ington, is marked by great
diversity of scenery. Flowing in a deep valley, which now and then
becomes a wild gorge with overhanging rocks and high precipitous
headlands, for the most part wooded; here reposing in long, dark
reaches, there sweeping and hurrying around a sudden bend or over a
rocky bed; receiving at short intervals small runs and spring
rivulets, which open up vistas and outlooks to the right and left, of
the most charming description,--Rock Creek has an abundance of all the
elements that make up not only pleasing but wild and rugged scenery.
There is perhaps, not another city in the Union that has on its very
threshold so much natural beauty and grandeur, such as men seek for in
remote forests and mountains. A few touches of art would convert this
whole region, extending from Georgetown to what is known as Crystal
Springs, not more than two miles from the present State Department,
into a park unequaled by anything in the world. There are passages
between these two points as wild and savage, and apparently as remote
from civilization, as anything one meets with in the mountain sources
of the Hudson or the Delaware.

One of the tributaries to Rock Creek within this limit is called Piny
Branch. It is a small, noisy brook, flowing through a valley of great
natural beauty and picturesqueness, shaded nearly all the way by woods
of oak, chestnut, and beech, and abounding in dark recesses and hidden
retreats.

I must not forget to mention the many springs with which this whole
region is supplied, each the centre of some wild nook, perhaps the
head of a little valley one or two hundred yards long, through which
one catches a glimpse, or hears the voice, of the main creek rushing
along below.

My walks tend in this direction more frequently than in any other.
Here the boys go, too, troops of them, of a Sunday, to bathe and prowl
around, and indulge the semi-barbarous instincts that still lurk
within them. Life, in all its forms, is most abundant near water. The
rank vegetation nurtures the insects, and the insects draw the birds.
The first week in March, on some southern slope where the sunshine
lies warm and long, I usually find the hepatica in bloom, though with
scarcely an inch of stalk. In the spring runs, the skunk cabbage
pushes its pike up through the mould, the flower appearing first, as
if Nature had made a mistake.

It is not till about the 1st of April that many wild flowers may be
looked for. By