'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to picture out at large the varied¹ haps² and hazards of our wanderings in the savage³ wilderness⁴. For the actors in any play the trivial details have their place and meaning momentous⁵ enough, it may be; yet these are often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax⁶.  
So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes⁷, yet always with the plain-marked trail to guide us.
 
At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles⁸ of the forest temple through lush green glades⁹ dank and steaming in the August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked¹⁰ windings¹¹ of some brawling¹² mountain stream through thicket¹³ tangles¹⁴ where, you would think, no woman-ridden horse could penetrate¹⁵.
 
One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded¹⁶ the autumn, whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and arabesques¹⁷ against the blue. But in the night, mayhap, a dismal¹⁸ rain would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench¹⁹ us where we lay, sodden²⁰ already with the heaviness of exhaustion²¹.
 
Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of fortitude²² and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in a little time the hush²³ of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting²⁴ us of speech and bidding us go softly. And after this the march became a soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless mechanisms²⁵ wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop forever.
 
This was the loom²⁶ on which we wove the backward-reaching web of strenuous²⁷ onpressing. But through that web the scarlet²⁸ thread of famine shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present specter of starvation.
 
You will not think it strange that I should have but dim and misty²⁹ memories of this fainting time. Of all privations famine soonest blunts the senses, making a man oblivious³⁰ of all save that which drives him onward³¹. The happenings that I remember clearest are those which turned upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf³². One was Yeates's killing³³ of a milch doe which, with her fawn³⁴, ran across our path when we had fasted two whole days. By this, a capital crime in any hunter's code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. Also, I remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. And, being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the hickory and chestnut³⁵ and black walnut³⁶ that pelted³⁷ us in passing.
 
The doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for game, the Catawba would set over-night snares³⁸ for rabbits; and for another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this haphazard³⁹ hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the famine edge of hunger.
 
For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian there was no such bellows⁴⁰ to blow the fire of perseverance⁴¹. None the less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and held us to it; the Catawba Spa............