f a fossil shell are preserved in the coarse
matrix of a stony paste. In this way the nodule connects itself with
my emotional life, and recalls the incidents of this sketch.

We were journeying over the mountains in the autumn of 1869. Our camp
was pitched in a valley of the ascending ridges of the Cumberland
range, on the south-east border of Kentucky. At this point the
interior valley forms the letter J, the road following the bend, and
ascending at the foot of the perpendicular.

It is nearly an hour since sunset, but the twilight still lingers in
softened radiance, mellowing the mountain-scenery. The camp-wagons
are drawn up on a low pebbly shelf at the foot of the hills, and the
kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring
branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow
river fretting over shoals. The road we have followed hangs like
a rope-ladder from the top of the hills, sagging down in the
irregularities till it reaches the river-bed, where it flies apart in
strands of sand. The twilight leans upon the opposite ridge, painting
its undulations in inconceivably delicate shades of subdued color.
Although the night is coming on, the clear-obscure of that dusk, like
a limpid pool, reveals all beneath. A road ascending the southern hill
cuts through a loamy crust a yellow line, which creeps upward, winding
in and out, till nothing is seen of it but a break in the trees set
clear against the sky. No art of engineer wrought these graceful
bends: it is a wild mountain-pass, followed by the unwieldy buffalo in
search of pasturage. Beyond, the mountain rises again precipitously, a
ragged tree clinging here and there to the craggy shelves. Around and
through the foliage, like a ribbon, the road winds to the top. A blue
vapor covers it and the hills melting softly in the distance. At the
base of the hills a little river winds and bends to the west through
a low fertile bottom, the stem of the J, which is perhaps a mile in
width. It turns again, its course marked by a growth of low water-oaks
and beeches, following the irregular fold in the hills which has been
described.

Leaning against the bluffs hard by the camp is a low white cottage,
with its paddock and pinfold, and the cattle are coming up, with bells
toning irregularly as they feed and loiter on the way. The supper-horn
sends forth a hoarse but mellow fugue in swells and cadences from the
farm-house. Over all this sw