3S6 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



could only guess its course by the bright, glistening eye 

 which here and there blinked between the trees and stones 

 — now it came yelling and skirling and clamoring down 

 the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full of gibber- 

 ing, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering and 

 yammering and prophesying and hooting at what you were 

 going to do if you attempted to cross. 



5. As the bridge was two miles below, and there was 

 this continual uncertainty at the ford, I determined to 

 build a hunter's hut, where we might lodge for the night 

 when it was impossible to cross the water. There is a high 

 and beautiful crag at the crook of the river, near the "Lit- 

 tle Eas " — a precipice eighty feet in height, and then, like a 

 vast stone helmet, crowned with a feathery plume of wood, 

 which nodded over its brow. From its toj> you might drop 

 a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is an 

 accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels 

 firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is 

 a descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the 

 summit of the rock there is, or there was — my blessing 

 upon it ! — a thick and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung 

 over the crag, and whose pendent branches, taking root on 

 the edge of the steep, shot up again like the banyan, and 

 formed a natural arbor and close trellis along the margin 

 of the precipice. 



0. Behind its little gallery there is a mighty holly, un- 

 der which the snow rarely lies in winter, or the rain drops 

 in summer. Beneath the shelter of this tree, and within 

 the bank at its foot, I dug a little cell, large enough to 

 hold two beds, a beach, a hearth, a table, and a "kistie." 

 The sides were lined with deals well calked with moss, and 

 the roof was constructed in the same manner, but covered 

 with a tarpaulin, which, lying in the slojje of the sur- 

 rounding bank, carried off any water which might descend 

 from thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off 



