Beech trees, growing close in clanny groups, spread their straight limbs gracefully; the white birches gleamed like silver wherever a stray sunbeam stole through the foliage, and the oaks, monarchs of the forest, rose over all, dark, rugged, and kingly.
Joe soon understood why the party traveled through such open forest.
The chief, seeming hardly to deviate from his direct course, kept clear of broken ground, matted thickets and tangled windfalls.

Joe got a glimpse of dark ravines and heard the music of tumbling waters; he saw gray cliffs grown over with vines, and full of holes and crevices; steep ridges, covered with dense patches of briar and hazel, rising in the way.

Yet the Shawnee always found an easy path.
The sun went down behind the foliage in the west, and shadows appeared low in the glens; then the trees faded into an indistinct mass; a purple shade settled down over the forest, and night brought the party to a halt.
The Indians selected a sheltered spot under the lee of a knoll, at the base of which ran a little brook.

Here in this inclosed space were the remains of a camp-fire.

Evidently the Indians had halted there that same day, for the logs still smouldered.