64 Bo^-Trotting' for Orchids 



yet no sign of them; so I came back to the mill and 

 turned in through the bars, on the north side of the 

 pond, where I followed a grassy path around the hill 

 to the treacherous Cranberry Swamp farther north- 

 ward, where I had been cautioned not to wander alone. 



Sounding the margin of the marshy meadow, I 

 found quaking and unstable ground. With a ten-foot 

 pole I probed the depths of the mud, and found it 

 unfathomable, and no signs of terra firma about it. 

 Pickerel- weed, eel-grass, frog's-bit, and the leaves of 

 arrow-head grew about the pools. I could not very 

 well find an entrance here, unless for a permanent resi- 

 dence. So going northward along the west shore of 

 this mud-pond, I came to a place which promised fair 

 and safe walking, with my waterproof boots for pro- 

 tection. At first I felt my way very cautiously, then 

 grew bolder and forgot that I was in a dangerous 

 place, for the farther I advanced, the firmer and drier 

 and more enchanting became the field of my vision. 



Before me opened a wide expanse of meadow-land, 

 where even unruly cows dared not wander, and man 

 seldom ventured to trespass. Nature's remote solitude 

 indeed was peacefully hidden here. No human voices 

 nor sounds of hay-making ever echoed over these 

 luxuriant fields, and the grasses grew sweetly, to fall 

 untouched to earth again, mown as it were by the au- 

 tumn winds, and stored beneath the drifts of November 

 snow, to lay, in time, one more thin coat of soil upon 

 the unplumbed depths of this ancient lake bed. Dur- 

 ing some long-ago winter, some one had ventured here 



