resort only), and always found it pleasant. In winter it wasn't so cold there as down below; at any rate, it didn't feel so cold,—which is the main thing, of course. Sometimes when she went to the city, it seemed as if she should freeze, although she hadn't thought of its being cold before she left home. It is one form of patriotism, I suppose,—parochial patriotism, perhaps we may call it,—that makes us stand up pretty stoutly for our own dwelling-place before strangers, however we may grumble against it among ourselves. In the present instance, however, no such qualifying explanation seemed necessary. In general, I was quite prepared to believe that life on a mountain top, in a cottage in a grove, would be found every whit as agreeable as my hostess pictured it.

The rain slackened after a while, though it was long in ceasing altogether, and I went to the nearest railway station (Sunset Station, I believe) and waited half an hour for a train to the Point, chatting meanwhile with the young man in charge of the relic-counter. Then, at the Point, I waited again—this time to enjoy the prospect and see how the weather would turn—till a train passed on "the broad gauge" below. Just beyond Fort Cloud it ran into a fine old forest, and a sudden notion took me to go straight down through the woods and spend the rest of the day rambling in that direction. The weather had still a dubious aspect, but, with motive enough, some things can be trusted to Providence, and, the steepness of the descent accelerating my pace, I was soon on the sleepers, after which it was but a little way into the woods. Once there, I quickly forgot everything else at the sound of a new song. But was it new? It bore some resemblance to the ascending scale of the blue yellow-back, and might be the freak of some individual of that species. I stood still, and in another minute the singer came near and sang under my eye; the very bird I had been hoping for,—a cerulean warbler in full dress; as Dr. Coues says, "a perfect little beauty." He continued in sight, feeding in rather low branches,—an exception to his usual habit, I have since found,—and sang many times over. His complaisance was a piece of high good fortune, for I saw no second specimen. The strain opens with two pairs of notes on the same pitch, and concludes with an upward run much like the blue yellow-back's, or perhaps midway between that and the prairie warbler's. So I heard it, I mean to say. But everything depends upon the ear. Audubon speaks of it as "extremely sweet and mellow" (the last a surprising word), while Mr. Ridgway is quoted as saying that the bird possesses "only the most feeble notes."

The woods of themselves were well worth a visit: extremely open, with broad barren spaces; the trees tall, largely oak,—chestnut oak, especially,—but with chestnut, hickory, tupelo, and other trees intermingled. Here, as afterward on Walden's Ridge, I was struck with the almost total absence of mosses, and the dry, stony character of the soil,—a novel and not altogether pleasing feature in the eyes of a man accustomed to the mountain forests of New England, where mosses cover every boulder, stump, and fallen log, while the feet sink into sphagnum as into the softest of carpets.

Comfortable lounging-places continually invited me to linger, and at last I sat down under a chestnut oak, with a big broken-barked tupelo directly before me. Over the top of a neighboring boulder a lizard leaned in a praying attitude and gazed upon the intruder. Once in a while some loud-voiced tree-frog, as I suppose, uttered a grating cry. A blue-gray gnatcatcher was complaining,—snarling, I might have said; a red-eye, an indigo-bird, a field sparrow, and a Carolina wren took turns in singing; and a sudden chat threw himself into the air, quite unannounced, and, with ludicrous teetering motions, flew into the tupelo and eyed me saucily. A few minutes later, a single cicada (seventeen-year locust) followed him. With my glass I could see its monstrous red eyes and the orange edge of its wing. It kept silence; but without a moment's cessation the musical hum of distant millions like it filled the air,—a noise inconceivable.

I would gladly have sat longer, as I would gladly have gone much farther into the woods, for I had seen none more attractive; but a rumbling of thunder, a rapid blackening of the sky, and a recollection of the forenoon's deluge warned me to turn back. And now, for the first time, although I had been living within sound of locusts for a week or more, I suddenly came to trees in which they were congregated. The branches were full of them. Heard thus near, the sound was no longer melodious, but harsh and shrill.

It seemed cruel that my last day on Lookout Mountain should be so broken up, and so abruptly and unseasonably concluded, but so the Fates willed it. My retreat became a rout, and of the remainder of the road I remember only the hurry and the warmth, and two pleasant things,—a few wild roses, and the scent of a grapevine in bloom; two things so sweet and homelike that they could be caught and retained by a man on the run.