234 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



feathery pile of willows, and to the left still another, al- 

 most as close to us as the first, so that this tongue of 

 meadow here is like a peninsula. 



We enter a canoe a canoe because it slips noiselessly 

 through the water, and can go almost anywhere and 

 examine the river bank more closely, with quite a new 

 impression of its size here on the surface of the water, 

 where it towers six feet above us and shuts out all but 

 the tops of the mountains. It is composed of compact 

 layers of loamy sand, with here and there a little slippery 

 clay. The constant erosion of the water at freshet time 

 has hollowed it out beneath the surface soil, and the 

 grass and flowers, holding together the surface overhang 

 by tenacious roots, curve out and droop along the top 

 like peat thatching. Each Spring great chunks of this 

 overhang break away and fall into the water, as the 

 river continues to deepen the bend. Under this thatch, 

 looking quaintly like a street of Upper West Side 

 apartment houses, are the dark little holes of the bank 

 swallows, row after row of them, neatly tunnelled into 

 the damp brown earth. The swallows skim low over the 

 surrounding fields, snapping up insects as they fly, or 

 come home unerringly to their abodes and disappear 

 with a flutter of tail. The nests are so exactly similar 

 in appearance that one marvels at the birds' discrimina- 

 tion. It is fortunate, certainly, that sobriety is one of 

 their virtues. Now and then among the swallows' cliff 

 dwellings is a larger hole, where dog or woodchuck or 



