Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/410

 384 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1858,

see him scaling the heights as if he had lost his way, or at his jumping over their cow-yard fences, asking if he had fallen from the clouds. In a walk like this he always carried his um brella ; and on this Monadnoc trip, when about a mile from the station (in Troy, N. H.), a tor rent of rain came down ; without the umbrella his books, blankets, maps, and provisions would all have been spoiled, or the morning lost by de lay. On the mountain there being a thick, soak ing fog, the first object was to camp and make tea. He spent five nights in camp, having built another hut, to get varied views. Flowers, birds, lichens, and the rocks were carefully examined, all parts of the mountain were visited, and as accurate a map as could be made by pocket com pass was carefully sketched and drawn out, in the five days spent there, with notes of the striking aerial phenomena, incidents of travel and natural history. The outlook across the val ley over to Wachusett, with its thunder-storms and battles in the cloud; the farmers back yards in Jaffrey, where the family cotton can be seen bleaching on the grass, but 110 trace of the pigmy family; the dry, soft air all night, the lack of dew in the morning ; the want of water, a pint being a good deal, these, and similar things make up some part of such an excur-