For some distance the road makes a gradual and rather perilous looking descent along the steep and broken slope on the shady side of the ancient river’s great retaining-wall, while that opposite is glorified by the brilliant glow of the afternoon sun, which adds an equal charm to the rich, luxuriant foliage below and the tall stately pines that adorn, without concealing, the grey rock they proudly cling to, or that rises in a protecting rampart three hundred feet higher than the canon bed, with banners of the long-needled pine waving above to proclaim the perfection of Nature’s undisturbed freedom.

The road descending crosses the thread of water still flowing among the great rounded bowlders left by the former torrent, and our view is changed to one of dense, but by no means melancholy, shadows, with a crown of golden sunlight; and presently the course of the canon turns to the east, and it is all filled with the yellow rays and we notice the bright red hawthorn berries, and masses of hydrangea still showing remnants of their late profusion of bloom.  We Missourians have a great love of fine scenery and generally take long journeys into other states in order to gratify the taste, while quite unconscious of the wonderful beauty and grandeur of the Ozarks.

Where the canon begins to broaden into a small sheltered valley as it approaches Eleven Points River, we turned and retraced our way to the forks, and a short distance beyond to a house where we might again inquire.  A woman came to the open door as we stopped and in answer to a question said:  “You ought to have asked me when you passed here a while ago.”

Apologies for the seeming neglect were offered and accepted, then she explained that both roads went to Van Buren but not to Greer Spring, where in due time we at length arrived.

The house being in one corner of a “forty” and the spring in that diagonally opposite, there was a walk of nearly that distance before coming to an old road inclining steeply down into what looked to be a narrow canon.  About midway of this sloping road, the space confined between perpendicular walls, rising to heights above on one side and descending to the stream on the other, widens suddenly and a picturesque old mill comes into view, it having been wholly screened from the approach by the rich growth of shrubs and trees.  Chief in abundance among this luxury of leaf was the hydrangea,—­a favorite shrub largely imported into this country from Japan before it was discovered as a native.  The mill site seems to have been selected for its beauty although we were told that at this point the stream is seventy-two feet wide, and two and one half feet deep, but could be raised thirty feet with perfect safety by a dam, for which the rock is already on the ground and much of it broken ready for use.  The flow is said to be two hundred and eighty yards per minute, with no appreciable variation, and never freezes.  The high walls of the Greer Spring gorge will, of course, far more than double the value it would otherwise possess, when it becomes desirable to control and turn to practical account the power now going so cheerily to waste, but the artistic loss will be proportionately severe.