X GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 



the almost endless variety of their forms, tlieir confused and 

 disorderly arrangement, and the deep forests that are inter- 

 rupted only by the lakes at their bases and the rocks and 

 snows of their summits, invest the eastern half of the table 

 with unrivalled solitude and sublimity." 



This vast mountain chain rises and sinks along the hori- 

 zon in such colossal proportions that one imagines himself 

 in the Alps. The highest peak of the Catskill is only three 

 thousand and some hundred feet in height, yet here are 

 summits rising out of the bosom of forests nearly twice its 

 altitude. Mount Tahawus is over a mile high, while 

 Whiteface, Nipple Top, Mount Seward, Santenoni, Dix's 

 Peak, Mount McMartin and Mount Mclntyre, rise each 

 five thousand feet into the heavens. Shall I mention Owl's 

 Head, Mount Emmons, Schroon Mountains, North River 

 and Boreas Mountains, three thousand feet high ; or Bald 

 Peak and Raven Hill, and a host of others two thousand feet 

 and upwards? Why, the Catskill range, majestic as it is, 

 is a dwarf beside these gigantic mountains. From the top 

 of one of them, you see for nearly four hundred miles in cir- 

 cumference. To wander among them is the hardest toil 

 that a forest life presents. Without roads, your only re- 

 liance the guide and compass, you are compelled to wade 

 streams, cross marshes, and climb over vast tracts of 

 fallen timber, and at last, when night comes on, pull your 

 own couch from the fir trees around. It it were not that 



