THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 43 



found in bloom. I had never before stood amid 

 blooming claytonia, a flower of April, and looked 

 down upon a field that held ripening strawberries. 

 Every thousand feet elevation seemed to make about 

 ten days' difi'erence in the vegetation, so that the 

 season was a month or more later on the top of the 

 mountain than at its base. A very pretty flower 

 which we began to meet with well up on the moun- 

 tain-side was the painted trillium, the petals white, 

 veined with pink. 



The low, stunted growth of spruce and fir which 

 clothes the top of Slide has been cut away over a 

 small space on the highest point, laying open the 

 view on nearly all sides. Here we sat down and 

 enjoyed our triumph. We saw the world as the 

 hawk or the balloonist sees it when he is three thou- 

 sand feet in the air. How soft and flowing all the 

 outlines of the hills and mountains beneath us looked ! 

 The forests dropped down and undulated away over 

 them, covering them like a carpet. To the east we 

 looked over the near-by Wittenberg range to the 

 Hudson and beyond; to the south, Peak-o'- Moose, 

 with its sharp crest, and Table Mountain, with its 

 long level top, were the two conspicuous objects; 

 in the west, Mt. Graham and Double Top, about 

 three thousand eight hundred feet each, arrested the 

 eye; while in our front to the north we looked over 

 the top of Panther Mountain to the multitudinous 

 peaks of the northern Catskills. All was mountain 

 and forest on every hand. Civilization seemed to 

 have done little more than to have scratched this 



