West Va. May 1874. a brawling mountain stream full fifty feet below us walled in by hills so steep & high, that the cut through them formed rather a canyon than a valley; add to this a large herd of cows standing up to their knees in the water, a horse laden with two wild unkempt looking W. Va. boys, just emerging from the ford and struggling up the steep bank on the further side & my picture is complete & perhaps a typical one of this whole section of country, But the birds; as the planting days at the getting over streaching through the gaps in the Western divide tinged the floating mists with a beautiful rosy hue, in others when the beams fell more directly threw so strong a light that that smallest insect was disarmable at hundreds of yards distance in the still clear air, the chorus of