WARWICK WOODLANDS. 87 



sheet of limpid water, as it lay now cold, dun, and dismal, 

 like a huge plate of pewter, without one glittering ripple, with- 

 out one clear reflection, surrounded by the wooded hills which, 

 swathed in a dim mist, hung grim and gloomy over its silent 

 bosom and its bright sunny aspect on the previous day. 



Adieu ! fair Greenwood Lake ! adieu ! Many and blithe have 

 been the hours which I have spent around, and in, and on you 

 and it may well be I shall never see you more whether reflecting 

 the full fresh greenery of summer ; or the rich tints of cisatlantic 

 autumn ; or sheeted with the treacherous ice ; but never, thou 

 sweet lake, never will thy remembrance fade from my bosom, 

 while one drop of life-blood warms it ; so art thou intertwined 

 with memories of happy careless days, that never can return 

 of friends, truer, perhaps, though rude and humble, than all 

 of prouder seeming. Farewell to thee, fair lake ! Long may 

 it be before thy rugged hills be stripped of their green garni- 

 ture, or thy bright waters* marred by the unpicturesque im- 

 provements of man's avarice ! for truly thou, in this utilitarian 

 age, and at brief distance from America's metropolis, art young, 

 and innocent, and unpolluted, as when the red man drank of 

 thy pure waters, long centuries ere he dreamed of the pale- 

 faced oppressors, who have already rooted out his race from 

 half its native continent. 



Another half hour brought us down at a rattling pace to the 

 village, and once again we pulled up at Tom's well-known 

 dwelling, just as the day was breaking. A crowd of loiterers, 

 as usual, was gathered even at that untimely season in the 

 large bar-room ; and when the clatter of our hoofs and wheels 

 announced us, we found no lack of ready-handed and quick- 

 tongued assistants. 



* Marred it has been long ago. A huge dam has been drawn across its 

 outlet, in order to supply a feeder to the Morris Canal a gigantic piece 

 of unprofitable improvement, made, I believe, merely as a basis on which 

 for brokers, stock-jobbers et id genus omne of men too untilitarian and 

 ambitious to be content with earning money honestly to exercise their 

 prodigious 'cuteness. 



The effect of this has been to,,, change the bold shores into pestilential 

 submerged swamps, whereon the dead- trees still stand, tall, gray and 

 ghostly; to convert a number of acres of beautiful meadow-land into 

 stagnant grassy shallows ; to back up the waters at the lake's head, to the 

 utter destruction of several fine farms ; and, last not least, to create fever 

 and ague in abundance, where no such thing had ever been heard tell of 

 before. 



Certainly ! your well devised improvement is a great thing for a country I 



