76 East and West 
hymn, he finds himself upon the very shore of 
the Devonian Sea—that shore which was old 
when the Coal Age began. 
My camp—to return to the present and to 
Onteora—is so hidden among the beeches 
and maples on the slopes of Onteora Moun- 
tain that one might ascend the road and little 
more suspect its presence than that of a 
squirrel’s nest in a tree. Surrounded by a 
thick copse of beech which touch the hem- 
lock slabs and birch railings of the high 
veranda, the house is virtually in the tree 
tops, so that, in looking abroad from the 
windows, one looks down as from a nest, 
upon a world of interlacing branches and 
dancing leaves where magnolia, Black- 
burnian, chestnut and black -throated blue 
warblers peep and pry and flit about, uttering 
their fine lisping notes. 
A chestnut warbler has her nest in the 
underbrush, two feet from the ground and 
entirely concealed by a thick canopy of 
leaves. In a hemlock is the nest of a black- 
throated green and the voice of the male 
cheers me from the tree tops—one of the 
most attractive warbler songs, a quaint, 
woodsy, self-contained little voice, to be as- 
sociated only with hemlock boughs and tree 
