88 Bo^-Trotting for Orchids 



bushes and saplings on the other bank could I succeed 

 in crossing. I found no Pogonias and Liniodorums on 

 the west side of the stream, and it was just here that I 

 had once found the meadow one wave of rose-purple. 



Reaching the mill, I hastened around the bend in 

 the road. A little to the south of Arethusa's Spring, 

 and scarcely five feet to the left of the path, under some 

 willows, I saw a dark, insignificant looking pool. 

 Stooping down and touching the surface, I found it 

 icy cold. This pool, Merwin's mother tells me, has 

 always been here, and at no time in her memory has 

 she heard of any one being successful in measuring its 

 depth, although it has been probed with very long 

 sounding-poles. These have been dropped fifty feet or 

 more. Frequently she has left a long pole standing in 

 the pool, only to find upon returning later that it had 

 disappeared in the depths below, proving great suc- 

 tion. Such holes and springs are characteristic of the 

 swamps of Ktchowog, where the original lake bed was 

 located over a century ago, before the water of Ball 

 Brook was turned in its course through the present 

 pond west of the mill. This " dead hole " should be 

 fenced in and marked " dangerous," since it might so 

 easily be stepped into by one unacquainted with its 

 character. 



I followed the familiar and loved path out to the 

 sphagnous meadows east of Kimball's barns. Taking 

 a straight line southward up the hill, back of an or- 

 chard, along the border of a field of Indian corn, I 

 came again to Thompson's Brook, on its way to join 



