168 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



ture of this region. The road cut through is nowhere 

 more than six foot wide, and full of everything which 

 can make trouble for the passenger. On both sides the 

 forest so thick that the trees almost touch, by their 

 height and their matted branches making a dimness, 

 cold and fearful even at noon of the clearest day. All 

 beneath is grown up in green and impenetrable bush. 

 Everywhere lie fallen trees, or those half-fallen, despite 

 of their weight not reaching the ground. Thousands 

 of rotten and rotting trunks cover the ground, and 

 make every step uncertain ; and between lies a fat bed 

 of the richest mould that sucks up like a sponge all 

 the moisture and so becomes swampy almost every- 

 where. One can with difficulty penetrate this growth 

 even a little way and not without danger of coming 

 too near this or that sort of snake lying hidden from 

 the sharpest eye in the waste of stones, leaves, and 

 roots. Nature shows itself here quite in its original 

 wildness. The trees were still of the same sorts as 

 in the country behind. A particularly deep and nar- 

 row valley in this great swamp is The Shades of 

 Death; its steep mountain sides are distinguished by 

 a great number of the tallest and slimmest pines, with 

 white and hemlock spruce, and these are mixed below 

 with a profuse and beautiful growth of rhododendron 

 and calamus, their roots waxing lustily in deep beds 

 of the richest mould. One must imagine for himself 

 the effect of a very narrow, steep, stony, marshy, mel- 

 ancholy, dark road which on both sides is shadowed 

 thickly by pines more than 80-100 ft. high. 



Our fellow-travellers were of the opinion that all 

 these hills and valleys would never be used for any- 

 thing, because they thought cultivation would be im- 



