ah. The solitude of
mountain-tops is peculiarly impressive, and it is certainly easier
to believe the Deity appeared in a burning bush there than in the
valley below. When the clouds of heaven, too, come down and envelop
the top of the mountain,--how such a circumstance must have
impressed the old God-fearing Hebrews! Moses knew well how to
surround the law with the pomp and circumstance that would inspire
the deepest awe and reverence.

But when the clouds came down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain,
the grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the
portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet
us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and
humdrum the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we
looked from under it as from under a just-raised lid, and the eye
plunged again like an escaped bird into those vast gulfs of space
that opened at our feet, the feeling of grandeur and solemnity
quickly came back.

The first want we felt on the top of Slide, after we had got some
rest, was a want of water. Several of us cast about, right and left,
but no sign of water was found. But water must be had, so we all
started off deliberately to hunt it up. We had not gone many hundred
yards before we chanced upon an ice-cave beneath some rocks,--vast
masses of ice, with crystal pools of water near. This was good luck,
indeed, and put a new and a brighter face on the situation.

Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which no other mountain in the
State, so far as is known, does,--it has a thrush peculiar to
itself. This thrush was discovered and described by Eugene P.
Bicknell, of New York, in 1880, and has been named Bicknell's
thrush. A better name would have been Slide Mountain thrush, as the
bird so far has been found only on this mountain.[1] I did not see
or hear it upon the Wittenberg, which is only a few miles distant,
and only two hundred feet lower. In its appearance to the eye among
the trees, one would not distinguish it from the gray-cheeked thrush
of Baird, or the olive-backed thrush, but its song is totally
different. The moment I heard it I said, "There is a new bird, a new
thrush," for the quality of all thrush songs is the same. A moment
more, and I knew it was Bicknell's thrush. The song is in a minor
key, finer, more attenuated, and more under the breath than that of
any other thrush. It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a
delicate, slender, golden