UNDER THE MAPLES 



in the morning, but on the whole I have only pleas- 

 ant memories of our camp at Wolf Creek. 



We were near a week in Virginia and West Vir- 

 ginia, crossing many times the border between the 

 Iwo States, now in one, then in the other, all the 

 time among the mountains, with a succession of 

 glorious views from mountain-tops and along broad, 

 fertile valleys. Now we were at Warm Springs, 

 then at Hot Springs, then at White Sulphur, or at 

 Sweet Water Springs. Soft water and hard water, 

 cold water and warm water, mineral water and 

 trout-streams, companion one another in these 

 mountains. This part of the continent got much 

 folded and ruptured and mixed up in the building, 

 and the elements are unevenly distributed.' 



I think to most of us West Virginia had always 

 been a rather hazy proposition, and we were glad 

 to get a clear impression of it. We certainly 

 became pretty intimate with the backbone of the 

 continent — or with its many backbones, as its 

 skeleton seems to be a very multiplex affair. The 

 backbones of continents usually get broken in many 

 places, but they serve their purpose just as well. 

 In fact, our old Earth is more like an articulate 

 than a vertebrate. Its huge shell is in many sections. 



One of our camps we named Camp Lee, the name 

 of the owner of the farm. One of the boys there, 

 Robert E. Lee, made himself very useful in bring- 

 ing wood and doing other errands. 



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