After many days of fatigue of body and distress of mind, the sorrowing parents sadly relinquished the search as utterly hopeless, and mourned in bitterness of spirit over the disastrous fate of their first-born and beloved children.--"There was a voice of woe, and lamentation, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were not." The miserable uncertainty that involved the fate of the lost ones was an aggravation to the sufferings of the mourners: could they but have been certified of the manner of their deaths, they fancied they should be more contented; but, alas! this fearful satisfaction was withheld.
"Oh, were their tale of sorrow known, 'Twere something to the breaking heart, The pangs of doubt would then be gone, And fancy's endless dreams depart." But let us quit the now mournful settlement of the Cold Springs, and see how it really fared with the young wanderers.
When they awoke the valley was filled with a white creamy mist, that arose from the bed of the stream, (now known as Cold Creek,) and gave an indistinctness to the whole landscape, investing it with an appearance perfectly different to that which it had worn by the bright, clear light of the moon.

No trace of their footsteps remained to guide them in retracing their path; so hard and dry was the stony ground that it left no impression on its surface.

It was with some difficulty they found the creek, which was concealed from sight by a lofty screen of gigantic hawthorns, high-bush cranberries, poplars, and birch-trees.

The hawthorn was in blossom, and gave out a sweet perfume, not less fragrant than the "May" which makes the lanes and hedgerows of "merrie old England" so sweet and fair in May and June, as chanted in many a genuine pastoral of our olden time; but when our simple Catharine drew down the flowery branches to wreathe about her hat, she loved the flowers for their own native sweetness and beauty, not because poets had sung of them;--but young minds have a natural poetry in themselves, unfettered by rule or rhyme.
At length their path began to grow more difficult.

A tangled mass of cedars, balsams, birch, black ash, alders, and _tamarack_ (Indian name for the larch), with a dense thicket of bushes and shrubs, such as love the cool, damp soil of marshy ground, warned our travellers that they must quit the banks of the friendly stream, or they might become entangled in a trackless swamp.