teresting as well as instructive ways, they expected to make their tour a most profitable one.
Some of the boys became quite sober as they saw the grand view of the plateau and valley blotted out after leaving the noon camp. They brightened up after a while, however, since there were dozens of things to draw their attention, and arouse their boyish interest.
Dobbin had all he could do to pull the wagon over the rough road, so full of stones, and so overgrown had it become. Still, Paul noticed as he went along, that those marks of the wheels, and the prints of a horse's hoofs showed, telling that the vehicle occupied by the stranger, whom Joe Clausin seemed to have recognized, must have kept on this way.
They were now surrounded by the very wildest kind of scenery. It looked as though a tremendous convulsion of Nature must have occurred at some remote age; for giant rocks were piled up in great heaps on every hand, many of them covered with creeping vines. Trees grew in crevices, and wherever they could lodge.
"Whew! ain't this the toughest place ever, though?" remarked William, as he gaped around him at the frowning heights, and the little precipices that the road skirted.
"It's just what they told us, though, even if we wouldn't believe what we heard," declared
Wallace, who was deeply interested in the big ferns that cropped up, and dozens of other things most boys would never have noticed.
Several were kept busy snapping off photographs.
"Better go slow with that, fellows," warned Paul; "because we expect to be here ten days or so, and you'll find lots of chances to get action in your pictures, with this grand scenery for a background. And the one whose films run out will wish he'd been more careful. I'd advise that you don't take too many duplicates; because, you see, good pictures can be passed around to all, and the greater variety we have the better."
After that the camera brigade, taking warning, got together, and formed a set of rules that would prevent waste. It was a point worth noting.