Suddenly, “Katahdin!” said Iglesias.

Yes, there was a dim point, the object of our pilgrimage.

Katahdin,—­the more I saw of it, the more grateful I was to the three powers who enabled me to see it:  to Nature for building it, to Iglesias for guiding me to it, to myself for going.

We sat upon the deck and let Katahdin grow,—­and sitting, talked of mountains, somewhat to this effect:—­

Mountains are the best things to be seen.  Within the keen outline of a great peak is packed more of distance, of detail, of light and shade, of color, of all the qualities of space, than vision can get in any other way.  No one who has not seen mountains knows how far the eye can reach.  Level horizons are within cannon-shot.  Mountain horizons not only may be a hundred miles away, but they lift up a hundred miles at length, to be seen at a look.  Mountains make a background against which blue sky can be seen; between them and the eye are so many miles of visible atmosphere, domesticated, brought down to the regions of earth, not resting overhead, a vagueness and a void.  Air, blue in full daylight, rose and violet at sunset, gray like powdered starlight by night, is collected and isolated by a mountain, so that the eye can comprehend it in nearer acquaintance.  There is nothing so refined as the outline of a distant mountain:  even a rose-leaf is stiff-edged and harsh in comparison.  Nothing else has that definite indefiniteness, that melting permanence, that evanescing changelessness.  Clouds in vain strive to imitate it; they are made of slighter stuff; they can be blunt or ragged, but they cannot have that solid positiveness.

Mountains, too, are very stationary,—­always at their post.  They are characters of dignity, not without noble changes of mood; but these changes are not bewildering, capricious shifts.  A mountain can be studied like a picture; its majesty, its grace can be got by heart.  Purple precipice, blue pyramid, cone or dome of snow, it is a simple image and a positive thought.  It is a delicate fact, first, of beauty,—­then, as you approach, a strong fact of majesty and power.  But even in its cloudy, distant fairness there is a concise, emphatic reality altogether uncloudlike.

Manly men need the wilderness and the mountain.  Katahdin is the best mountain in the wildest wild to be had on this side the continent.  He looked at us encouragingly over the hills.  I saw that he was all that Iglesias, connoisseur of mountains, had promised, and was content to wait for the day of meeting.

The steamboat dumped us and our canoe on a wharf at the lake-head about four o’clock.  A wharf promised a settlement, which, however, did not exist.  There was population,—­one man and one great ox.  Following the inland-pointing nose of the ox, we saw, penetrating the forest, a wooden railroad.  Ox-locomotive, and no other, befitted such rails.  The train was one great go-cart.  We packed our traps upon it, roofed them with our birch, and, without much ceremony of whistling, moved on.  As we started, so did the steamboat.  The link between us and the inhabited world grew more and more attenuated.  Finally it snapped, and we were in the actual wilderness.