82 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
Newcastle, in her “Ode on Melancholy,” de- 
scribes among the symbols of hopeless gloom 
“the still moonshine night” and “a mill where 
rushing waters run about,” — the sweetest nat- 
ural images. In our own country, the early 
explorers seemed to find only horror in its 
woods and waterfalls. Josselyn, in 1672, could 
only describe the summer splendor of the 
White Mountain region as “dauntingly terrible, 
being full of rocky hills, as thick as molehills 
in a meadow, and full of infinite thick woods.” 
Father Hennepin spoke of Niagara, in the nar- 
rative still quoted in the guide-books, as a 
“frightful cataract ;” and honest John Adams 
could find no better name than “ horrid chasm” 
for the picturesque gulf at Egg Rock, where he 
first saw the sea-anemone. 
But we are lingering too long, perhaps, with 
this sweet April of smiles and tears. It needs 
only to add, that all her traditions are beautiful. 
Ovid says well, that she was not named from 
aperire, to open, as some have thought, but 
from Aphrodite, goddess of beauty. April holds 
Easter-time, St. George’s Day, and the Eve of 
St. Mark’s. She has not, like her sister May 
in Germany, been transformed to a verb and 
made a synonym for joy, —“ Deine Seele maiet 
den triiben Herbst,’ — but April was believed in 
early ages to have been the birth-time of the 
