It Led Us
Through A Sublime Waste, A Wilderness Of Mountains And Pine Forests,
Over Which The Spirit Of Loneliness And Silence Seemed Brooding.
Above and below little could be seen but the same dark green foliage.
It overspread the valleys, and the mountains were clothed with it
from the black rocks that crowned their summits to the impetuous
streams that circled round their base. Scenery like this, it might
seem, could have no very cheering effect on the mind of a sick man
(for to-day my disease had again assailed me) in the midst of a horde
of savages; but if the reader has ever wandered, with a true hunter's
spirit, among the forests of Maine, or the more picturesque solitudes
of the Adirondack Mountains, he will understand how the somber woods
and mountains around me might have awakened any other feelings than
those of gloom. In truth they recalled gladdening recollections of
similar scenes in a distant and far different land. After we had
been advancing for several hours through passages always narrow,
often obstructed and difficult, I saw at a little distance on our
right a narrow opening between two high wooded precipices. All
within seemed darkness and mystery. In the mood in which I found
myself something strongly impelled me to enter. Passing over the
intervening space I guided my horse through the rocky portal, and as
I did so instinctively drew the covering from my rifle, half
expecting that some unknown evil lay in ambush within those dreary
recesses. The place was shut in among tall cliffs, and so deeply
shadowed by a host of old pine trees that, though the sun shone
bright on the side of the mountain, nothing but a dim twilight could
penetrate within. As far as I could see it had no tenants except a
few hawks and owls, who, dismayed at my intrusion, flapped hoarsely
away among the shaggy branches. I moved forward, determined to
explore the mystery to the bottom, and soon became involved among the
pines. The genius of the place exercised a strange influence upon my
mind. Its faculties were stimulated into extraordinary activity, and
as I passed along many half-forgotten incidents, and the images of
persons and things far distant, rose rapidly before me with
surprising distinctness. In that perilous wilderness, eight hundred
miles removed beyond the faintest vestige of civilization, the scenes
of another hemisphere, the seat of ancient refinement, passed before
me more like a succession of vivid paintings than any mere dreams of
the fancy. I saw the church of St. Peter's illumined on the evening
of Easter Day, the whole majestic pile, from the cross to the
foundation stone, penciled in fire and shedding a radiance, like the
serene light of the moon, on the sea of upturned faces below. I saw
the peak of Mount Etna towering above its inky mantle of clouds and
lightly curling its wreaths of milk-white smoke against the soft sky
flushed with the Sicilian sunset.
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