But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders.  How clean it looked, what purity!  Civilization corrupts the streams as it corrupts the Indian; only in such remote woods can you now see a brook in all its original freshness and beauty.  Only the sea and the mountain forest brook are pure; all between is contaminated more or less by the work of man.  An ideal trout brook was this, now hurrying, now loitering, now deepening around a great boulder, now gliding evenly over a pavement of green-gray stone and pebbles; no sediment or stain of any kind, but white and sparkling as snow-water, and nearly as cool.  Indeed, the water of all this Catskill region is the best in the world.  For the first few days, one feels as if he could almost live on the water alone; he cannot drink enough of it.  In this particular it is indeed the good Bible land, “a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.”

Near the forks we caught, or thought we caught, through an opening, a glimpse of Slide.  Was it Slide? was it the head, or the rump, or the shoulder of the shaggy monster we were in quest of?  At the forks there was a bewildering maze of underbrush and great trees, and the way did not seem at all certain; nor was David, who was then at the end of his reckoning, able to reassure us.  But in assaulting a mountain, as in assaulting a fort, boldness is the watchword.  We pressed forward, following a line of blazed trees for nearly a mile, then, turning to the left, began the ascent of the mountain.  It was steep, hard climbing.  We saw numerous marks of both bears and deer; but no birds, save at long intervals the winter wren flitting here and there, and darting under logs and rubbish like a mouse.  Occasionally its gushing, lyrical song would break the silence.  After we had climbed an hour or two, the clouds began to gather, and presently the rain began to come down.  This was discouraging; but we put our backs up against trees and rocks, and waited for the shower to pass.

“They were wet with the showers of the mountain, and embraced the rocks for want of shelter,” as they did in Job’s time.  But the shower was light and brief, and we were soon under way again.  Three hours from the forks brought us out on the broad level back of the mountain upon which Slide, considered as an isolated peak, is reared.  After a time we entered a dense growth of spruce which covered a slight depression in the table of the mountain.  The moss was deep, the ground spongy, the light dim, the air hushed.  The transition from the open, leafy woods to this dim, silent, weird grove was very marked.  It was like the passage from the street into the temple.  Here we paused awhile and ate our lunch, and refreshed ourselves with water gathered from a little well sunk in the moss.