The canoe we turned bottom up and left in the bushes, and so we set off
through the forest.
At the end of fifteen minutes we began to mount a gentle ascent. The
gentle ascent speedily became a sharp slope, the sharp slope an abrupt
hill, and the latter finally an almost sheer face of rock and thin
soil. We laid hold doggedly of little cedars; we dug our fingers into
little crevices, and felt for the same with our toes; we perspired in
streams and breathed in gasps; we held the strained muscles of our
necks rigid, for the twisting of a pack meant here a dangerous fall; we
flattened ourselves against the face of the mountain with always the
heavy, ceaseless pull of the tump-line attempting to tear us backward
from our holds. And so at last, when the muscles of our thighs refused
to strengthen our legs for the ascent of another foot, we would turn
our backs to the slant and sink gratefully into the only real luxury in
the world.
For be it known that real luxury cannot be bought; it must be worked
for. I refer to luxury as the exquisite savour of a pleasant sensation.
The keenest sense-impressions are undoubtedly those of contrast. In
looking back over a variety of experience, I have no hesitation at all
in selecting as the moment in which I have experienced the liveliest
physical pleasure one hot afternoon in July. The thermometer might have
stood anywhere. We would have placed childlike trust in any of its
statements, even three figures great.
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