WARWICK WOODLANDS. 69 



our portable larder might afford, and I was put under the 

 charge of Tom, who seemed, for about an hour,, disposed to do 

 nothing but to lie dozing, with a cigar in his mouth, stretched 

 upon the broad of his back, on a bank facing the early sunshine 

 just without the door ; while our hosts were collecting bait, 

 preparing fishing tackle, and cleaning or repairing their huge 

 clumsy muskets. At length, when the drivers had been gone 

 already for considerably more than an hour, he got up and 

 shook himself. 



" Now, then, boys," he exclaimed, " we'll be a movin. You 

 Joe Teach man, what are you lazin there about, cuss you ? You 

 go with Mr. Forester and Garry in the big boat, and pull as 

 fast as you can put your oars to water, till you git opposite the 

 white-stone pint and there lie still as fishes ! You may fish, 

 though, if you will, Forester," he added, turning to me, " and 

 I do reckon the big yellow pearch will bite the darndest, this 

 cold morning, arter the sun gits fairly up but soon as ever you 

 hear the hounds holler, or one of them chaps shoot, then look 

 you out right stret away for business ! Gale, here, and I'll take 

 the small boat, and keep in sight of you ; and so we can kiver 

 all this eend of the pond like, if the deer tries to cross herea- 

 ways. How long is't, Gale, since we had six on them all at once 

 in the water six seven eight ! well, I swon, it's ten years 

 agone now ! But come, we mus'nt stand here talkin, else we'll 

 get a dammin when they drives down a buck into the pond, 

 and none of us in there to tackle with him !'' 



So without more ado, we got into our boats, disposed our 

 guns, with the stocks towards us in the bows, laid in our stock 

 of tinder, pipes, and liquor, and rowed off merrily to our ap- 

 pointed stations. 



Never, in the whole course of my life, has it been my for- 

 tune to look upon more lovely scenery than I beheld that morn- 

 ing. The long narrow winding lake, lying as pure as crystal 

 beneath the liquid skies, reflecting, with the correctness of the 

 most perfect mirror, the abrupt and broken hills, which sank 

 down so precipitously into ifc clad as they were in foliage of 

 every gorgeous dye, with which the autumn of America loves 

 to enhance the beatuy of her forest pictures that, could they 

 find their way into its mountain-girdled basin, ships of large 

 burthen might lie afloat within a stone's throw of the shore 

 the slopes of the wood-covered knolls, here brown, or golden, 

 and interspersed with the rich crimson of the faded maples, 



