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ger in the faitli or fancy of mortals. The truth of which I 

 am speaking is most strikingly illustrated in the associations 

 which henceforward will cling to this Father of American 

 Mountains; rising here in majestic grandeur; with its 

 rocky battlements scathed by the red lightnings, but yet 

 unharmed; and throwing back the voice of the loudest 

 thunders, from its deep-muttered and reverberating caverns, 

 and transmitting the awful roar from crag to crag, until 

 earth herself appears to shudder with fear and trembling. 

 A few years only have elapsed since it stood here in solitary 

 loneliness, unchronicled amidst changes which have mark- 

 ed the passing away of nations of men that roamed under 

 its woody sides or climbed its dizzy heights ! 



"We tread the scenes over which buried tribes and gene- 

 rations of men once wandered ; we gaze upon the cloud-cap- 

 ped summits which once filled their vision ; we strain the 

 eye to trace the dim and distant outline that bounded their 

 horizon ; the places which know us, knew them ; saw all 

 that we would vainly explore ; and heard those shrouded 

 secrets of the shadowy past which are never to be recover- 

 ed from oblivion till the coming of that hour when " the 

 earth shall give up her dead I" 



The eye of one who first drew breath in a northern clime, 

 and moved by the most honorable motives which can go- 

 vern human conduct, to seek useful employment in this, 

 his adopted State, and led by the desire to add to the stock 

 of human knowledge, or by the natural love of the sublime 

 and beautiful, rested some twenty three years ago upon 

 this glorious monument of the Creator's handy-work. He 

 traversed its most deeply wooded dells ; he stood upon its 

 loftiest peaks ; he gazed in rapture upon its bold and mag- 

 nificent outlines of grandeur ; his spirit here drank in the 

 sweet and elevating influences of the Heavenly world, and 

 though no angels, messengers from the spirit -land, met him 

 here to lift the veil that covers eternal things, yet here he 



