The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1894-10-11
DAYS OF WONDER.
Trip Through a Remarkably Beautiful
and Interesting Region.

scenery and good company. These were
most happily combined in our first trip
through the southeastern part OF High.
land county and the adjacent portions
of Adams and Pike.
Thursday morning, bright and early,
Hon. q. II. Collins and his son Frank,
with Yours Truly as portly and porta-
BILE guest. went out. t.ot this city in fine
style behind pair of Hugh Ervin's
fastest steppers.
The day was clear, cool and bracing-
the very finest Of all the days of the
year.
The companship could not have been
better picked. Our good friend Col
Inns was brimming full of enthusiasm.
information and jolly good fellowship.
If his body was as large as his soul, no
circus tent could hold it. Frank, the
prince of drivers, was properly proud of
his team, and all through the trip saw
that they lacked for nothing horses
heart could wish.
The continually changing panorama
was source of unfailing pleasure.
There was nothing tiresome or monot-
onous about it. Now we gaze across
well-kept fields to some pretty farm
house, with all its happy, thrifty sur.
roundings. Now we look down some
winding, widowed stream, where the
murmuring ripples sing their sweet, low
songs to the nodding grasses. A mo-
ment later we view the broad expanse
of some fertile valley, stretching far
away with its fruitful shocks in measur-
ed ranks like vision of the wigwams
that sheltered here the red legions long
since departed. Now, from some rise,
we look upon picture of marvellous
beauty-spreading farms and winding
streams and wooded hills-and away be.
yond, in the hazy blue, procession OF
stately mountains.
On we go at spirited gait through
the hamlets of Berryville, Belfast and
Loudon.
Here and there some country church.
yard, with it's clean and storied mar.
BILE, tells us of its sainted dead. Hardly
have our lips been stilled in hushed
contemplation until our ears ring with
childish mirth, and the district school is
before us with its kind and pretty school
marm, and it's bright eyed bevy of merry
children. Such are the contrasts ol
life
At last we reach the park of the Ser
pent Mound, owned and kept in it's ex
cellent condition by the ladies of Massa.
chusetts. All honor to these noble
women. What wonder that Daniel
Webster could utter such grand enconi
) ums for Massachusetts,
Entering by a splendid roadway
through the broad gate where no fee il
, taken, we find this large park, all i,
we'll kept and excellent condition. o
!. course our first anxiety is to see tn
mound, the serpent in all its glory, ant
thither we turn our steps.
Talk of snakes Since the days O
Adam and Eve, Moses and Aaron, tn
magicians of Egypt and the shelalah O
. st. Patrick, who ever saw snake lik
: this Has some one captured the ses
serpent and stretched him here, a
covered with weeds and grasses of tn
sea? Surely it could swallow shi
). with those jaws sevety.six across 9
It churn the frightened ocean to
b foam with its body twenty-five fee
n through and more than a quarter of
}, mile in length.
# We mount the monsters neck lik
i. tiny insects and gaze, wonder .strickel
b at its immensity. The great convolution
,. stretch away beyond the brow of tn
3, hill and are lost to sight as they cury
d and coil toward the dizzy precipice.
d this awful serpent climbing from b
G. low? We turn, and looking over IL
4. open jaws, see them ready to spring
the egg, sixty feet in diameter and OF
hundred and twenty. one feet long. B
yond this egg is the gigantic frog, who
le head projects many feet from the rocl
70 cantour of the cliff. and bends it eve
ly lasting gaze on the tumbling waters al
n the green valley hundred feet belo'
t, And what does it all mean?
ye Was this strange, wonderful emban
ID ment thrown up as work of defense
Or Then why the coil of the tail, the CO
r. tour OF the head, the egg and the froi
N Did the builders of this wonder NAL
Id their last refuge and fight behind Il
ID serpent's folds, from which there cou
Id be no escape but death?
1t. Or, was it an object or place of We
o. ship? From the earliest traditions
humanity, the serpent has been a syl
boil of wisdom. The egg speaks of i
to come. The frog, leaping into spat
40 open beyond and unbounded, exec
~ for the rock from which he springs,
sS like the soul that leaves the sord