_Diary_—hauled the material by ox-team. Platt, the stage-driver, boasted of the fact that he was the _first_ man to drive a team to the summit of the then pathless Greylock, led by President Griffin of Williams on horseback, who directed the building of that first observatory. This tower is now replaced by a modern iron structure fifty feet high. [Illustration: =Notch Valley and the Bellows-Pipe, North Adams, Massachusetts. Mount Greylock towers up on the right, and the Ragged Mountains on the left hand.= “_There is a vale which none hath seen,_ _Where foot of man has never been,_ _Such as here lives with toil and strife,_ _An anxious and a sinful life._” THOREAU.] Thoreau collected some “dry sticks, and made a fire on some flat stones” placed on the floor of the observatory for the purpose, and cooked the rice which he had bought in the village, eating it with a wooden spoon whittled out for the occasion. He was up at daybreak the next morning, and he has left a glorious description of sunrise on Greylock, as seen from the tower in the mists.[54] The nights are very chill on these summits, even in July. There are now several log-cabins erected on Greylock for travellers to occupy, with stables for horses and keepers in attendance. The Catskills can be seen to the southwestward from this height. Thoreau set his compass for a lake in the valley to the southwest, and descended the mountain by his own route, on the opposite side to that of his ascent. My companions and I had climbed the slippery glen to where Thoreau commenced his ascent, and a tiny rivulet slipped over the rocks, which had formerly been dimpled with miniature pot-holes. Along the moss-grown banks, above the brook-bed, grew the familiar leaves of the Wild Ginger, while at the very entrance I discovered the Wild Black Currants (_Ribes floridum_), similar in taste and appearance to the cultivated species. The fruit was covered with bristles, and produced a disagreeable odor like that of the Wild Red Currants on the Dome—reminding one of a skunk. At the entrance of Æolian Glen, a long log-like slab of rock lay upon the ground, strangely suggesting a petrified tree. Slowly we descended the western side of the vale, counting no less than twenty-two flowing brooklets, and four sun-dried brook-beds between Æolian Brook, at the head of the Bellows, and Walden Farm below. As we approached the meadows where the Wilbur Farm buildings formerly stood, we found a half-dozen spikes of the Ragged Orchis (_Habenaria lacera_) amid the damp grasses. This species I collected also later in the pastures of Rattlesnake Swamp, and found the pure White-Fringed Orchis along the roadside of Ladd Brook Valley in Pownal. We now arrived at Crystal Spring, where we freshened up before entering the City in the “hollow vale” three miles below.