Here they took another road, and were carried back into Maine to Houlton, the county seat of Aroostook County.

After staying overnight here they took a stage, and for a whole day travelled over pleasant roads, through sweet-scented forests of spruce and balsam, broken here by clearings and thrifty farms, until at last the journey ended in the pretty little backwoods settlement of Presque Isle.
Here Uncle Christopher's lumber business detained him for a week, and here he introduced Mark to all his friends as "My grandnephew, Mr.Mark Elmer, Jun., President of the Elmer Mills down in Floridy," covering Mark with much confusion thereby, and enjoying the joke immensely himself.

Now the real object of bringing the boy on this trip was disclosed.

Mr.Bangs not only wanted Mark to meet with these practical men, and become familiar with their ways of conducting a business which was very similar to that which the Elmers had undertaken in Florida, but he knew that pine lumber was becoming scarce in that Northern country, and thought perhaps some of these men could be persuaded to emigrate to another land of pines if the idea was presented to them properly.

So he encouraged Mark to talk of Florida, and to give them all the information he possessed regarding its forests of pine and its other resources.