"Does the ford go right straight across?" I asked. "No, you must make a
curve up towards the dam or you will get into deep water, and there are
boulders too, you must avoid, or your horse may fall down."

A curve! Now a straight line, two points being given, can be defined. And
if I could steer for some given point on the opposite bank, I could hit it
if the current did not take me down stream; but a curve is awfully
uncertain, and my mind was in a state of perturbation. However, I got
across with nothing worse than a good spattering.

I wish I could paint the pictures constantly opening on the view as I rode
along. Forest clad mountains rose on every side with huge cliffs peering
grimly out. Sometimes these cliffs overhung the road and occasionally a
great slab of slate projected sufficiently to furnish shelter for a
family. In one place a farmer had taken advantage of this and made his
stable under a rock. A great slab of shaly slate projected so that he had
a roof some fifty feet long and ten or fifteen wide. My mind went back
eighteen hundred years and more to another stable in a rock and the
wonderful scene enacted there. It was not easy to believe that the little
cabins, looking like miniature houses which might be built by boys for
play, were actually homes, occupied by families, father, mother and eight
or ten children; but such is the case.

Seven miles of constantly changing pictures, but all beautiful, brought me
to Rockhold, a name I had supposed derived from its physical
characteristics, but which I was informed was given in respect to a family
formerly the most important in the vicinity but now quite gone. I made my
way to the little church. In front was a huge wagon and in a little grove
at the back several horses tied. I had been informed that I might safely
address any man I found prominent, as "Elliott," and as I entered I so