THE GROUND-CEDAR. 39 



leave it alone. It will interfere with his comfort. 

 We went trudging along, stumbling over boulders 

 and roots, scrambling over huge logs, and around the 

 tops of fallen trees, for an hour or more, when we 

 came to a patch of table land, slightly elevated above 

 the surrounding country. It was comparatively bare 

 of underbrush, and had upon it but few trees of a 

 larger growth. This opening contained perhaps four 

 or five acres, and was covered with short coarse grass 

 and weeds, with here and there a clump of what my 

 guide termed ground-cedar. This shrub grows from 

 a single stem, as large perhaps as a mar>V arm, from 

 which branches spread out along upon, or a few 

 inches from, the ground, to a distance of from six to 

 ten feet, so that one of these shrubs will extend over 

 a circle from ten to twenty feet in diameter, present- 

 ing an evergreen surface of dense foliage, and at no 

 place over twelve inches from the ground. I was ex- 

 amining one of these, when I discovered two beauti- 

 fully bright and soft eyes, peering through the inter- 

 twined branches at me. I was at first startled, but 

 upon examination found them to belong to a fawn, 

 that had been hid away by its dam beneath the 



i/ / 



ground-cedar. It was a beautiful little animal, as 



