, even though only the leading
characters in this chorus of forty songsters have been described, and
only a small portion of the venerable old woods explored. In a
secluded swampy corner of the old Barkpeeling, where I find the great
purple orchis in bloom, and where the foot of man or beast seems never
to have trod, I linger long, contemplating the wonderful display of
lichens and mosses that overrun both the smaller and the larger
growths. Every bush and branch and sprig is dressed up in the most
rich and fantastic of liveries; and, crowning all, the long bearded
moss festoons the branches or sways gracefully from the limbs. Every
twig looks a century old, though green leaves tip the end of it. A
young yellow birch has a venerable, patriarchal look, and seems ill at
ease under such premature honors. A decayed hemlock is draped as if by
hands for some solemn festival.

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and
stillness of twilight com upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest
hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the
deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of
sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint
types and symbols. 1865.

III

THE ADIRONDACKS

When I went to the Adirondacks, which was in the summer of 1863, I was
in the first flush of my ornithological studies, and was curious,
above else, to know what birds I should find in these solitudes,--what
new ones, and what ones already known to me.

In visiting vast primitive, far-off woods one naturally expects to
find something rare and precious, or something entirely new, but it
commonly happens that one is disappointed. Thoreau made three
excursions into the Maine woods, and, though he started the moose and
the caribou, had nothing more novel to report by way of bird notes
than the songs of the wood thrush and the pewee. This was about my own
experience in the Adirondacks. The birds for the most part prefer the
vicinity of settlements and clearings, and it was at such places that
I saw the greatest number and variety.

At the clearing of an old hunter and pioneer by the name of Hewett,
where we paused a couple of days on first entering the woods, I saw
many old friends and made some new acquaintances. The snowbird was
very abundant here, as it had been at various points along the route
after leaving Lake George. As I went out to the spring in the morning
t