with our packs on our backs, entering upon a pass in the mountains that
led to the valley of the Rondout.

The scenery was wild and desolate in the extreme, the mountains on
either hand looking as if they had been swept by a tornado of stone.
Stone avalanches hung suspended on their sides, or had shot down into
the chasm below. It was a kind of Alpine scenery, where crushed and
broken boulders covered the earth instead of snow.

In the depressions in the mountains the rocky fragments seemed to have
accumulated, and to have formed what might be called stone glaciers
that were creeping slowly down.

Two hours' march brought us into heavy timber where the stone cataclysm
had not reached, and before long the soft voice of the Rondout was
heard in the gulf below us. We paused at a spring run, and I followed
it a few yards down its mountain stairway, carpeted with black moss,
and had my first glimpse of the unknown stream. I stood upon rocks and
looked many feet down into a still, sunlit pool and saw the trout
disporting themselves in the transparent water, and I was ready to
encamp at once; but my companion, who had not been tempted by the view,
insisted upon holding to our original purpose, which was to go farther
up the stream. We passed a clearing with three or four houses and a
saw-mill. The dam of the latter was filled with such clear water that
it seemed very shallow, and not ten or twelve feet deep, as it really
was. The fish were as conspicuous as if they had been in a pail.

Two miles farther up we suited ourselves and went into camp.

If there ever was a stream cradled in the rocks, detained lovingly by