“It’s a wild place, I understand. Have you been there lately?”
“Not since last May, and then I caught the finest string of trout there I ever saw.”
“Well,” continued the officer, “there’s one place in the ravine through which the brook runs, that bears a striking resemblance, in everything except grandeur and extent, to a famous valley somewhere out West, and when some of the academy boys were botanizing there, a few years ago, they named it the Little Yosemite.”
“I know right where it is,” said George.
“Then take us there by the quickest and shortest route.”
George closed the door of the cabin, mounted the horse that had been provided for him, and led the way around the head of the lake.
The shortest route to the place they wanted to find was a long one, and a rough one too; and, for almost the entire distance, it led through a thick wood, where every step of the way was obstructed by bushes and fallen logs, which were piled upon and across one another in every conceivable shape.
After two hours of slow and laborious riding, George dismounted, pushed aside the bushes, and gave his companions their first view of the Little Yosemite. Dungan Brook they could not see. It was so far below them that the ripple of its waters could be but faintly heard.
“As long as I have lived in this county I never knew before that it could boast of scenery like this,” said the sheriff, as he drew back from the edge of the gulf, after trying in vain to see the bottom of it. “How are we going to get down there?”
“Hitch your horses, and I will see if I can find the path I cut the last time I was here,” said George. “Here it is now, and, I declare, it looks as though it had been used,” he added, in a tone of surprise.