12 NORTH CAROLINA 



on foot. A turn or two in the road, and we 

 had left the village behind us, and then, 

 almost before I knew it, we were among the 

 hills: now aloft on the shoulder of one of 

 them, with innumerable mountains crowding 

 the horizon ; now shut in some narrow, wind- 

 ing valley, our " distance and horizon gone,'* 

 with a bird singing from the bushes, and 

 likely enough a stream playing hide-and-seek 

 behind a tangle of rhododendron and laurel. 

 Wild as the country was, we never traveled 

 many miles without coming in sight of a 

 building of some kind : a rude mill, it might 

 be, or more probably a cabin. Once at least, 

 in a very wilderness of a place, we passed a 

 schoolhouse; as to which it puzzled me to 

 guess, first where the pupils came from, and 

 then how they got light to read by, unless, 

 happy children, they took their books out of 

 doors and studied their lessons under the 

 trees, and so went to school with the birds. 



Little by little — very little — we con- 

 tinued to ascend, gaining something more 

 than we lost as the road seesawed from valley 

 to hill, and from hill to valley. So it finally 

 appeared, I mean to say ; the changes in the 

 vegetation serving eventually to establish a 



