the
hill-tops. I think I got nearer the infernal regions there than I ever
did in any other city in this country. One is fairly suffocated at times
driving along the public highway on a bright, breezy August day. It
might well be the devil's laboratory. Out of such blackening and
blasting fumes comes our civilization. That weapons of war and of
destructiveness should come out of such pits and abysses of hell-fire
seemed fit and natural, but much more comes out of them--much that
suggests the pond-lily rising out of the black slime and muck of the
lake bottoms.

We live in an age of iron and have all we can do to keep the iron from
entering our souls. Our vast industries have their root in the geologic
history of the globe as in no other past age. We delve for our power,
and it is all barbarous and unhandsome. When the coal and oil are all
gone and we come to the surface and above the surface for the white
coal, for the smokeless oil, for the winds and the sunshine, how much
more attractive life will be! Our very minds ought to be cleaner. We may
never hitch our wagons to the stars, but we can hitch them to the
mountain streams, and make the summer breezes lift our burdens. Then the
silver age will displace the iron age.

The western end of Pennsylvania is one vast coal-mine. The farmer has
only to dig into the side of the hill back of his house and take out his
winter's fuel. I was surprised to see how smooth and gentle and grassy
the hills looked. It is a cemetery of the old carboniferous gods, and it
seems to have been prepared by gentle hands and watched over with kindly
care. Good crops of hay and grain were growing above their black
remains, and rural life seemed to go on in the usual way. The shuffling
and the deformation of the earth's surface which attended the laying
down of the coal-beds is not anywhere evident. The hand of that
wonderful husbandman, Father Time, has smoothed it all out.

Our first camp was at Greensborough, thirty or more miles southeast of
Pittsburgh, an ideal place--a large, open oak grove on a gentle eminence
well carpeted with grass, with wood and water in abundance. But the
night was chilly. Folding camp-cots are poor conservers of one's bodily
warmth, and until you get the hang of them and equip yourself with
plenty of blankets, Sleep enters your tent very reluctantly. She
tarried with me but briefly, and at three or four in the morning I got
up, replenished the fire, and in a camp-