That same afternoon our party climbed the mountain by an old bridle-path, arriving just before sunset at a place admirably suited for a camp. Two steep ridges, descending from the main mountain top, hold between them the channel of a sparkling brook. Its water is crystal in clearness and icy cold. The wood, principally beech, is green with casings of moss, and the cold rocks in the brook’s bed and on the slopes above it are covered with a like growth. Where the trail enters the water the ground is level on one bank, and here we decided to kindle our fire, and, as the air was quite chilly, bearing indications of a storm, to erect a light shelter. Dry leaves and twigs make excellent tinder for a flint’s spark to settle and blaze in, and enough seasoned logs, bark, and limbs always lie scattered through this forest to afford campfires. Our’s was soon flaming. The loosened bark of a fallen beech furnished us the material for the roof and sides of a shelter, which we built up on four forked limbs driven into the ground and covered with long poles. It was secured against wind assaults by braces. Near where we encamped, and below on the Beech Flats, stand trees as stately and magnificent as any ever touched by woodman’s ax. We noticed several cherries measuring four and a half feet through, and towering, straight as masts, 70 feet before shooting out a limb; poplars as erect and tall to their lower branches and of still greater diameter; chestnuts from 15 to 33 feet in circumference, and thousands of sound, lofty linns, ashes, buckeyes, oaks, and sugar maples. A few hemlocks considerably exceed 100 feet in height. A tree called the wahoo, grows here as well as on many of the ranges. It bears a white lily-shaped flower in the summer. Numerous cucumber trees are scattered on the slopes. These with the beech, water birch, black birch or mountain mahogany, black gum, red maple, and hickory, form the forests from the mountain bases to the line of the balsams. On the Beech Flats there is no underbrush, except where the rhododendron hedges the purling streams. In places the plain path, the stately trees, and the level or sloping ground, covered only with the mouldering leaves of autumn, form parks more magnificent than those kept in trim by other hands than nature’s. The best hounds, known as the “leaders,” were fastened to poles stuck in the ground at the corners of our lodge. This was done to prevent them starting off during the night on the trail of a wolf, raccoon, or wildcat, thereby exhausting themselves for the contemplated bear hunt. The rest of the pack were either standing around, looking absently into the fire, or had already stretched themselves out in close proximity to it. “The way them curs crawl up to the blaze,” said Wid Medford, “is a shore sign thet hits goin’ ter be cold nuff ter snow afore mornin’.”