The things we do!

Thus, at first sight,
one set down in the valley might have felt that it had neither
inlet nor outlet, but had been created, panoplied and peopled by
some Titanic power, and owned by those who neither knew nor desired
any other world. As a matter of fact, the road up through the
lower Ozarks from the great Mississippi, which entered along the
bed of the little stream, ended at Tallwoods farm. Beyond it,
along the little river which led back into the remote hills, it was
no more than a horse path, and used rarely except by negroes or
whites in hunting expeditions back into the mountains, where the
deer, the wild turkey, the bear and the panther still roamed in
considerable numbers at no great distance from the home plantation.
Tallwoods itself needed no other fence than the vast wall of hills,
and had none save where here and there the native stone had been
heaped up roughly into walls, along some orchard side. The fruits
of the apple, the pear and the peach grew here handsomely, and the
original owner had planted such trees in abundance.


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