who might be too
curious regarding the object of their journey.

The second week of August had half elapsed when, towards the evening of
a day that had been distinguished for the exhilarating freshness of the
atmosphere, such as is peculiar to the highlands of southern latitudes
at this season, our travellers found themselves descending through a
long and shady defile to the level ground that lay along the margin of
the Broad river. The greater part of the day had been spent in threading
the mazes of a series of sharp and abrupt hills covered with the native
forest, or winding through narrow valleys, amongst tangled thickets of
briers and copse-wood, by a path scarce wide enough to permit the
passage of a single horse. They had now emerged from the wilderness upon
a public highway, which extended across the strip of lowland that
skirted the river. The proximity of the river itself was indicated by
the nature of the ground, that here retained vestiges of occasional
inundations, as also by the rank character of the vegetation. The road
led through a swamp, which was rendered passable by a causey of timber,
and was shaded on either side by a mass of shrubbery, composed of
laurel, magnolia, and such other plants as delight in a moist soil, over
whose forms a tissue of creeping plants was woven in such profusion as
to form a fastness or impregnable retreat for all kinds of noxious
animals. Above this wilderness, here and there, might be seen in the
depths of the morass, the robust cypress or the lurid pine, high enough
for the mast of the largest ship, the ash, and gum, and, towering above
all, the majestic poplar, with its branchless trunk bound up in the
embraces of a huge serpent-like grapevine.

As soon as Butler found himself extricated from the difficult path that
had so much embarrassed his journey, and once more introduced upon a
road that allowed him to ride abreast with his companion, he could not
help congratulating himself upon the change.

"Well, here at last, Galbraith," he said, "is an end to this bridle
path, as you call it. Thank heaven for it! The settlement of the
account between this and the plain road would not leave much in our
favor: on one side, I should have to set down my being twice unhorsed in
riding up perpendicular hills; one plunge up to the belly in the mud of
a swamp; a dozen times in danger of strangling from grapevines; and how
often torn by briers, I leave you to reckon up by looking at