16 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



"Glorious indeed ! Most glorious !" I exclaimed. 



"Right, Frank," he said; "a man may travel many a 

 day, and not see any thing to beat the vale of Sugar-loaf — 

 so named from that cone-like hill, over the pond there — 

 that peak is eight hundred feet above tide water. Those 

 blue hills, to the far right, are the Hudson Highlands; 

 that bold bluff is the far-famed Anthony's Nose; that 

 ridge across the vale, the second ridge I mean, is the 

 Shawangunks; and those three rounded summits, farther 

 yet — those are the Kaatskills! But now a truce with the 

 romantic, for there lies Warwick, and this keen mountain 

 air has found me a fresh appetite!" 



Away we went again, rattling down tlie hills, nothing 

 daunted at their steep pitches, with the nags just as fresh 

 as when they started, champing and snapping at their 

 curbs, till on a table-land above the brook, with the tin 

 steeple of its church peering from out the massy foliage of 

 sycamore and locust, the haven of our journey lay before 

 us. 



"Hilloa, hill-oa ho ! whoop ! who-whoop !" and with a 

 cheery shout, as we clattered across the wooden bridge, he 

 roused out half the population of the village. 



"Ya ha ha ! — ya yah !" yelled a great woolly-headed coal- 

 black negro. "Here 'm massa Archer back again — massa 

 ben well, I spect — " 



"Well — to be sure I have, Sam," cried Harry. "How's 

 old Poll? Bid her come up to Draw's to-morrow night — 

 I've got a red and yellow frock for her — a deuce of a 

 concern !" 



"Ya ha ! yah ha ha yaah !" and amid a most discordant 

 chorus of African merriment, we passed by a neat farm- 

 house shaded by two glorious locusts on the right, and a 

 new red brick mansion, the pride of the viUage, with a 

 flourishing store on the left — and wheeled up to the fam- 

 ous Tom Draw's tavern — a long white house with a piazza 

 six feet wide, at the top of eight steep steps, and a one- 

 story kitchen at the end of it; a pump with a gilt pine- 

 apple at the top of it, and horse-trough; a wagon shed 

 and stable sixty feet long; a sign post with an indescrib- 

 able female figure swinging upon it, and an ice house over 

 the way! 



Such was the house, before which we pulled up just as 

 the sun was setting, amid a gabbling of ducks, a barking 



