lonesome solitude if the guide became disabled? We couldn’t carry him out; could we find our own way out to get assistance? The guide himself had never been there before; and although he knew the general direction of our point of egress, and was entirely adequate to extricate himself from any position in the woods, his knowledge was of that occult sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible to communicate. Our object was to strike a trail that led from the Au Sable Pond, the other side of the mountain-range, to an inlet on Mud Pond. We knew that if we traveled southwestward far enough we must strike that trail, but how far? No one could tell. If we reached that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, there would be only a row of a couple of miles to the house at the foot of the lake. If no boat was there, then we must circle the lake three or four miles farther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in particular. The prospect was not pleasing. We were short of supplies, for we had not expected to pass that night in the woods. The pleasure of the excursion began to develop itself.