THE- LONE OAK. 341 



auriferous mountain stream, at that place and time of year 

 twenty yards more or less in width and about knee-deep. 



Lone Oak Camp had received its name because the spot 

 used as a halting-place was the shaded ground beneath the 

 boughs of a large ilex, that grew at a distance of about 

 thirty yards from the water's edge, and stood there solitary 

 and alone ; the country on the side of the stream it was on 

 being an open rolling grass plain, without, excepting it, either 

 tree or bush for many miles. 



The nature of the ground on the opposite or right side of 

 the Escarabajo Grande was in every respect the reverse. 

 Immediately across the stream there commenced the 

 " breaks " of the foothills of a lofty mountain range, which 

 rose up at a distance of a couple of miles or so from its 

 banks. These breaks were a jumble of hillocks gradually 

 increasing in size, and of intervening hollows and ravines, 

 all thickly covered with scrub-oaks, bearberry-bushes, and 

 numerous other varieties of dwarf-trees and shrubs, and with 

 occasional matted and impenetrable thickets of grape-vines 

 and wild hop-bines. 



In the cool shade of the Lone Oak, we were going to eat 

 and drink, and take our ease ; for we were hungry, thirsty, 

 and tired with so many hours' travelling. 



We approached the place over the undulating grass plain, 

 but it was concealed from our view by a ridge or roil of the 

 ground. 



This roll continued for some miles parallel with the course 

 of the Escarabajo Grande, at an average distance of fifty 

 yards from it, and had in all probability been at some remote 

 geological period its left bank, for it was a boulder and gravel 



