pound. As for the wild fish, we were informed by a sharp boy who
volunteered to show us the chalybeate spring, and who guided us
through the woods barefoot, making himself ill with "sarvice" berries
as he went,--we were instructed by this naturalist that the trout were
eaten away from the streams "by the alligators." This we regarded as a
sun-myth, or some other form of aboriginal superstition, until we were
informed by several of the gravest and most trustworthy gentlemen of
several different localities on the mountains that there really is
a creature infesting these streams supposed by them to be a young
alligator, reaching a length of twelve inches, and doubtless
subsisting on fish. An alligator as a mountain-reptile had not entered
into our conception: can these voracious saurians, playing in the
alpine affluents of the Mississippi, possibly be identical with the
vast and ugly beasts of the lower bayous and the Gulf? We leave the
identification for some reptile-loving philosopher.

[Illustration: CHEAT RIVER VALLEY AND MOUNTAINS.]

Descending the western slope of the mountains, we prick up our
attention, although the grade is gradual and easy. We know that we are
coming to the crowning glory of the ride, the region celebrated for
its more than Arcadian beauty, and consecrated by the earliest glories
of our war--by the mountain Iliad of McClellan, the initial action at
Philippi, and the prompt trampling out of West Virginia secession
by the victories of Cheat River. This tameless, mountain-lapped,
hemlock-tinted river had long been our fancied cynosure. "Each mortal
has his Carcassonne," said, after a French poet, the late lamented
John R. Thompson, using the term for what is long desired and never
attained; and Mr. Matthew Arnold, in writing of a "French Eton," says,
"Whatever you miss, do not miss seeing Carcassonne." As Carcassonne