270 FRANK FORESTER^ FIELD SPORTS. 
which, to them, savour far more of purgatory than they do of 
paradise,—“ for quiet, to quick bosoms, is a hell,” and theirs 
are quick enough, heaven knows, in W r all-street. It was a hot 
and breathless afternoon—the sun, which had been scourging 
the faint earth all day long with a degree of heat endurable by 
those alone who can laugh at 100° of Fahrenheit, was stooping 
toward the western verge of heaven; but no drop of diamond 
dew had as yet fallen to refresh the innocent flowers, that hung 
their heads like maidens smitten by passionate and ill-requited 
love; no indication of the evening breeze had sent its welcome 
whisper among the motionless and silent tree-tops. Such was 
the season and the hour when, having started, long before Dan 
Phoebus had arisen from his bed, to beat the mountain swales 
about the greenwood lake, and having bagged, by dint of infi¬ 
nite exertion and vast sudor , present alike to dogs and men, our 
thirty couple of good summer Woodcock, Archer and I paused 
on the bald scalp of Round Mountain. 
Crossing a little ridge, we came suddenly upon the loveliest 
and most fairy-looking ghyll —for I must have recourse to a 
north-country word to denote that which lacks a name in any 
other dialect of the Anglo-Norman tongue—I ever looked upon. 
Not, at the most, above twenty yards wide at the brink, nor 
above twelve in depth, it was clothed with a dense rich growth 
of hazel, birch, and juniper; the small rill brawling and spark¬ 
ling in a thousand mimic cataracts over the tiny limestone 
ledges which opposed its progress—a beautiful profusion of 
wild flowers—the tall and vivid spikes of the bright scarlet 
habenaria—the gorgeous yellow cups of the low-growing eno- 
thera—and many gaily-colored creepers decked the green 
marges of the water, or curled, in clustering beauty, over the 
neighbouring coppice.. We followed for a few paces this fan¬ 
tastic cleft, until it widened into a circular recess or cove—the 
summit-level of its waters—whence it dashed headlong, some 
twenty-five or thirty feet, into the chasm below. The floor of 
this small basin was paved with the bare rock, through the very 
midst of which the little stream had worn a channel scarcely a 
