222 DAYS OUT OF DOOMS. 



would be shut in by mist, and I was all anxious to escape 

 the pent creek's gathering damp. I walked boldly to the 

 cliff and seized whatever projection offered. The pleasure 

 of the stroll had vanished. Progress now meant toil, if 

 not danger. Every promising cranny seemed to shrink as 

 I placed my hand within it ; every jutting corner trembled 

 as I placed my foot upon it. The rock that at first was 

 perpendicular was now overhanging, and at every inch 

 that I progressed the valley receded a foot. To scramble 

 over gravel bluffs at home proved a poor schooling now. 

 Every tree was just beyond my reach, and the half-way 

 ledges, promising a refuge and rest, were but snares, need- 

 ing little more than a hand's weight to send them thun- 

 dering to the creek below. I am yet alive, and why recall 

 a perilous and painful past ? The summit was reached — 

 no matter how — and in due time I stood upon a broad 

 plateau, overlooking miles of wooded valleys and beyond 

 the reach of those threatening rocks, which, in future, I 

 shall contemplate, and leave to others to explore. But if 

 not directly upon rock, I stood upon firm earth. Save a 

 solitary maple, that for years has stood the lone spot's si- 

 lent sentinel, no trees sheltered it from storm or sunshine ; 

 and here, on this bleak, unprotected bluff, Art, not Na- 

 ture, held the upper hand. The transition was indeed 

 startling. 



If it taxes the equanimity of the average person to 

 come suddenly upon even a harmless snake, what shall be 

 said of him who, with head and shoulders at last exulting- 

 ly raised above a beetling cliff, finds himself confronted by 

 a serpent more than a thousand feet in length, and with its 

 huge jaws widely agape ? Yet this is the fortune of him 

 who clambered, at one point, from the Brush Creek Valley 

 to the high ground above. But I speak enigmatically. 

 The serpent is not and has never been alive. It is not 

 even, as the reader may have guessed, some great fossil of 



