58 BEES. 



seem magnified many times. We see them bridge 

 the little gulf between us and the woods, then rise 

 up over the tree-tops with their burdens, swerving 

 neither to the right hand nor to the left. It is al- 

 most pathetic to see them labor so, climbing the 

 mountain and unwittingly guiding us to their treas- 

 ures. When the sun gets down so that his direction 

 corresponds exactly with the course of the bees, we 

 make the plunge. It proves even harder climbing 

 than we had anticipated; the mountain is faced by 

 a broken and irregular wall of rock, up which we pull' 

 ourselves slowly and cautiously by main strength. 

 In half an hour, the perspiration streaming from 

 every pore, we reach the summit. The trees here 

 are all small, a second growth, and we are soon con- 

 vinced the bees are not here. Then down we go on 

 the other side, clambering down the rocky stair-ways 

 till we reach quite a broad plateau that forms some- 

 thing- like the shoulder of the mountain. On the 

 brink of this there are many large hemlocks, and we 

 scan them closely and rap upon them with our ax. 

 But not a bee is seen or heard ; we do not seem as 

 near the tree as we were in the fields below ; yet if 

 some divinity would only whisper the fact to us we 

 are within a few rods of the coveted prize, which is 

 not in one of the large hemlocks or oaks that absorb 

 our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet 

 high, and which we have seen and passed several 

 times without giving it a thought. We go farther 

 down the mountain and beat about to the right and 

 left and get entangled in brush and arrested by pre- 

 cipices, and finally as the day is nearly spent, give 

 up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but 

 resolved to return on the morrow. The next day we 



