A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf Author:John Muir Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II CROSSING THE CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS 1HAD climbed but a short distance when I was overtaken by a young man on horseback, who soon showed that he in... more »tended to rob me if he should find the job worth while. After he had inquired where I came from, and where I was going, he offered to carry my bag. I told him that it was so light that I did not feel it at all a burden; but he insisted and coaxed until I allowed him to carry it. As soon as he had gained possession I noticed that he gradually increased his speed, evidently trying to get far enough ahead of me to examine the contents without being observed. But I was too good a walker and runner for him to get far. At a turn of the road, after trotting his horse for about half an hour, and when he thought he was out of sight, I caught him rummaging my poor bag. Finding there only a comb, brush, towel, soap, a change of underclothing, a copy of Burns's poems, Milton's Paradise Lost, and a small New Testament, he waited for me, handed back my bag, and returned down the hill, saying that he had forgotten something. I found splendid growths of shining-leaved Ericacece [heathworts] for which the Alleghany Mountains are noted. Also ferns of which Os- munda cinnamomea [Cinnamon Fern] is the largest and perhaps the most abundant. Os- munda regalis [Flowering Fern] is also common here, but not large. In Wood's and Gray's Botany Osmunda cinnamomea is said to be a much larger fern than Osmunda Clayloniana, This I found to be true in Tennessee and southward, but in Indiana, part of Illinois, and Wisconsin the opposite is true. Found here the beautiful, sensitive Schrankia, or sensitive brier. It is a long, prickly, leguminous vine, with dense heads of small, yellow fragrant flowers. 1 Alphonso Wood, Class-book of Botany, with a F...« less