218 VIRGINIA 



and every successive visit was similarly re- 

 warded. A pleasing sight at the bridge 

 itself was the continual fluttering of butter- 

 flies — Turnus and his smaller and paler 

 brother Ajax, especially — against the face 

 of the cliffs, sipping from the deep honey- 

 jars of the columbines. Here, too, I often 

 stopped awhile to enjoy the doings of sev- 

 eral pairs of rough-winged swallows that had 

 their nests in a row of holes in the rock, 

 between two of the strata. Most romantic 

 homes they looked, under the overhanging 

 ledge, — a narrow platform below, ferns and 

 sedges nodding overhead, with tall arbor- 

 vitae trees a little higher on the cliff, and 

 water dropping continually before the doors. 

 One of the nests, I noticed, had directly in 

 front of it a patch of low green moss, the 

 neatest of door-mats. The holes were only 

 a few feet above the level of the stream, 

 but there was no approach to them without 

 wading ; for which reason, perhaps, the 

 owners paid little attention to me, even 

 when I got as near them as I could. In 

 and out they went, quite at their ease, rest- 

 ing now and then upon a jutting shelf, or 

 perching in the branches of some tree near 



