Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/416

 390 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1858,

&quot; Yes, my brother is the guide ; but if he went to-day he could never find his way back in this fog.&quot; &quot; Well,&quot; said Thoreau, &quot; if we cannot have a guide we will find it ourselves ; &quot; and he at once produced a map he had made the day before at a roadside inn, where he had found a wall map of the mountain region, and climbed on a table to copy that portion he needed. With this map and his pocket-compass he &quot; struck a bee-line,&quot; said Mr. Hoar, for the ravine, and soon came to it, about a mile away. They went safely down the steep stairs into the chasm, where they found the midsummer iceberg they wished to see. But as the;y* walked down the bed of the Peabody River, flowing from this ravine, over bowlders five or six feet high, the heavy packs on their shoulders weighed them down, and finally, Thoreau s foot slipping, he fell and sprained his ankle. He rose, but had not limped five steps from the place where he fell, when he said, &quot; Here is the arnica, anyhow,&quot; reached out his hand and plucked the Arnica mollis, which he had not before found anywhere. Before reaching the mountains they had marked in their botany books forty-six species of plants they hoped to find there, and before they came away they had found forty-two of them.

When they reached their camping-place, far ther down, Thoreau was so lame he could not