The path below this point swung over to the side of a rushing brook, and they began to enter a region where the lumbermen had been, stripping the forest down to bare soil and leaving behind dry, ugly slash. The path grew steeper every moment. The brook went down the mountain in a series of cascades, one after the other, and at almost every waterfall the path beside it dropped almost as steeply. In some places there were rough ladders to descend by. At other places you simply had to swing over a root and drop, often landing in soft, wet leaf-mould, and sinking up to the ankles. “Steep? Well, I should smile!” said Peanut. “Say, fellers, don’t you wish we were going up instead of down?” “Can’t say I do,” Frank answered. “I don’t see how anybody does get up here, ’specially with a heavy pack. Wasn’t this path ever better than this?” “It must have been once. The water has washed it,” the Scout Master replied. Just then they came to a six foot drop, and Frank took it first. He unslung his camera at the bottom, and snapped the rest as they came tumbling after him. “That’ll prove we had some steep work, all right,” he said. “I believe if my pants were stronger, I’d just sit down and slide the rest of the way,” Peanut laughed. But such steep descents have one great advantage--they get you down quickly. Almost before the boys realized that they were at the bottom, they found themselves walking along a level wood road, and it seemed suddenly very still. “It’s the brook--we don’t hear the water falling any more,” said Art. They came out quickly upon the highway--or so much of a highway as ran through this tiny notch. It was hardly more than a wood road. They turned to the left, as their friend on Moosilauke had advised, and in a moment came into a grassy clearing, with the ruins of an old logging camp at one side. This was Beaver Meadow. To the left, the steep wall of Moosilauke leapt up, and they could see the course of Beaver Brook, beside which they had descended, the white of its waterfalls flashing here and there in the sun. To the right was Wildcat Mountain, really a foot-hill of Kinsman. The meadow itself was very green, and the road went through the middle of it. At the western end, it narrowed to perhaps a hundred feet in width, and here a little brook flowed out, beside the road, and on either side they saw the remains of a dam, perhaps three or four feet high, quite grown over with grass and bushes. “The beaver dam!” cried Art. “They just cut down the trees on each side, and let them fall over the brook, and then plastered ’em up with mud, eh? My, but they are smart!” “Did they clear all the trees out of this meadow, too?” asked Frank. “They didn’t have to do that,” the Scout Master replied. “Once they had the brook dammed back the water killed the trees--killed ’em so thoroughly that this meadow has remained open long after the beavers have vanished, and their dam has been broken open by the road.”