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The trees pines, spruces, hemlocks, balsams, cedars are to me about the pleasantest of all, both in taste and odour, and though the spruces and pines taste and smell much alike at first, one soon learns to distinguish them. The elm has a rather agreeable, nondescript, bitterish taste, but the linden is gummy and of a mediocre quality, like the tree itself, which I dislike.
Several times she was forced to dismount and blaze out a new path in order to avoid some bog; but she sternly refused his aid. "You must not get off," she warned; "stay where you are. I can do this work better alone." They were again in that green, gloomy, and silent zone of the range, where giant spruces grow, and springs, oozing from the rocks, trickle over the trail.
It was a great cove running up from the basin into the rim. Craggy ledges, broken, ruined, tottering and gray, slanted down into this abyss. The place was so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet they were many. An empire of splintered cliff! High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with lichens, with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow bushes.
Off to the right was a dim, branching place which we knew was the orchard; and on our left, among sibilant spruces and firs, was the old, whitewashed house from which presently a light gleamed through an open door, and Aunt Janet, a big, bustling, sonsy woman, with full-blown peony cheeks, came to welcome us.
It seemed impossible that I could have been so miserable in the night. As soon as I had eaten I dragged the tent back among the spruces where I set it up and anchored it securely. Lesson Number One had sunk in. It would not need repeating. When camp was at last secure, I climbed slowly to the ridge top above. Its crest was above timberline.
"This time we took our positions with great care, among some small spruces on a joint that ran out from the southern meadow. So Billy began to call, very beautifully. The long echoes went bellowing over the hills. The afternoon was still and the setting sun shone through a light mist, like a ball of red gold.
A blazing sun warmed field and forest, the lingering patches of snow vanished even in the deep shade of the woods; the Peribonka rose and rose between its rocky banks until the alders and the roots of the nearer spruces were drowned; in the roads the mud was incredibly deep.
Well for us if we are still able to stand in our place and do faithfully our allotted task, like the mountain spruces and the Bethlehemite road-mender. This is making no account of the gray-cheeked thrushes, who are found only near the tops of the mountains. I have since found both species at Willoughby Lake, Vermont and the veery with them.
By and bye the air grew bitterly cold, and Teague suggested we give up, and ride back. So we did. The mountains were dim and obscure through the gray gloom, and the black spear-tipped spruces looked ghostly against the background. The lightning was vivid, and the thunder rolled and crashed in magnificent bombardment across the heavens.
Through the unbroken thatch of matted foliage overhead no faintest ray of sunlight filtered not even where the stream coiled its slimy way among the tamaracks and spruces.
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