: Muskrat City by Abbott Henry - Natural history Outdoor books; Camping

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Jim is glad to have visitors call upon him at his mountain-top resort, and to encourage such he has made an excellent trail to the nearest point on Long Lake, about three miles, and has marked it with signs to point the way up the mountain. Jim will lend you his field-glass, name the points of interest in view, make coffee for you, if you bring the makings, and discuss with you the latest political questions, philosophy or religion.

In a book entitled, "The Adirondack, or Life in the Woods," published in 1849, J. T. Headley, the author, writes about his visit to the top of Owl's Head Mountain, with his guide, Mitchell Sabattis, an Indian, and the first settler on Long Lake. Headley says that in returning they "lost their way and were fourteen hours without food." He describes the view from the top of Owl's Head as follows:

"It looks off on a prospect that would make your heart stand still in your bosom. Look away toward that distant horizon! In its broad sweep round the heavens, it takes in nearly four hundred miles, while between slumbers an ocean but it is an ocean of tree tops. Conceive, if you can, this vast expanse stretching on and spreading away, till the bright green becomes shaded into a deep black, with not a sound to break the solitude, and not a hand's breadth of land in view throughout the whole. It is a vast forest-ocean, with mountain ridges for billows, rolling smoothly and gently on like the subsiding swell of a storm. I stand on the edge of a precipice which throws its naked wall far down to the tops of the fir trees below, and look off on this surpassing wild and strange spectacle. The life that villages, and towns, and cultivated fields give to a landscape is not here, neither is there the barrenness and savageness of the view from Tahawus. It is all vegetation--luxuriant, gigantic vegetation; but man has had no hand in it. It stands as the Almighty made it, majestic and silent, save when the wind or the storm breathes on it, waking up its myriad low-toned voices, which sing:

'The wild profound eternal bass In nature's anthem.'

I have gazed on many mountain prospects in this and the old world, but this view has awakened an entirely new class of emotions."

As Bige and I descended the steep slope from our lookout, we were quickly buried among the evergreens, with the only extended view toward the blue sky and floating clouds above the tall tree tops. Having in mind the experience of the previous day, the compass was frequently consulted, but travel was difficult and progress slow.

An hour later we came upon a small log cabin, having a roof of spruce bark, no floor, but a puncheon door and one window. In one corner was a crude fireplace made of stones, having two lengths of stove pipe which passed through the window for a chimney. Opposite the fireplace was a balsam bed and in another corner was a pile of spruce gum. There were also a frying pan, tin plate, knife and fork, and on a bark shelf some food stuff. We left the shack and on a path a short distance from it, we met its owner who was returning. He was of uncertain age, but with white hair and white scraggy beard. He carried a bag partly filled with gum and in one hand a long pole having a small shovel-shaped piece of steel fastened to one end. This implement he used to loosen a ball of gum that was too high on the tree trunk to be otherwise reached.

The man proved to be Sam Lapham. Bige knew him and I had often heard about him. Sam spent most of the summer collecting spruce gum, which he was able to sell for a good price. This unfrequented part of the forest was one of his camping places during the "gumming season." The sticky juice of the spruce tree oozes out through cracks in the wood, and collects on the bark where it hangs in lumps from the size of a child's thumb up to the dimensions of a hen's egg. In the course of years of exposure to the air this pitchy material crystallizes, "ripens," and becomes spruce gum. On inquiry we learned that there is a constant demand for spruce gum, but an insufficient supply since few make a business of collecting it. It appears that a few pounds of clarified spruce gum and an equal quantity of "chicle" from South America are mixed with a carload of paraffine wax and some flavoring extract, the result being the "chewing gum" of commerce which is distributed by the one-cent slot machines, and furnishes exercise for the jaw muscles of the rising generation. It has been estimated that more than five million dollars are expended for chewing gum in the United States every year.

It also is possible to chew pure spruce gum, just as it is broken from the tree trunk. I have tried it. In this operation one must "watch his step" to avoid lockjaw. At least, caution must be exercised until the quid is well "started." I understand that in some places it is possible, at an increased cost, to buy spruce gum that has been "started."

We reached Dan'l's in time for a late luncheon and were none the worse for our exploit. While we were on our lookout mountain we recognized several lakes and ponds and learned that Plum Pond was a long way from Muskrat City and to the south of it. Also, while there, on a piece of birch bark we made a topographical map of the region in view and laid out a new route to Muskrat City. This route was not a direct bee-line. It was circuitous, but it would avoid the swamps, the deep valleys and the steep ridges, and also would enter the city following up along the brook.

Having gone out to our headquarters on the lake for fresh supplies, a week later we made another trip to Muskrat City. This time we carried a small tent, an axe and food to last a week. While there we built a log lean-to camp. It was placed on a shelf, or narrow level space on the steep hillside, about seventy feet above the bottom of the valley. The shelf was just wide enough for our building and the fireplace in front. There were plenty of stones on the ground with which we built the fireplace. We chose this elevation for our building site because it would be above the fogs that often at night settle in the bottom of a valley, on a stream or pond.

A rill, tumbling down the steep hillside, draining a cold spring above, passed within thirty yards of the camp and supplied us with the kind of drinking water that, in the city, we buy for thirty cents a quart. This is a commodity that Nature distributes with lavish hand throughout this entire mountain region. On every hillside may be found one or more springs of pure soft water having a temperature of approximately forty degrees on the hottest days of summer. Here, the rheumatic, the dispeptic, the diabetic, and the fellow with kidneys, may have the poisons washed out of his system; while the balsamic air heals the rent in his breathing machinery. These processes may go forward, not while he sits on a hotel porch and broods over his troubles, but while he camps, explores, fishes, hunts and forgets his disabilities.

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