The Sun Of A November Morning Had Just Risen As I Left Albany, And In A
Short Time Beamed Upon Swelling Hills, Green Savannahs, And Waving Woods
Fringing The Margin Of The Hudson.
At Coxsackie the river expands into a
small lake, and the majestic Catsgill Mountains rise abruptly from the
western side.
The scenery among these mountains is very grand and varied.
Its silence and rugged sublimity recall the Old World: it has rocky
pinnacles and desert passes, inaccessible eminences and yawning chasms.
The world might grow populous at the feet of the Catsgills, but it would
leave them untouched and unprofaned in their stern majesty. From this
point for a hundred miles the eyes of the traveller are perfectly steeped
in beauty, which, gathering and increasing, culminates at West Point, a
lofty eminence jutting upon a lake apparently without any outlet. The
spurs of mountain ranges which meet here project in precipices from five
to fifteen hundred feet in height; trees find a place for their roots in
every rift among the rocks; festoons of clematis and wild-vine hang in
graceful drapery from base to summit, and the dark mountain shadows loom
over the lake-like expanse below. The hand wearies of writing of the
loveliness of this river. I saw it on a perfect day. The Indian summer
lingered, as though unwilling that the chilly blasts of winter should
blight the loveliness of this beauteous scene. The gloom of autumn was not
there, but its glories were on every leaf and twig.
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