158 VIRGINIA 



I made no serious effort to pick it up again. 

 Why should I go farther? I could never 

 be farther from the world, nor was I likely 

 to find anywhere a more inviting spot ; and 

 so, climbing the stony hillside, over beds of 

 trailing arbutus bloom and past bunches 

 of birdfoot violets, I sat down in the sun, on 

 a cushion of long, dry grass. 



The gentlest of zephyrs was stirring, the 

 very breath of spring, soft and of a delicious 

 temperature. My New England cheeks, 

 winter-crusted and still half benumbed, felt 

 it only in intermittent puffs, but the pine 

 leaves, more sensitive, kept up a continuous 

 murmur. Close about me close enough, 

 but not too close stood the hills. At my 

 back, filling the horizon in that direction, 

 stretched an unbroken ridge, some hundreds 

 of feet loftier than my own position, and 

 several miles in length, up the almost per- 

 pendicular slope of which, a very rampart 

 for steepness, ranks of evergreen trees were 

 pushing in narrow file. Elsewhere the land 

 rose in separate elevations ; some of them, 

 pale with distance, showing through a gap, 

 or peeping over the shoulder of a less remote 

 neighbor. Nothing else was in sight; and 



