Then the lights of the settlement were blotted out behind them, the hum of voices ceased, and they were alone in the primeval silence of the bush.

The thud and splash of tired hoofs only served to emphasize it, the thin jingle of steel or creak of pack-rope was swallowed up and lost, for the great dim forest seemed to mock at anything man could do to disturb its pristine serenity.

It had shrouded all that valley, where no biting gale ever blew, from the beginning, majestic in its solitary grandeur and eternally green.

Pine and hemlock, balsam and cedar, had followed in due succession others that had grown to the fulness of their stature only in centuries, and their healing essence, which brings sound sleep to man's jaded body and tranquillity to his mind, had doubtless risen like incense when all was made very good.
Now Alton loved the wilderness, partly because he had been born in it, and because he had a large share of the spirit of his race.

He had also seen the cities, and they did not greatly please him, though he had watched their inhabitants curiously and been taught a good deal about them by what he read in books, which to the wonder of his associates he would spend hardly-earned dollars upon.