Roughing It by Mark Twain

while the other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be

able to find it again, it had such a strong family resemblance to the

surrounding vegetation. But we were satisfied with it.

We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within the

protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our residence on

our own domain and enjoy that large sense of independence which only such

an experience can bring. Late the next afternoon, after a good long

rest, we sailed away from the Brigade camp with all the provisions and

cooking utensils we could carry off–borrow is the more accurate word–

and just as the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing.

CHAPTER XXIII.

If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber

ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I

have not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see a

human being but ourselves during the time, or hear any sounds but those

that were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, and

now and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us

was dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with

sunshine, the broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and

breezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature’s mood; and its

circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with

land-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering

snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The view was always

fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing,

night or day, in calm or storm; it suffered but one grief, and that was

that it could not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep.

We slept in the sand close to the water’s edge, between two protecting

boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We never

took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we were

always up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical vigor

and exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was–but I held his hat.

While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel

peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as

it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests

free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water

till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought in

and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to

“business.”

That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore.

There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white.

This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage

than it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards

or so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let

the boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked.

It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious

rest and indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep,

curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where the

sand ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space–rose

up like a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly wooded

with tall pines.

So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or

thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat

seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep.

Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand’s-

breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite boulder, as

large as a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and

seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently it threatened to

touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and