Our next start--far too speedy, for the day was short--was for Williams Point; but on our way thither we descended into the valley of Shoal Creek, down which, with the creek to keep it company, runs the old mountain road, now disused and practically impassable. Here we hitched the horse, and strolled downwards for perhaps half a mile. I was never in a lovelier spot. The mountain brook, laughing over the stones, is overhung with laurel and rhododendron, which in turn are overhung by precipitous rocks broken into all wild and romantic shapes, with here and there a cavern--"rock-house"--to shelter a score of travelers. The place was rich in ferns and other plants, which, unhappily, I had no time to examine, and all the particulars of which have faded out of my memory. We walked far enough to look over the edge of the mountain, and up to the Signal Point cliffs. If I could have stayed there two or three hours, it would have been a memorable season. As it was, the stroll was enlivened by one little adventure, at which I have laughed too many times ever to forget it. I had been growing rapturous over the beauty of things, when my companion said, "There are some people whom it is no pleasure to take into places like this. They can't keep their eyes off the ground, they are so bitten with the fear of snakes." He was a few paces ahead of me, as he spoke, and the sentence was barely finished before he shouted, "Look at that huge snake!" and sprang forward to snatch up a stone. "Get a stick!" he cried. "Get a stick!" From his manner I took it for granted that the creature was a rattlesnake, and a glance at it, lying motionless among the stones beside the road, did not undeceive me. I turned hurriedly, looking for a stick, but somehow could not find one, and in a moment more was recalled by shouts of "Come and help me! It will get away from us!" It was a question of life and death, I thought, and I ran forward and began throwing stones. "Look out! Look out! You'll bury it!" cried my companion; but just then one of my shots struck the snake squarely in the head. "That's a good one!" exclaimed the other man, and, picking up a dead stick, he thrust it under the disabled creature and tossed it into the road. Then he bent over it, and, with a stone, pounded its head to a jelly. Such a fury as possessed him! He might have been bruising the head of Satan himself, as no doubt he was--in his mind; for my surveyor was also a preacher, as had already transpired. "It isn't a venomous snake, is it?" I ventured to ask, when the work was done. "Oh, I think not," and he pried open its jaws to look for its fangs. "I don't generally kill innocent snakes," I ventured again, a little inopportunely, it must be confessed. "Well, _I_ do," said the preacher. "The very sight of a snake stirs my hatred to its depths."