for his sick mother, and lingered chatting with the young ladies until we began to fear that his mother would recover before his return; the coming and going of lean women in shackly wagons to trade at the store; the coming home of the cows, splashing through the stream, hooking right and left, and lowing for the hand of the milker,—­all these interruptions, together with the generally drowsy quiet of the approach of evening, interfered with the study of the Elements.  And when the travelers, after a refreshing rest, went on their way next morning, considering the Elements and the pianos and the refinement, to say nothing of the cuisine, which is not treated of in the text-book referred to, they were content with a bill double that of brother Egger, in his brick magnificence.

The simple truth is, that the traveler in this region must be content to feed on natural beauties.  And it is an unfortunate truth in natural history that the appetite for this sort of diet fails after a time, if the inner man is not supplied with other sort of food.  There is no landscape in the world that is agreeable after two days of rusty-bacon and slack biscuit.

“How lovely this would be,” exclaimed the Professor, if it had a background of beefsteak and coffee!

We were riding along the west fork of the Laurel, distinguished locally as Three Top Creek,—­or, rather, we were riding in it, crossing it thirty-one times within six miles; a charming wood (and water) road, under the shade of fine trees with the rhododendron illuminating the way, gleaming in the forest and reflected in the stream, all the ten miles to Elk Cross Roads, our next destination.  We had heard a great deal about Elk Cross Roads; it was on the map, it was down in the itinerary furnished by a member of the Coast Survey.  We looked forward to it as a sweet place of repose from the noontide heat.  Alas!  Elk Cross Roads is a dirty grocery store, encumbered with dry-goods boxes, fly-blown goods, flies, loafers.  In reply to our inquiry we were told that they had nothing to eat, for us, and not a grain of feed for the horses.  But there was a man a mile farther on, who was well to do and had stores of food,—­old man Tatern would treat us in bang-up style.  The difficulty of getting feed for the horses was chronic all through the journey.  The last corn crop had failed, the new oats and corn had not come in, and the country was literally barren.  We had noticed all along that the hens were taking a vacation, and that chickens were not put forward as an article of diet.

We were unable, when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, to imagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose.  His house is of logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loft accessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney.  The chimney is a huge construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; in fact, the chimney was built first, apparently, and the two rooms were then