^84 THE ADIRONDACK. 



He has painted it in a single night. He has trod the 

 gloomy swamp also, and lit up its solemn arcades 

 with brightness and beauty. The bushes that lifted 

 themselves modestly beside the dark fir trees, un- 

 noticed before, he has touched with his pencil, while 

 the evergreens, which he always avoids, stand in their 

 native greenness — and lo, a yellow lake is spread 

 under their sombre tops, as if a flood of molten 

 gold had suddenly been poured through them. He 

 has tipped the bush that dips the water with his 

 pencil, and lo, the liquid mirror blushes with the re- 

 flection at morning. Like a giant he has stood at the 

 base of the sky-seeking mountain, and swept his brush 

 with a bold stroke all over its forest-covered sides, till 

 it fairly dazzles the eye as the evening sunbeams flood 

 it. There, where the ridges stoop into a long steady 

 slope, he has wrought on a grander scale. The 

 different nature of the soil has given birth to several 

 varieties of timber, which lie like so many separate 

 strata for miles along the mountain side ; and here he 

 has swept his brush in long stripes of yellow and red 

 and green and gold, till acres on acres of carpeting 

 spread away on the vision, while here and there sepa- 

 rate clumps of trees have been touched with varie- 



