THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 189 



opossums ; but the products of the vegetable kingdom are cheap, and 

 diversified enough to make up a tolerable menu. Sweet-potatoes at 

 twelve cents a peck, string-beans fifteen, green peas twenty-five ; 

 strawberries ten cents a quart, roasting-ears a cent a piece, brown 

 beans actually a bushel for one dollar Dalton (Georgia) market-prices. 

 " Semi-annual " comestibles in proportion : eggs eight cents a dozen, 

 butter twenty cents a pound in mid-winter, and ten cents in summer. 

 Milk is a drug in the market ; a good mileh-cow can be hired for a 

 dollar a month, a cow-boy for two dollars and his board. Whortle- 

 berries are sold at five cents a quart, but the pleasure of picking them 

 is worth a great deal more. The lamest and weakest can join in that 

 sport, for the shrub attains a height of three feet, and thus saves one 

 the trouble of stooping. 



About an hour after breakfast the colony (or family) should mus- 

 ter for out-door exercise. The choice between the various opportu- 

 nities for entertaining work is the only difficulty, for Nature has pro- 

 vided them in embarrassing profusion. Expert bee-hunters can find 

 four or five hive-trees in a single day. The chestnut-forests of the 

 upper ridges are full of squirrels, and with a dog, a sack, and a good 

 axe, it is not difficult to catch one alive, and turn it over to the quar- 

 termaster of the pet-department. Climbing trees is an exercise that 

 brings into action nearly every muscle of the human body, and, like 

 the mal de monte, the shudder that seizes the traveler at the brink of 

 Alpine precipices, the dizziness that takes away the breath, returns it 

 with interest and is a mechanical asthma-cure. Entomologists may 

 combine the gratification of their mania with useful exercise by roll- 

 ing logs in quest of big-horn beetles. Log-rolling and tumbling rocks 

 from the tops of projecting cliffs is the spice of life in the engineer- 

 ing enterprises which a campf ul of male North Americans are sure to 

 set afloat as enlarging the entrance of a cave, constructing a graded 

 trail to the next spring, to the next wagon-road, or to a favorite look- 

 out point. Enterprises of that sort involve a good deal of grubbing 

 and chopping, but also many interesting discoveries geological speci- 

 mens, an unknown chrysalis, new varieties of ferns and mosses. As 

 the work progresses it becomes a pastime rather than a task, and nov- 

 ices feel inclined to agree with engineer Spangenberg, that " with a 

 little management a first-class railroad can be built to any point of the 

 continent earth." There is no cliff that can not be circumvented or 

 terraced. With a slight curve in the road an apparent obstacle can 

 be utilized as a bulwark. In fallen trees the removal of a few side- 

 branches develops revolving faculties. A pickaxe makes a whole wil- 

 derness plastic. 



The summer air of the highlands makes out-door life a luxury, but 

 the chief advantage of the plan is this : The stimulus of a pleasant 

 pastime enables a man to beguile himself into about ten times as much 

 exercise as he could stand in the Turner-hall. The visitors of a hygi- 



