The Bright Scarlet Of
The Maple Vied With The Brilliant Berries Of The Rowan, And From Among The
Tendrils Of The Creepers, Which Were Waving In The Sighs Of The West Wind,
Peeped Forth The Deep Crimson Of The Sumach.
There were very few signs of
cultivation; the banks of the Hudson are barren in all but beauty.
The
river is a succession of small wild lakes, connected by narrow reaches,
bound for ever between abrupt precipices. There are lakes more beauteous
than Loch Katrine, softer in their features than Loch Achray, though like
both, or like the waters which glitter beneath the blue sky of Italy.
Along their margins the woods hung in scarlet and gold - high above towered
the purple peaks - the blue waters flashed back the rays of a sun shining
from an unclouded sky - the air was warm like June - and I think the
sunbeams of that day scarcely shone upon a fairer scene. At mid-day the
Highlands of Hudson were left behind - the mountains melted into hills - the
river expanded into a noble stream about a mile in width - the scarlet
woods, the silvery lakes, and the majestic Catsgills faded away in the
distance; and with a whoop, and a roar, and a clatter, the cars entered
into, and proceeded at slackened speed down, a long street called Tenth
Avenue, among carts, children, and pigs.
True enough, we were in New York, the western receptacle not only of the
traveller and the energetic merchant, but of the destitute, the
friendless, the vagabond, and in short of all the outpourings of Europe,
who here form a conglomerate mass of evil, making America responsible for
their vices and their crimes.
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