On July 19th I drove beyond the Bogs of Etchowog, over a portion of the Hill Road toward Bennington. As I passed the Elijah Mason Farm, I turned my horse’s head through the cow-pastures to the east. In a swamp to the left of the grassy wood-road, I collected scattered Pogonias and Limodorums, although the season was late for them. Still farther eastward are impenetrable swamps, through which Ball Brook flows northward to the Walloomsac near Bennington. The road led around to another swamp farther eastward, toward which I drove. It was one of those wild regions, tangled with tamarack, balsam-firs, high-huckleberry trees, amid the peat and sphagnum. The green spires of tamarack and fir swayed in billowy waves as the wind breathed through these vales; and the sunshine drew forth the fragrance of pitch and balsamic resins from the blistered bark of these young trees. I fastened my horse to a pine tree, and penetrated the depths of this swamp as far as I dared, along a moss-grown brook bed leading from a spring toward the interior. The heart of this region was impenetrable. The pioneers, settling along the valley of Ball Brook, chose in Revolutionary days this heavily timbered region, in preference to the lower swamps of the deeper vales of the Hoosac. It has proven to be the coldest, most desolate, and barren soil for corn and grains,—the most productive crops here being stumps and boulders! Shad-bushes and the high-huckleberry bushes were laden with berries. I stood upon a log and ate of them for some time, meanwhile listening to the choruses of locusts and numerous thrushes, screaming jays, young crows, and whistling hawks. Many distant sounds came whispering to me from out this wild solitude of Nature. The mystery of wild wood isolation, in the presence of the scars of ages, took possession of me, and filled me with a nameless fear. I gave vent to a wild howl in order to relieve the tensity and portentousness of the situation. It was a damp, mossy place, such as bears, lynxes, and wild cats choose in which to nap during the day, being located in their run from the Petersburgh Hills to the Dome of the Green Mountains eastward, above. As Thoreau described one of the Maine woods swamps: “It was ready to echo the growl of a bear, the howl of a wolf, or the scream of a panther; but when you get fairly into the middle of one of these grim forests, you are surprised to find that the larger inhabitants are not at home commonly, but have left only a puny red squirrel to bark at you. Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.”[50] I ventured on farther east, until I came to the true spring of the swamp. Every swampy region reveals innumerable springs, and this swamp was no exception. Many were oozing through the carpets of moss. Around such fountains I searched for the familiar leaves of Moccasin-Flowers without success.