14 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



to announce all ready. "Ecod, measter Frank, you munna 

 wager i' that gate* wi' master, or my name beant Tim, 

 but tbou'lt be clean bamboozled." 



Well, not to make a short story long, we got under way 

 again, and, with speed unabated, spanked along at full 

 twelve miles an hour for five miles farther. There, down 

 a wild looking glen, on the left hand, comes brawling, over 

 stump and stone, a tributary streamlet, by the side of 

 which a rough track, made by the charcoal burners and 

 the iron miners, intersects the main road; and up this 

 miserable looking path, for it was little more, Harry 

 wheeled at full trot. 



"Now for twelve miles of mountain, the roughest road 

 and wildest country you ever saw crossed in a phaeton, 

 good master Frank." 



And wild it was. indeed and rough enough in all con- 

 science; narrow, unfenced in many places, winding along 

 the brow of precipices without rail or breast-work, encum- 

 bered with huge blocks of stone, and broken by the summer 

 rains ! An English stage coachman would have stared 

 aghast at the steep zigzags up the hills, the awkward turns 

 on the descents, the sudden pitches, with now an unsafe 

 bridge, and now a stony ford at the bottom; but through 

 all this, the delicate quick finger, keen eye, and cool head 

 of HaiTy, assisted by the rare mouths of his exquisitely 

 bitted cattle, piloted us at the rate of full ten miles the 

 hour; the scenery, through which the wild track ran, being 

 entirely of the most wild and savage character of wood- 

 land; the bottom filled with gigantic timber trees, cedar, 

 and pine, and hemlock, with a dense undergrowth of 

 rhododendron, calmia, and azalia, which, as my friend in- 

 formed me, made the whole mountains in the summer 

 season one rich bed of bloom. About six miles from the 

 point where we had entered them we scaled the highest 

 ridge of the hills, by three almost precipitous zigzags, the 

 topmost ledge paved by a stratum of broken shaley lime- 

 stone; and, passing at once from the forest into well 

 cultivated fields, came on a new and lovelier prospect — a 

 narrow deep vale scarce a mile in breadth — scooped, as it 

 were, out of the mighty mountains which embosomed it 

 on every side — in the highest state of culture, with rich 

 orchards, and deep meadows, and brown stubbles, whereon 



*Gate — Yorkshire! Anglice way! 



