The faithful watchman, a modern Eckhart, sits before the entrance of the Western Gateway of Hoosac Mountain, and warns the people against entering through this portal to the greater world that lies beyond. It is as if he wished to guard these children of the marble highlands from the risks attendant upon the wild whirl of life beyond these quiet hills. The sun was setting as I left him, calm but alert, at his post of duty, trimming and lighting his colored lanterns for signals of danger or safety to the approaching trains. Climbing up by the path which passes the little red cottage on the crest of the hill on the north bank of the chasm, I returned leisurely homeward, winding over the hillsides, far above Aurora’s Lake, then down along the borders of the swamp-lands. In the crevices of rock were creeping colonies of the Common Polypody (_Polypodium vulgare_). Along the edges of this bog are still seen the primeval stumps of the pine and hemlock forests, which clothed these hillsides when only the Redmen dwelt and hunted among these wildernesses. In May and early June these decaying stumps are usually draped with Painted Trillium and the delicate vines of Gaultheria and the Creeping Snowberry, while the Arbutus trails about luxuriantly, covering up the ruins of years. [Illustration: =The Western Gateway of Hoosac Mountain, the Entrance to Hoosac Tunnel, North Adams, Massachusetts.=] II Ball Brook and the Bogs of Etchowog Fringing the stream, at every turn Swung low the waving fronds of fern; From stony cleft and mossy sod Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod. WHITTIER, _The Seeking of the Waterfall_. On May 25th I reached Pownal, Bennington County. Upon the following day I explored the great swamps of Etchowog. Prepared with luncheon, vasculum, basket for roots and my hound Major, I started on one of those happy excursions such as Thoreau recommends we should take, “in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.”[2] Ball Brook, a sluggish stream flowing northwardly to East Pownal swamps—commonly called the Bogs of Etchowog—has its source in the marshy hillsides northwest of the schoolhouse in District Fourteen. Two streams flow from this valley. One is called Ladd Brook, running southwesterly and following the windings of the shady Ladd Road to Pownal village, where it joins the Hoosac River. The other stream, Ball Brook, flows north and northeast onward through innumerable and unfathomable swamps, to Bennington village, ten miles north, there meeting the Walloomsac River, which is also a tributary of the Hoosac, farther northward in its course. This brook is rich in a continuous chain of peat bogs—rich from an orchid-hunter’s point of view.