122 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



United States, much less in the vicinity of its most populous and 

 cultivated districts, than that long line of rocky wood-crowned 

 heights which at times rising to an elevation and exhibiting a 

 boldness of outline that justifies the application to them of the 

 term * mountains/ while at others they would be more appro- 

 priately designated as hills or knolls run all across the Eastern 

 and the Midland States, from the White Mountains westward to 

 the Alleghanies, between which mighty chains they form an in- 

 termediate and continuous link. 



" Through this stern barrier, all the great rivers of the States, 

 through which they run, have rent themselves a passage, exhibit- 

 ing in every instance the most sublime and boldest scenery, 

 while many of the minor, though still noble streams, come forth 

 sparkling and bright and cold from the clear lakes and lonely 

 springs embosomed in its dark recesses. 



"Possessing, for the most part, a width of eight or ten miles, 

 this chain of hills consists, at some points, of a single ridge, 

 rude, forest-clad and lonely at others, of two, three, or even 

 four distinct and separate lines of heights, with valleys more or 

 less highly cultured, long sheets of most translucent water, and 

 wild mountain streams dividing them. 



" With these hills known as the Highlands where the 

 gigantic Hudson has cloven, at some distant day, a devious path 

 for his eternal and resistless waters, and by a hundred other 

 names, the Warwick Hills, the Greenwoods, and yet farther 

 west, the Blue Ridge and the Kittatinny Mountains, as they 

 trend southerly and west across New York and New Jersey 

 with these hills I have now to do. 



" Not as the temples meet for the lonely muse, fit habitations 

 for the poet's rich imaginings ! not as they are most glorious in 

 their natural scenery whether the youthful May is covering 

 their rugged brows with the bright tender verdure of the tas- 

 selled larch, and the yet brighter green of maple, mountain ash 

 and willow or the full flush of summer has clothed their forests 

 with impervious and shadowy foliage, while carpeting their sides 

 with the unnumbered blossoms of calmia, rhododendron and 

 azalia ! whether the gorgeous hues of autumn gleam like the 

 banners of ten thousand victor armies along their rugged slopes, 

 or the frozen winds of winter have roofed their headlands with 

 inviolate white snow ! Not as their bowels teem with the wealth 

 of mines which ages of man's avarice may vainly labor to ex- 

 haust ! but as they are the loved abode of many a woodland 



