TOPOGRAPHY OF COOS COUNTY. 21/ 



tread, while the rays of the sun, shining through the thick foliage, give 

 a genial light, and the fresh green moss covers even the fallen trunks of 

 the trees, as if to conceal every sign of decay ; — and here, where a stream 

 trickles over its mossy bed, one is carried away in elysian dreams, and 

 forgets all else save that some enchantment binds him here. But to-mor- 

 row we become entangled in the undergrowth and shrubs, in what seems 

 to be an illimitable morass ; while the gently descending rain adheres to 

 eveiy spray of the foliage, and every touch brings down an additional 

 shower to add to our discomfiture, until every thread of our apparel is 

 saturated. As we struggle on through the underbrush and tangled 

 ferns, we become bewildered as to our course, and our compass shows us 

 that we are travelling in a direction exactly opposite to that we wished to 

 go ; and we conclude that this is certainly studying geology under difficul- 

 ties. To-day we traverse a section where not a single rock is to be seen 

 in place : to-morrow ledges that excite the liveliest interest crop out on 

 every hillside. To-day the vision is circumscribed within the narrowest 

 limits: to-morrow we ascend some lofty mountain, where the view is 

 unobstructed, and where the undulations of the forests, as they stretch 

 out in the far distance, seem like vast waves of the ocean ; and nothing 

 is more pleasing than to watch the shadows of the fleeting clouds as they 

 pass over these miles of forests. To-day we see only the straight shafts 

 of the spruce and fir: to-morrow the trees are varied, and along our 

 pathway are plants of rare beauty, — orchids, — that would attract the 

 attention of the most careless observer. To-day we see no sign of 

 animal life, and the songs of birds, even, break not the stillness of these 

 deep solitudes : to-morrow we may be carried away in ecstacies of delight 

 as the song of the hermit thrush greets the ear, or we wonder at the 

 extraordinary volume of song that the little winter wren pours forth ; and, 

 as we see its diminutive size, we mark the force of the comparison of 

 the Indian who said that, if he had strength in proportion as this bird has 

 power of song, he could move the world ; — and it would not be strange if, 

 in our travels through the woods, we should meet a deer or see a moose. 

 To-day the cool breezes drive every insect from the air: to-morrow, in 

 the dense forests, the mosquitoes are in perfect swarms, and their attacks 

 drive one almost frantic. In the openings, where the mosquitoes cannot 

 endure the sun, the black flies are sure not to be wanting. The very air 

 VOL. I. 30 



