Everywhere was a soft, fresh, bright green.

The old gray cliffs were festooned with ferns, lichens and moss.

Under a great, shelving rock, damp and stained by the copper-colored water dripping down its side, was a dewy dell into which the sunshine had never peeped.

Here the swift brook tarried lovingly, making a wide turn under the cliff, as though loth to leave this quiet nook, and then leaped once more to enthusiasm in its murmuring flight.
Life abounded in this wild, beautiful, almost inaccessible spot.
Little brown and yellow birds flitted among the trees; thrushes ran along the leaf-strewn ground; orioles sang their melancholy notes; robins and flickers darted beneath the spreading branches.

Squirrels scurried over the leaves like little whirlwinds, and leaped daringly from the swinging branches or barked noisily from woody perches.
Rabbits hopped inquisitively here and there while nibbling at the tender shoots of sassafras and laurel.
Along this flower-skirted stream a tall young man, carrying a rifle cautiously stepped, peering into the branches overhead.