Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/48

 high pasture, and finally plunged into a thick second growth forest, where the dew on the branches soaked everybody, but particularly Peanut, who was leading and got the first of it. The path crossed the brook several times on old corduroy log bridges, now nearly rotted away, and grew constantly steeper. The boys were panting a bit. They hadn't got their mountain wind yet. After two miles, during which, but for the steepness, they might have been leagues from any mountain for all they could see, they began to hear a roaring in the woods above them. They hastened on, and suddenly, right ahead, they saw a smooth, inclined plane of rock, thirty or forty feet long, with the water slipping down over it like running glass, and above it they saw a sheer precipice sixty feet high, with a V-shaped cut in the centre. Through the bottom of this V the brook came pouring, and tumbled headlong to the ledge below.

"Up we go!" cried Peanut, tackling the smooth sloping ledge at a dry strip on the side. He got a few feet, and began to slip back.

The rest laughed, and tackled the slide at various spots. Only the Scout Master, with a grin, went way to the right and climbed easily up by a hidden path on the side ledge. He got to the base of the falls before the boys did.

"A picture, a picture!" cried Frank, as the rest