GLORIOUS PROSPECT. 145 



the subsiding swell of a storm. I stand on the edge 

 of a precipice which throws its naked wall far down to 

 the tops of the fir trees below, and look off on this 

 surpassingly wild and strange spectacle. The life that 

 villages, and towns, and cultivated fields give to a 

 landscape is not here, neither is there the barrenness 

 and savageness of the view from Tahawus. It is all 

 vegetation — luxuriant, gigantic vegetation ; but man 

 has had no hand in it. It stands as the Almighty 

 made it, majestic and silent, save when the wind or 

 the storm breathes on it, waking up its myriad low- 

 toned voices, which sing 



''The wild profound eternal bass 

 In nature's anthem." 



Oh, how still and solemn it slumbers below me ; 

 while far away yonder, to the left, shoot up into the 

 heavens the massive peaks of the Adirondack chain, 

 mellowed here, by the distance, into beauty. Yet 

 there is one relief to this vast forest solitude — like 

 gems sleeping in a moss bed, lakes are everywhere 

 glittering in the bright sunshine. How calm and 

 trustingly they repose on the bosom of the wilder- 

 ness ! Thirty-six, a hunter tells me, can be counted 

 from this summit, though I do not see over twenty. 



