130 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



single ridge, rude, forest-clad and lonely — at others, of 

 two, three, or even four distinct and separate lines of 

 heights, with valleys more or less highly cultured, long 

 sheets of most translucent water, and wild mountain 

 streams dividing them. 



With these hills — known as the Highlands — where the 

 gigantic Hudson has cloven, at some distant day, a de- 

 vious path for his eternal and resistless waters, and by a 

 hundred other names, the Warwick Hills, the Green- 

 woods, and yet farther west, the Blue Ridge and the 

 Kittatinny Mountains, as they trend southerly and west 

 across New York and New Jersey — with these hills I have 

 now to do. 



"Not as the temples meet for the lonely muse, fit habi- 

 tations for the poet's rich imaginings! not as they are 

 most glorious in their natural scenery — whether the youth- 

 ful May is covering their rugged brows with the bright 

 tender verdure of the tasselled larch, and the yet brighter 

 green of maple, mountain ash and willow — or the full 

 flush of summer has clothed their forests with impervious 

 and shadowy foliage, while carpeting their sides with the 

 unnumbered blossoms of calmia, rhododendron and azalia ! 

 — whether the gorgeous hues of autumn gleam like the 

 banners of ten thousand victor armies along their rugged 

 slopes, or the frozen winds of winter have roofed their 

 headlands with inviolate white snow ! Not as their bowels 

 teem with the wealth of mines which ages of man's avarice 

 may vainly labor to exhaust! but as they are the loved 

 abode of many a woodland denizen that has retreated, even 

 from more remote and seemingly far wilder fastnesses, to 

 these sequestered haunts. I love them, in that the graceful 

 hind conceals her timid fawn among the ferns that wave 

 on the lone banks of many a nameless rill, threading their 

 hiUs, untrodden save by the miner, or the unfrequent 

 huntsman's foot — in that the noble stag frays oftentimes 

 his antlers against their giant trees — in that the mighty 

 bear lies hushed in grim repose amid their tangled swamps 

 — in that their bushy dingles resound nightly to the long- 

 drawn howl of the gaunt famished wolf — in that the lynx 

 and wild-cat yet mark their prey from the pine branches 

 — in that the ruffed grouse drums, the woodcock bleats, 

 and the quail chirrups from every height or hollow — in 



