wood (Cornus florida). The lugubrious vociferations of the whip-poor-will; the croaking frogs, chirping crickets, and whoops and halloos of the Indians, broke not disagreeably the silence of a calm and fine evening, in which the thermometer still remained at 70°; and though the scene was not finished in the usual style of rural landscape, yet to me it was peculiarly agreeable, when contrasted with the dull monotony of a gloomy and interminable forest, {128} whose solitude had scarcely ever been cheered by the voices or habitations of men.
9th.] In the forenoon, I proceeded to Mr. Webber's, along the hills of the Dardanelle, which border the right bank of the river, opposite to which, a contiguous ridge and similar cliffs also appear, forming, as it were, a wide chasm traversed by the river. The approach of these hills to either bank, like vast portals, probably originated the name of this place. Walking along the margin of the continued precipice which bordered the river, I observed a brownish animal quickly retreating into its burrow, which in size appeared to be little short of that of a mole. On rolling away a fragment of rock, I succeeded in discovering that the object of my pursuit was an enormous spider, no less than four inches from the extremity of one foot to that of the other, and two inches from head to tail, covered with long brown hair; the eyes six in number and minute, the mouth not discoverable, but in the place of jaws, as in the Monoculi, two of the six pair of feet, of a strong cartilaginous texture, very short and retracted together, each terminated by a simple hooked claw, and internally lined with a row of minute teeth for mastication. In fact, it entirely resembled those gigantic tropical spiders, which we see exhibited in museums.
The rocks, like many others which we had now seen,
