You Are Sure That
You Never Can Reach This Far-Distant Town, But Are Agreeably
Surprised When You Gaze At The Vastness Of The Gray, Sterile
Mountain Sides You Have Left.
Far below you the terraced
vineyards rise in emerald waves against their silvery background
of century-old olives.
Yet we have experienced almost as strong emotions of vagueness,
terror, sublimity, strength, and beauty while gazing upon the
vast panorama of groups and clusters of chaotic peaks that
stretch away in almost endless variety of form in confused and
disorderly arrangement. Here almost interminable forests are
only interrupted with beautiful lakes that now and then peep
from their hiding places in vast expanse of forest-crowned
wilderness. But here is beauty as well as grandeur. "Those three-
months European travelers who hurry through our lowlands by
steam and perhaps take a night boat up the Hudson, Lake
Champlain, or St. Lawrence and presume to belittle our natural
scenery, are not the most reliable persons in the world."
Let them go to the summit of Mount Marcy on a clear day and look
out over the magnificent panorama spread out before them, and
they will not say we have no natural scenery worth viewing in
the Atlantic States from Canada to New Orleans, except Niagara
and Burlington. Here in every direction countless summits pierce
the sky, and the unnumbered miles of forests that clothe with
green garments the ridges and slopes of this vast wilderness,
who can ever forget them? How wonderful are these wild and
rugged scenes, still fresh from the hand of God!
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