The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-07-14
correspondence.
IN THE MAINE WOODS.

hope have no feeling of exultahon
or superiority over my unfortunate
friends in the West, as think of them on
the broad levels of the "boundless con-
tiguity" of prairie, while I turn my face
toward the sunrise. But ever since the
sun began to climb higher I have had
such tingling in my veins, as I suppose
the migratory birds must feel when they
think they hear from afar the whisper
ings of the sedge and reds that will hide
their future nests, and under the irresis-
tible impulse OF which they fly to the dis
tant north. For many years several
weeks of each year we're passed by me in
the aboriginal Businesses OF the Maine
woods, along the foamy streams, on the
picturesque lakes, and among the maies-
tic mountains, but for several years past
this delightful experience has been denied
me. This year the old impulse has seized
me with irresistible force, and suddenly l
found myself fleeing from our Western
Venice to renew the pleasures of former
years. May not hope that any little
feeling of regret that any exiled Maine
lac who reads these lines may experience,
as he remembers former days, will be lost
in the memory of similar delights he has
himself enjoyed sin the days that are no
more"
Ii is long and yet, however many
times repeated, an always interesting pre-
lude to the joys of the Maine woods
the 1,4O0 miles journey from Chicago to
Northwestern Maine; for it includes the
broad savannas of parts of Illinois, In
diana. Michigan, beautiful Detroit, the
magnificent Detroit river, the level
stretches of the province of Ontario, with
views of lakes Ontario, ST. Clair and
Erie, emphasized and accumulated by
Natures masterpiece, the mighty cataract
of Niagara; and thence through the finer
portions of the Empire State to Albany.
A day in Boston, and then one of the
most enjoyable of all-night voyages by
Casco bay, with Portland at the end Of
the voyage Portland, ''the brightest gem
the Atlantic wears in her blue girdle."
To the north from Names metropolis,
through the classic shades OF Brunswick,
and thence along the banks of the An
droscoggin, loveliest of New England
streams, to Farmington,-with lake,
mountain, forest, rugged hills and fields
succeeding each other, realizing the poets
description:
"Land of the forest and the rock,
OF dark blue lake and mighty river;
OF mountains reared aloft to mock
The storms career, the lightning's shock.
My own green land forevori'
Few places in America surpass for
beauty of situation Pennington. The
valley of the Sandy river is an ideal vale,
level as floor, with borders of rugged
boulder strewn pastures, and blue sum-
mits of forest. clothed hills and purple
mountains in the distance. At Farming
ton a narrow gauge railway plunges into
the forest some eleven miles to Strong,
and thence it passes TO Phillips seven
~
threads it's way along swift-running
mountain streams, through cool and
shadowy foreste, foored with ferns and
messy rocks, and almost seems to be
making its own path, for the met
ais are not even fenced in from the sur
rounding landscape, untamed and I'M
shorn. Nothing in the way Of travel can
be more fascinating, when June heats
are parching the open country, and when
one remembers the sultry air breathed
by those Sin close cities pent."
wish 1 could describe this locality.
The three towns in which shall spend
the next four or five Sundsys-Salem,
King6eld and Phillips-lie at the foot OF
Mt. Abraham, with Saddleback, Blue,
Bigelow and other eminences in the near
neighborhood. From the room in which
I write in Salem, midway between Phil
lips and King6eld, Mt. Abraham rises
directly in front.
From my window look across the
village, or rather hamlet street, over the
stream that wsnders through the town,
tringed with alders. and branching over
and among granite boulders, along
sloping uplands to the immediate foot of
the mou ntains, and thence the eye easily
climbs to its summit, $500 feet high.
Ii cannot be three miles on an air line
from the eye to the twin peaks OF this inn
msnse pile of solid granite, covered with
splendid forests to the very top. And
yet it is loftier than Ben-Lomond or Ben
Nevis or Ben Crusehan, IN Scotland, that
travellers from Maine cross the ocean to