Jersey Mountains and Meadoivs 233 



elm trees. The forest, apparently, was still in its 

 primeval state. 



As I approached the cottage of Wildmont, I ran 

 upon an old cellar hole, where a building had once 

 stood. The ruins were now prettily covered with 

 myrtle and ivy. From this site, between the parting 

 boughs, I caught glints of a sea of blues in the valley 

 of the Oranges, which was overflowing with glistening 

 house-tops and church- spires. Here I turned about 

 and found a great colony of Indian Pipes. 



As I turned from the shades of Wildmont, I walked 

 toward Crystal Lake, along a dry brook bed. Here, 

 indeed, I found a Cardinal show; over a hundred spikes 

 of that brilliant flower danced before my eyes and 

 lighted up the glooms. I had never before seen such 

 flowers as these. The Cardinal-Flower (^Lobelia car- 

 diiialis) is not frequent in Hoosac Valley — at least I 

 have never collected it there. John Burroughs writes 

 of it: '* It is not so much something colored as it is 

 color itself." ' I gathered many spikes of this flaring 

 colored flower, and passed out to the shore of the 

 lake; children, with their sailboats, ran teasingly after 

 me, until I escaped to a quiet retreat where ice-cream 

 was served. The waiter and the children alike were 

 strangely unfamiliar with this flower, growing so close 

 to their homes. 



I passed out over the rocky slopes northward, where 

 I ate huckleberries to my heart's content. The ghost- 

 like Feathery Plumes, and common Purple Clubs of this 

 * Burroughs, Riverby. 



