22 LETTERS FROM THE BACKWOODS. 



telling where a swift river is sweeping onward, but 

 not a murmur rises up to this still spot, nor a flash of 

 its bright waters escapes from the sullen woods that 

 shut it in. To your left is Mount Mclntyre, black 

 as night, and rising from the sea of forest below like 

 some monument of a past world. There, too, is Mount 

 Golden, and further on White Face, with the immense 

 scar on its forehead ; and there, and there — but it is 

 vain even to count the summits that seem to have 

 been piled here in some awful hurry of nature. As 

 you thus stand with your face to the south, the whole 

 ranoje of the Green Mountains, from Canada to where 

 they sink into Massachusetts stretches in one grand 

 bold pencil-stroke along the sky. Far away to the 

 southeast, a storm is raging, and the clouds lift and 

 heave along the dark bosom of the mountain, like the 

 foldings of a vast curtain stirred by the wind. At 

 the base, and losing itself in the distance, spreads 

 away Lake Champlain, with all its green islands on 

 its bosom. From this immense height and distance, 

 the elevated banks disappear, and the whole beautiful 

 sheet appears' like water flowing over a flat country. 

 Burlington is a mere toy-shop in the hazy distance. 

 Turning to the west and southwest, you overlook all 

 that primeval wilderness of which Long Lake is the 

 centre; and how grand and gloomy is the scene — an 

 interminable forest, now descending in a bold sweep 

 to the margin of some lake, and now climbing and 

 overstepping the lordly mountain in its progress. 

 Summit overlaps summit, ridge intersects ridge, and 

 all flowing away together, in one wild majestic sea, 



