ORCHID-HUNTING 141 
ina line. The outer ones, like the guard-stars of great 
Altair, were light in color. Between them gleamed, 
like the Eagle Star itself, a flower of deepest rose, an 
unearthly crystalline color, like a rain-drenched 
jacinth. 
Another time, at the crest of a rattlesnake den, I 
found two of these pink pearls of the woods swinging 
above the velvet-black coils of a black timber rattle- 
snake. I picked my way down the mountain-side, 
with Beauty in one hand and Death in the other, as 
I romantically remarked to the unimpressed snake- 
collector who was waiting for me with an open 
gunny-sack. 
Then there was the day in the depths of the 
pine-barrens, where stunted, three-leaved pitch pines 
took the place of the towering, five-leaved white pine 
of the North. The woods looked like a shimmering 
pool of changing greens lapping over a white sand- 
land that had been thrust up from the South into the 
very heart of the North. I followed a winding wood- 
path along the high bank of a stream stained brown 
and steeped sweet with a million cedar-roots. A 
mountain laurel showed like a beautiful ghost against 
the dark water—a glory of white, pink-flecked 
flowers. 
Through dripping branches of withewood and star- 
leaved sweet-gum saplings the path twisted. Sud- 
denly, at the very edge of the bank, out of a mass 
of hollow, crimson-streaked leaves filled with clear 
water, swung two glorious blossoms. Wine-red, aqua- 
marine, pearl-white, and pale gold they gleamed and 
