No trace of their footsteps remained to guide them in retracing
their path; so hard and dry was the stony ground that it left no impression
on its surface. It was with some difficulty they found the creek, which was
concealed from sight by a lofty screen of gigantic hawthorns, high-bush
cranberries, poplars, and birch-trees. The hawthorn was in blossom, and
gave out a sweet perfume, not less fragrant than the "May" which makes the
lanes and hedgerows of "merrie old England" so sweet and fair in May and
June, as chanted in many a genuine pastoral of our olden time; but when our
simple Catharine drew down the flowery branches to wreathe about her hat,
she loved the flowers for their own native sweetness and beauty, not
because poets had sung of them;--but young minds have a natural poetry in
themselves, unfettered by rule or rhyme.
At length their path began to grow more difficult. A tangled mass of
cedars, balsams, birch, black ash, alders, and _tamarack_ (Indian name for
the larch), with a dense thicket of bushes and shrubs, such as love the
cool, damp soil of marshy ground, warned our travellers that they must
quit the banks of the friendly stream, or they might become entangled in
a trackless swamp.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49