ORCHID-HUNTING 141 



in a line. The outer ones, like the guard-stars of great 

 Altair, were light in color. Between them gleamed, 

 like the Eagle Star itself, a flower of deepest rose, an 

 unearthly crystalline color, like a rain-drenched 

 jacinth. 



Another time, at the crest of a rattlesnake den, I 

 found two of these pink pearls of the woods swinging 

 above the velvet-black coils of a black timber rattle- 

 snake. I picked my way down the mountain-side, 

 with Beauty in one hand and Death in the other, as 

 I romantically remarked to the unimpressed snake- 

 collector who was waiting for me with an open 

 gunny-sack. 



Then there was the day in the depths of the 

 pine-barrens, where stunted, three-leaved pitch pines 

 took the place of the towering, five-leaved white pine 

 of the North. The woods looked like a shimmering 

 pool of changing greens lapping over a white sand- 

 land that had been thrust up from the South into the 

 very heart of the North. I followed a winding wood- 

 path along the high bank of a stream stained brown 

 and steeped sweet with a million cedar-roots. A 

 mountain laurel showed like a beautiful ghost against 

 the dark water a glory of white, pink-flecked 

 flowers. 



Through dripping branches of withewood and star- 

 leaved sweet-gum saplings the path twisted. Sud- 

 denly, at the very edge of the bank, out of a mass 

 of hollow, crimson-streaked leaves filled with clear 

 water, swung two glorious blossoms. Wine-red, aqua- 

 marine, pearl-white, and pale gold they gleamed and 



