old hunter with whom I talked thought it aided them in climbing.  They are inveterate gnawers, and spend much of their time in trees gnawing the bark.  In winter one will take up its abode in a hemlock, and continue there till the tree is quite denuded.  The carcass emitted a peculiar, offensive odor, and, though very fat, was not in the least inviting as game.  If it is part of the economy of nature for one animal to prey upon some other beneath it, then the poor devil has indeed a mouthful that makes a meal off the porcupine.  Panthers and lynxes have essayed it, but have invariably left off at the first course, and have afterwards been found dead, or nearly so, with their heads puffed up like a pincushion, and the quills protruding on all sides.  A dog that understands the business will manoeuvre round the porcupine till he gets an opportunity to throw it over on its back, when he fastens on its quilless underbody.  Aaron was puzzled to know how long-parted friends could embrace, when it was suggested that the quills could be depressed or elevated at pleasure.

The next morning boded rain; but we had become thoroughly sated with the delights of our present quarters, outside and in, and packed up our traps to leave.  Before we had reached the clearing, three miles below, the rain set in, keeping up a lazy, monotonous drizzle till the afternoon.

The clearing was quite a recent one, made mostly by barkpeelers, who followed their calling in the mountains round about in summer, and worked in their shops making shingle in winter.  The Biscuit Brook came in here from the west,—­a fine, rapid trout stream six or eight miles in length, with plenty of deer in the mountains about its head.  On its banks we found the house of an old woodman, to whom we had been directed for information about the section we proposed to traverse.

“Is the way very difficult,” we inquired, “across from the Neversink into the head of the Beaverkill?”

“Not to me; I could go it the darkest night ever was.  And I can direct you so you can find the way without any trouble.  You go down the Neversink about a mile, when you come to Highfall Brook, the first stream that comes down on the right.  Follow up it to Jim Reed’s shanty, about three miles.  Then cross the stream, and on the left bank, pretty well up on the side of the mountain, you will find a wood-road, which was made by a fellow below here who stole some ash logs off the top of the ridge last winter and drew them out on the snow.  When the road first begins to tilt over the mountain, strike down to your left, and you can reach the Beaverkill before sundown.”

As it was then after two o’clock, and as the distance was six or eight of these terrible hunters’ miles, we concluded to take a whole day to it, and wait till next morning.  The Beaverkill flowed west, the Neversink south, and I had a mortal dread of getting entangled amid the mountains and valleys that lie in either angle.