ASCENT TO MOUNT TAHAWUS. 19 



to follow with your eye that crooked river that seems, 

 since we last crossed it, to have stolen round and lain 

 in ambush in our path, so suddenly and unexpectedly 

 does it again appear before us. But, after wading it 

 half a dozen times, just stand here a moment on the 

 bank of a new stream, and look through those huge 

 hemlocks into that awful mountain gorge. That 

 lonely sheet of water, spreading there so dark and yet 

 so still, is Lake Golden, and looks, amid those savage 

 and broken hills, like Innocence sleeping on the lap 

 of Wrath. How peaceful and how lonely it seems in 

 its solitude! — and it shall linger in the memory like 

 some half-sad, half-pleasant dream. 



From this we struck across to the Opalescent River 

 — so called from the opalescent stones, some of which 

 are very beautiful, that are found in its channel — and 

 followed its rocky bed five miles into the mountains. 

 Now wading across, and now leaping from rock to 

 rock, and again striking out into the thick forest, to 

 get around a deep gulf or cataract, we pressed on till 

 one o'clock, when we hallooed each other together, 

 and began to prepare for dinner. Some old and 

 shivered trees, which the floods of spring had brought 

 down and lodged against the rocks, served us for fuel. 

 Over the crackling fire we hung our tea-kettle, which 

 we filled from the limpid stream that crept in rivulets 

 around our feet, and, placing some large slices of pork 

 on the ends of sticks which we held in the blaze, soon 

 had our dinner under full headway. 



Amid the laughter and freedom inseparable from 

 a life in the woods, we whilcd away an hour, then 



