woods, and I will prove it to you,—aye, in March. The turf in the flat or hollow places is soaked with water, like a sponge, and if you do not step carefully you will press it out over your shoe-tops; but, by dint of quick eyes and agile movement, you will escape any serious mishaps. Climbing over logs, jumping weather ditches, and crossing creeks furnishes the necessary excitement and exercise by which you keep off a chill; for if you were to sit down to summer reveries at this time of year, the doctor would be in requisition directly.
Here we are at last, at the very foot of the mountain; and what does this forest recess furnish us? What magnificent great trees! Fir, cedar, and here and there along this little creek a yew, a maple, or an alder. Hardly a ray of sunshine ever penetrates this green and purple gloom. Spring and fall, winter and summer, are much the same here,—a difference only of water. In summer the creek is within bounds, and you can lie on the mosses, if you feel disposed. "What! lie on the mosses, every one of which seems such a marvel of beauty? What a wonderful, what a charming spot! I never, in all my life——!"
No, of course you never saw anything like it. This is the only country out of the tropics where vegetation has such a remarkable growth. Here are a dozen kinds of elegant green mosses in a group, to say nothing of the tiny gray and brown and yellow varieties with which we have always been familiar, besides lichens innumerable. Observe those fallen trees. Their immense trunks are swathed in elegant blankets of emerald brightness. See here, I can tear them off by the yard,—enough on one tree to carpet a room! Look at the pendent moss,—two feet long at least,—and what a vivid yellow green!
Just step up a little higher: I will show you a wonder. Did you ever dream of anything so marvellous as that bank of moss? Six inches high, branching like a fern, yet fine and delicate as that on the calyx of a moss-rose. Here is enough, if preserved, to furnish all the French flower-makers; and glad would they be to get it. And ferns,—yes, indeed! Just look at this maidenhair. It is of every size, from the delicate plant three inches high to the mature one of fifteen or eighteen inches. And here are some that have stood all winter in their autumn
