FOOTPATHS 213 
tage, quaint and sheltered as any Spenser drew; 
it was built on no high-road, and turned its 
vine-clad gable away from even the footpath. 
Then the ground rose and we were surprised 
by a breeze from a new quarter; perhaps we 
climbed trees to look for landmarks, and saw 
only, still farther in the woods, some great cliff 
of granite or the derrick of an unseen quarry. 
Three miles inland, as I remember, we found 
the hearthstones of a vanished settlement; then 
we passed a swamp with cardinal flowers ; then 
a cathedral of noble pines, topped with crows’ 
nests. If we had not gone astray by this time, 
we presently emerged on Dogtown Common, 
an elevated tableland, overspread with great 
boulders as with houses, and encircled with a 
girdle of green woods and an outer girdle of 
blue sea. I know of nothing more wild than 
that gray waste of boulders ; it is a natural Salis- 
bury Plain, of which icebergs and ocean cur- 
rents were the Druidic builders; in that multi- 
tude of couchant monsters there seems a sense 
of suspended life; you feel as if they must 
speak and answer to each other in the silent 
nights, but by day only the wandering sea-birds 
seek them, on their way across the Cape, and 
the sweet-bay and green fern embed them in a 
softer and deeper setting as the years go by. 
This is the “height of ground” of that wild 
