AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS 65 



she rocks upon the dark secluded waters of some 

 pool or lakelet, are the crown and summit of the 

 floral expeditions of summer. It is the expedition 

 about which more things gather than almost any 

 other: you want your boat, you want your lunch, 

 you want your friend or friends with you. You 

 are going to put in the greater part of the day; you 

 are going to picnic in the woods, and indulge in a 

 "green thought in a green shade." When my friend 

 and I go for pond-lilies, we have to traverse a dis 

 tance of three miles with our boat in a wagon. The 

 road is what is called a "back road," and leads 

 through woods most of the way. Black Pond, 

 where the lilies grow, lies about one hundred feet 

 higher than the Hudson, from which it is separated 

 by a range of rather bold wooded heights, one of 

 which might well be called Mount Hymettus, for I 

 have found a great deal of wild honey in the forest 

 that covers it. The stream which flows out of 

 the pond takes a northward course for two or three 

 miles, till it finds an opening through the rocky 

 hills, when it makes rapidly for the Hudson. Its 

 career all the way from the lake is a series of alter 

 nating pools and cascades. Now a long, deep, level 

 stretch, where the perch and the bass and the pick 

 erel lurk, and where the willow-herb and the royal 

 osmunda fern line the shores; then a sudden leap 

 of eight, ten, or fifteen feet down rocks to another 

 level stretch, where the water again loiters and suns 



