76 WARWICK WOODLANDS, 



It needed all that Tim's best dinner, with lots of cham- 

 pagne and Ferintosh, could do to restore the fat chap's 

 equanimity; but he at last consoled himself, as we threw 

 oui'selves on the lowly beds of the log hut, by swearing 

 that by the etarnal devil he'd beat us both at partridges 

 tomorrow. 



DAY THE SIXTH. 



The sun rose broad and bright in a firmament of that 

 most brilliant and transparent blue, which I have wit- 

 nessed in no other country than America, so pure, so 

 cloudless, so immeasurably distant as it seems from the 

 beholder's eye! There was not a speck of cloud from 

 east to west, from zenith, to horizon ; not a fleece of vapor 

 on the mountain sides; not a breath of air to ruffle the 

 calm basin of the Greenwood lake. 



The rock-crowned, forest-mantled ridge, on the farther 

 side of the narrow sheet was, visible almost as distinctly 

 through the medium of the pure fresh atmosphere, as 

 though it had been gazed at through a telescope — the hues 

 of the innumerable maples, in their various stages of de- 

 cay, purple, and crimson,and bright gorgeous scarlet, were 

 contrasted with the rich chrome yellow of the birch and 

 poplars, the sere red leaves of the gigantic oaks, and with 

 the ever verdant plumage of the junipers, clustered in 

 massy patches on every rocky promontory, and the tall 

 spires of the dark pines and hemlock. 



Over this mass of many-colored foliage, the pale thin 

 yellow light of the new-risen sun was pouring down a flood 

 of chaste illumination ; while, exhaled from the waters 

 by his first beams, a silvery gauze-like haze floated along 

 the shores, not rising to the height of ten feet from 

 the limped surface, which lay unbroken by the smallest 

 ripple, undisturbed by the slightest splash of fish or insect, 

 as still and tranquil to the eye as though it had been one 

 huge plate of beaten burnished silver; with the tall cones 

 of the gorgeous hills in all their rich variety, in all their 

 clear minuteness, reflected, summit downward, palpable as 

 their reality, in that most perfect mirror. 



Such was the scene on which I gazed, as on the last day 

 of our sojourn in the Woodlands of fair Orange, I issued 



