e no surface evidences of this once rich treasure of
giant fossils; although occasionally a "find" is made by enterprising
excavators,--several bones having thus been unearthed only a week ago.
They are now on exhibition in the neighboring village, preparatory to
being shipped to an Eastern museum.

As we hurried back over the rolling highway, thunder-clouds grandly
rose out of the west, and great drops of rain gave us moist warning
of the coming storm. W---- was watching us from the cabin door, as we
made the last turning in the road, and, accompanied by the farm-wife
and her two daughters, came tripping down to the landing. She had been
entertained in the one down-stairs room, as royally as these honest
cracker women-folk knew how; seated in the family rocking-chair, she
had heard in those two hours the social gossip of a wide neighborhood;
learned, too, that the cold, wet weather of the last fortnight had
killed turkey-chicks and goslings by the score; heard of the damage
being done to corn and tobacco, by the prevalent high water; was told
how Bess and Brindle fared, off in the rocky pasture which yields
little else than mulleins; and how far back Towser had to go, to claim
relationship to a collie. "And weren't we really show-people, going
down the river this way, in a skiff? or, if we weren't show-people,
had we an agency for something? or, were we only in trade?" It seems a
difficult task to make these people on the bottoms believe that we are
skiffing it for pleasure--it is a sort of pleasure so far removed from
their notions of the fitness of things; and so at last we have given
up trying, and let them think of our pilgrimage what they will.

The entire family now assembled on the muddy bank, and bade us a
really affectionate farewell, as if we had been, in this isolated
corner of the world, most welcome guests who were going all too soon.
In a few strokes of the oars we were rounding the bend; and waving
our hands at the little knot of watchers, went forth from their lives,
doubtless forever.

The storm soon burst upon us in full fury. Clad in rubber, we rested
under giant trees, or beneath projecting rock ledges, taking advantage
of occasional lulls to push on for a few rods to some new shelter. The
numerous little hillside runs which, in our journey up, were but dry
gullies choked with leaves and boulders, were now brimming with muddy
torrents, rushing all foam-flecked and with deafening roar into the
cen