The Salt Meadows of New Jersey, during August and September, are rolling swales of tall sedges and cat-tail grasses. Later in the season, when the golden-rod and purple asters are frozen and brown, and thrown in heaps upon the ground by the autumn winds, one may see great flocks of geese, and the comical purple grackle—the crow blackbird—flying southward over these desolate lands. A deep, weird solitude surrounds these unfathomable swamps. The foot of man and his bog-hoe as yet have never penetrated their regions, although within hearing of Old Trinity’s chimes. In the Hoosac Valley autumn is a season of glory. Late August produces the gorgeous colored tiger lilies. The swampy meadows in September are brightened with the delicate greenish-white stars of the Grass-of Parnassus (_Parnassia Caroliniana_), first found on that ancient Mount Parnassus in Greece, and described and named by Dioscorides in Christ’s day. Innumerable asters and golden-rod brighten the roadside hedges. In the open clearings of bushy pastures grows the Woolly Moonshine—the “everlasting” of which Thoreau wrote. It is sometimes called Cud-Weed, or Balsam-Weed (_Gnaphalium decurrens_). The Pearly-Everlasting or None-so-Pretty (_Anaphalis margaritacea_) is peculiarly fragrant and beautiful, banked in among the late golden-rods, and the crimson and chrome-colored autumn leaves of sumach and blackberry briars against the dark green pines. I have found these flowers unfolding amid the snows as late as December. Late spikes of Orchids, the Ladies’ Tresses of genus _Gyrostachys_, the Bitter-Buttons or Tansy-Weed (_Tanacetum vulgare_), numerous thistles (_Carduus_), the velvety leaves of St. Peter’s Mullen (_Verbascum Thapsus_), Wormwood (_Artemisia Absinthium_) grow along the roadsides over Mount Œta, while Thimble-Berry blossoms and the Bluebells-of-New-England fill in the waste places of fences and dug-away ledges. When the cooler days of October come, we may look for that blue flower of heaven, the Fringed Gentian (_Gentiana crinita_), along the roadsides near the swamps of Etchowog, modestly and patiently waiting for the autumnal skies of blue: Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean well.[63] So come and fade alike the rarest flowers and the commonest weeds among the Highlands of the Hoosac, the valley of peaceful waters. It is in the deepest and most secluded swamps that the shy orchid blooms, far beyond the realm of lawn or garden. Few indeed realize what a world of beauty and order lies sleeping unsought and unseen in the mossy recesses of our mountains,—a wonderland of discovery to any one who persistently, though reverently, seeks to lure from Nature the secrets of her deep retreats. [Illustration: =The Hoosac River, Pownal, Vermont.=