IN QUEST OF RAVENS 55 



And there we stayed till the clouds broke. 

 Then, refreshing myself with big hailstones, 

 which lay white in the grass, I took the 

 road again for the long diagonal descent to 

 the valley. 



I was well fagged by the time I reached 

 Highlands ; but I had been to Turtlepond, 

 and in my memory were some confused 

 recollections of a few distant notes, probably 

 a bird's, and possibly a raven's. To that 

 complexion had the matter already come. 

 It is marvelous how quickly certainty loses 

 its color when once the breath of doubt 

 touches it. 



Two days afterward, finding myself not 

 yet acclimated, I joined a company who 

 were making a day's wagon-trip to White- 

 side, the highest peak in the immediate 

 vicinity of Highlands ; a real mountain, 

 said to be five thousand feet in height, but 

 looking considerably lower to my eye, its 

 surroundings being all so elevated, and the 

 southern latitude, as I suppose, giving to it 

 a more richly wooded, and consequently less 

 rugged and alpine appearance than belongs 

 to New England mountains of a correspond- 

 ing rank. On the southerly side it breaks 



