When we had thus reached the height of our folly and made nothing by it, we addressed ourselves to the descent, no wiser for our pains.  Descent is always harder than ascent, for divine ambitions are stronger and more prevalent than degrading passions.  And when Katahdin is befogged, descent is much more perilous than ascent.  We edged along very cautiously by remembered landmarks the way we had come, and so, after a dreary march of a mile or so through desolation, issued into welcome sunshine and warmth at our point of departure.  When I said “we,” I did not include the grave-stone peddler.  He, like a sensible fellow, had determined to stay and eat berries rather than breathe fog.  While we wasted our time, he had made the most of his.  He had cleared Katahdin’s shoulders of fruit, and now, cuddled in a sunny cleft, slept the sleep of the well-fed.  His red shirt was a cheerful beacon on our weary way.  We took in the landscape with one slow, comprehensive look, and, waking Cancut suddenly, (who sprang to his feet amazed, and cried “Fire!”) we dashed down the mountain-side.

It was long after noon; we were some dozen of miles from camp; we must speed.  No glissade was possible, nor plunge such as travellers make down through the ash-heaps of Vesuvius; but, having once worried through the wretched little spruces, mean counterfeits of trees, we could fling ourselves down from mossy step to step, measuring off the distance by successive leaps of a second each, and alighting, sound after each, on moss yielding as a cushion.

On we hastened, retracing our footsteps of the morning across the avalanches of crumbled granite, through the bogs, along the brooks; undelayed by the beauty of sunny glade or shady dell, never stopping to botanize or to classify, we traversed zone after zone, and safely ran the gantlet of the possible bears on the last level.  We found lowland Nature still the same; Ayboljockameegus was flowing still; so was Penobscot; no pirate had made way with the birch; we embarked and paddled to camp.

The first thing, when we touched terra firma, was to look back regretfully toward the mountain.  Regret changed to wrath, when we perceived its summit all clear and mistless, smiling warmly to the low summer’s sun.  The rascal evidently had only waited until we were out of sight in the woods to throw away his night-cap.

One long rainy day had somewhat disgusted us with the old hemlock-covered camp in the glade of the yellow birch, and we were reasonably and not unreasonably morbid after our disappointment with Katahdin.  We resolved to decamp.  In the last hour of sunlight, floating pleasantly from lovely reach to reach, and view to view, we could choose a spot of bivouac where no home-scenery would recall any sorry fact of the past.  We loved this gentle gliding by the tender light of evening over the shadowy river, marking the rhythm of our musical progress by touches of the paddle.