20 WINTER SUNSHINE 



fire and dependence upon it, in the camp or the 

 cave, comes freshly to mind. 



On resuming our march, we filed off along a 

 charming wood-path, — a regular little tunnel through 

 the dense pines, carpeted with silence, and allowing 

 us to look nearly the whole length of it through its 

 soft green twilight out into the open sunshine of 

 the fields heyond. A pine wood in Maryland or in 

 Virginia is quite a different thing from a pine wood 

 in Maine or Minnesota, — the difference, in fact, 

 between yellow pine and white. The former, as it 

 grows hereabout, is short and scrubby, with branches 

 nearly to the ground, and looks like the dwindling 

 remnant of a greater race. 



Beyond the woods, the path led us by a colored 

 man's habitation, — a little, low frame house, on a 

 knoll, surrounded by the quaint devices and rude 

 makeshifts of these quaint and rude people. A 

 few poles stuck in the ground, clapboarded with 

 cedar-boughs and cornstalks, and supporting a roof 

 of the same, gave shelter to a rickety one-horse 

 wagon and some farm implements. Kear this there 

 was a large, compact tent, made entirely of corn- 

 stalks, with, for door, a bundle of the same, in the 

 dry, warm, nest-like interior of which the husking 

 of the corn crop seemed to have taken place. A 

 few rods farther on, we passed through another 

 humble dooryard, musical with dogs and dusky 

 with children. We crossed here the outlying fields 

 of a large, thrifty, well-kept-looking farm with a 

 showy, highly ornamental frame house in the centre. 



