WARWICK WOODLANDS. 15 



got too eager, and he heard or saw me, and so fetched a turn ; 

 but they were close upon him, and the day was hot, and he 

 was forced to soil. I never saw him till he was in the act of 

 leaping from a bluff of ten or twelve feet into the deep lake, but 

 I pitched up my rifle at him, a snap shot ! as 1 would my gun 

 at a cock in a summer brake, and by good luck sent my ball 

 through his heart. There is a finer view yet when we cross 

 this hiil, the Bellevale mountain ; look out, for we are just upon 

 it; there! Now admire P 



And on the summit he pulled up, and never did I see a land- 

 scape more extensively magnificent. Ridge after ridge the 

 mountain sloped down from our feet into a vast rich basin ten 

 miles at least in breadth, by thirty, if not more, in length, gir- 

 dled on every side by mountains the whole diversified with 

 wood and water, meadow, and pasture-land, and corn-field 

 studded with small white villages with more than one bright 

 lakelet glittering like beaten gold in the declining sun, and several 

 isolated hills standing up boldly from the vale ! 



" Glorious indeed ! Most glorious !" I exclaimed. 



" Right, Frank," he said ; " a man may travel many a day, 

 and not see any thing to beat the vale of Sugar-loaf so named 

 from that cone-like lull, over the pond there that peak is eight 

 hundred feet above tide water. Those blue hills, to the far 

 right, are the Hudson Highlands ; that bold bluff is the far- 

 famed Anthony's Nose ; that ridge across the vale, the second 

 ridge I mean, is the Shawariguuks ; and those three rounded 

 summits, farther yet those are the Kaatskills ! But now a 

 truce with the romantic, for there lies Warwick, and this keen 

 mountain air has found me a fresh appetite !" 



Away we went again, rattling down the hills, nothing daunted 

 at their steep pitches, with the nags just as fresh as when they 

 started, champing and snapping at their curbs, till on a table- 

 land above the brook, with the tin steeple of its church peering 

 from out the massy foliage of sycamore and locust, the haven 

 of our journey lay before us. 



" Hilloa, hill-oa ho ! whoop ! who-whoop !" and with a cheery 

 shout, as we clattered across the wooden bridge, he roused out 

 half the population of the village. 



"Ya ha ha! ya yah !" yelled a great woolly-headed coal- 

 black negro. " Here 'm massa Archer back again massa ben 

 well, I spect 



" Well to be sure I have, Sam," cried Harry. " How's old 



