The site of the Dove Cote was eminently picturesque. It was an area of level ground, containing, perhaps, two acres, on the summit of a hill that, on one side, overhung the Rockfish river, and on the other rose by a gentle sweep from the champaign country below. This summit might have been as much as two hundred feet above the bed of the stream, and was faced on that side by a bold, rocky precipice, not absolutely perpendicular, but broken into stages or platforms, where grassy mould had accumulated, and where the sweet-brier and the laurel, and clusters of the azalea, shot up in profuse luxuriance. The fissures of the crag had also collected their handful of soil and gave nourishment to struggling vines, and everywhere the ash or pine, and not unfrequently the dogwood, took possession of such spots upon the rocky wall, as these adventurous and cliff-loving trees had found congenial to their nature. The opposite or northern bank of the river had an equal elevation, and jutted forward so near to the other as to leave between them a cleft, which suggested the idea of some sudden abruption of the earth in those early paroxysms that geologists have deemed necessary to account for some of the features of our continent. Below was heard the ceaseless brattle of the waters, as they ran over and amongst the rocks which probably constituted the _debris_ formed in the convulsion that opened this chasm. It was along through this obscure dell that the road, with which my reader is acquainted, found place between the margin of the stream and the foot of the rocks. The general aspect of the country was diversified by high knolls and broken masses of mountain land, and the Dove Cote itself occupied a station sufficiently above the surrounding district to give it a prospect, eastward, of several miles in extent. From this point the eye might trace the valley of the Rockfish, by the abrupt hill-sides that hemmed it in, and by the growth of sombre pines that coated the steeps where nothing else could find a foot-hold. Not far below, in this direction, was to be seen the Fawn's tower, a singular pinnacle of rock, which had acquired its name from the protection it was said to have afforded to a young deer against the assault of the hounds; the hard-pressed animal, as the tradition relates, having gained this insulated point by a bound that baffled the most adventurous of his pursuers, and admiration of the successful boldness of the leap having won from the huntsman the favor that spared his life.