How much more noble is such courage, how infinitely superior is such a warfare, one which mows down forest trees instead of men, which creates green pastures, broad meadows, and fields of waving grain, instead of smouldering cities, and desolated homes!

I remembered the little meadow on the Rapidan, and the tale told by the grey ashes.

From the western one, the hills rise from the water with a steep acclivity, covered with a gigantic growth of timber, save on the northern side, where a pleasant natural meadow, covered with rank grass and a few spruce and fir trees, stretches away.

There were forests scattered athwart it, and single great trees, and little ridges, too, but at the height where we stood it seemed to the eye to be one verdant meadow as trim and shapely as the lawn of a garden.

Yet no heterogeneous confused flood-deposit, no fertile meadows below.

The tall lilies are brought forward in all their glory by the light of your blazing camp-fire, relieved against the outer darkness, and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies, and the sky seen through the garden opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.

As we got close to the Hot Springs we came across several white-tail in an open, marshy meadow.

And though silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking its place on rock, or tree, or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow finds a voice!

Fording rivers, creeping through underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy beaver-meadows, fighting the awful swarms of mosquitoes, I got through the summer, living on fish, game and berries.

Here and there between the houses, a glimpse might be had of the low country beyond, with its sluggish canal choked with rushes, a dingy windmill here and there, and stretching away on either side the flat meadows crinkling with yellow grain, and the green pastures dotted with huge black-and-white cattle.

Facing us somewhere Spread the sweet meadows.

CHAPTER IV A NEAR VIEW OF THE HIGH SIERRA Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of Mount Lyell, on my way down to Yosemite Valley, to replenish my exhausted store of bread and tea.

And buttercups are coming, And scarlet columbine, And in the sunny meadows The dandelions shine.

This last is native to wet meadows and distinguished enough to have a family all to itself.

Granta greets them, gliding down On by park and spire and town; Humming mills and golden meadows, Barred with elm and poplar shadows; Giant groves, and learned halls; Holy fanes and pictured walls.

But neither these nor the glaciers, nor the bits of brown meadow and moorland that occur here and there, are large enough to make any marked impression upon the mighty wilderness of mountains.

"At the extremity of a retired valley," says Lamartine, "flanked by the walls of the convent, on the margin of extensive meadows, closed by woods, and near to a neighboring stream, there exists an enormous lime-tree, under the shade of which Abélard in his closing days was accustomed to sit and meditate, with his face turned towards the Paraclete which he had built, and where Héloïse still discharged the duties of abbess.

"Oh!" cried Fanny, as they were again walking upon the smooth meadow, in the afternoon, "I think we ought to go and get some apples!"

From the moist meadow to the withered hill, Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs, And swells and deepens to the cherished eye.

Before her was a tiny meadow, as green and smooth as velvet, thick with white and yellow violets.

She lost her senses; and when she awoke and came to herself again, she was in a lovely meadow where the sun was shining and many thousands of flowers were growing.

Here I saw many clayey mounds covering burrows scattered over the ground irregularly both upon the banks of the stream and in the adjacent meadow, even as far as ten yards from the bed of the brook.

sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!" Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!

He did not, however, intend to be overtaken, and he sped on, if possible faster than ever, until there was only a large dried-up, barren meadow between him and the spot where he had tied his canoe on the shore of the lake.

The whole space of 3,000 acres is literally under cultivation, or in a sense which we in New England do not generally give to that termthat is, there is not, I believe, a single acre of permanent meadow in the whole territory.