166 VIRGINIA 



by tlie acre, in the woodlands of southwest- 

 ern North Carolina), were gathered, as be- 

 fore said, not far from the foot of Peak 

 Knob. From the moment of my arrival in 

 Pulaski I had had my eye upon that emi- 

 nence, the highest of the hills round about, 

 looking to be, as I was told it was, a thou- 

 sand feet above the valley level, or some 

 three thousand feet above tide-water. I call 

 it Peak Knob, but that was not the name I 

 first heard for it. On the second afternoon 

 of my stay I had gone through the town and 

 over some shadeless fields beyond, following 

 a crooked, hard-baked, deeply rutted road, 

 till I found myself in a fine piece of old 

 woods, — oaks, tulip-trees (poplars, the 

 Southern people call them), black walnuts, 

 and the like ; leafless now, all of them, and 

 silent as the grave, but certain a few days 

 hence to be alive with wings and vocal with 

 spring music. In imagination I was already 

 beholding them populous with chats, indigo- 

 birds, wood pewees, wood thrushes, and 

 warblers (it is one of our ornithological 

 pleasures to make such anticipatory cata- 

 logues in unfamiliar places), when my pro- 

 phetic vision was interrupted by the ap- 



