A SEARCH FOR THE PLEIADES 259 
and sheltered life was as absolutely withdrawn. 
Beneath us and around us was a craggy world 
of boulders and broken rock, all united into 
one continuous and treacherous surface by an 
emerald garment of the softest moss. Our feet 
sank and slipped in it; it was a delicious 
cushion on which to leap from rock to rock; 
but the leaps were too dangerous, for none 
could tell by the eye whether there was any 
foothold. Meantime we were twisting and 
writhing our bodies among closely set trees, 
never very large, since it was too high in 
air for that, but tough and firmly knit, their 
branches being stunted into a magnificent vigor. 
Their insecurity was in their foothold among 
those mossy rocks: in some cases they had so 
wrenched and griped their roots into the crevices 
as to seem a part of the mountain side, while 
other trees were scarcely more than poised 
upon the rocks, and were wholly unable to bear 
the weight of a man. The brook soon disap- 
peared beneath the rocks, leaving only moisture 
enough for the beautiful slender spikes of the 
northern white orchis (Platanthera dilatata), 
which we afterwards found abundantly through- 
out the watercourses of the ravine. Still we 
descended ; it seemed like slipping cautiously 
down the interminable steeple of a gigantic 
church, on which boulders had somehow stayed 
