474 "WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



reached the top of Mount Speclater did we lift our eyes 

 and behold the promised land of sportsmen — the Canaan, 

 not of milk and honey, by a long jump — but of the ferse 

 naturae — " a whole yearth full 'er God-a-mighty's wild var- 

 mints !" as a sublimity-struck Connecticut Pedlar ejaculated 

 from the same point of view ! Of a truth it was a wonderful 

 sight — looking down at your feet, then off to the South, and 

 then to the North-west, upon this wild chaos of savage-looking 

 hills, lit up by the scattered shine of thirty-six Lakes, which, 

 within the space of about the same number of miles in length, 

 look like bright patches which had fallen in benediction out 

 of a summer's sky into these sullen glooms ! 



There they go, far away beneath us — those younger ranks 

 of pine-haired Titans, that make the blue line of the Arion- 

 dack ! See them stretch their misty arms to one another, 

 rank upon rank, to form these cordons of impregnable defence 

 about those shadowy basins, up from which the silver sheen 

 of many a grotesque form of Lake is thrown into our dazzled 

 eyes. 



What a sight is this, within twenty-four hours of New 

 York, with its smoke, and din, and crush ! 



Hurrah ! to think that these bright sheets are gleaming 

 down through their still blue depths with shoals of the 

 magnificent salmon trout, with their dark marbled backs 

 and lustrous mottled sides, and that every silver thread of 

 river, rivulet and inlet binding them together, glitters upon 

 its ripples or within its shaded pools to the arrowy leap of 

 that crimson flecked keystrel of the streams, the brook trout ! 



Hurrah ! hurrah ! to think, too, that these unbroken forests 

 which still wear the solemn look of Earth's Primeval births, 

 yet shelter within their difficult fastnesses, her earliest chil- 

 dren. That the huge moose which came before the red man, 

 yet rouses the sluggish echoes with its hoarse bellowings. 

 That the red deer whistles and snorts to the boding howl 



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