Note 95 — III FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS (continued 3)

This is the excursion described by Thoreau in a subsequent letter,—lasting six days, and the first that Channing had made which involved "camping out." It was also Thoreau's last visit to this favorite mountain; but Channing continued to go there after the death of his friend; and some of these visits are recorded in his poem "The Wanderer." The last one was in September, 1869, when I accompanied him, and we again spent five nights on the plateau where he had camped with Thoreau. At that time, one of the "two good spruce houses, half a mile apart," mentioned by Thoreau, was still standing, in ruins,—the place called by Channing "Henry's Camp," and thus described:—

We built our fortress where you see Yon group of spruce-trees, sidewise on the line Where the horizon to the eastward bounds,— A point selected by sagacious art, Where all at once we viewed the Vermont hills, And the long outline of the mountain-ridge, Ever renewing, changeful every hour. See The Wanderer (Boston, 1871), p. 61.