We have heard many nightingales
and skylarks singing, but their songs do not attain that depth
of soul-thrilling harmony found alone in the song of the thrush.
So, too, here in the lovely Catskill region, you will see a kind
of beauty that nowhere else can be obtained.
The hostess told us how on a mild March morning, she had
witnessed the funeral procession escorting the mortal remains of
John Burroughs over this scenic highway. She said she saw Thomas
A. Edison and Henry Ford gazing out over the lovely hills their
dear departed friend loved so well. It was not with sadness we
listened to her words, for we know this gentle lover of Nature
had only wandered a little farther to lovelier hills and fairer
scenes.
Morning dawned, bringing the mingled blessings of sunlight and
song to this lovely glen. Rain had fallen during the night,
making the grass take on new life and washing the leaves of
every particle of dust. How they reflected the morning light!
How fresh and new all Nature appeared after the cleansing she
received!
The Genii of the mountains seemed to be casting their magic
spell over the soft, sunny landscape. Those troops of workers,
early sunbeams and crystal dewdrops, hung the curtains of. the
forest with moist, scintillating pearls, whose brilliancy seen
through the transparent veil of blue seemed another twilight
sky, trembling with groups of silver stars. The air was pure and
unpolluted; the birds sang from every field and forest. Flowers
nodded good morning as we passed. Brilliant spikes of cardinal
blossoms burned like coals against the green shrubs; foxgloves
rang their purple bells with no one to hear; campanulas bluer
than the sky decked the rocky ledges; where the wood lily, like
a reigning queen, "seemed to have caught all the sunbeams of
summer and treasured them in her heart of gold."
A thin layer of white mist still hid fair lakes that were
waiting to mirror the sky. Down the blue mistiness of the
valleys we beheld a far-flashing stream, whose silver course
grew fainter and at last disappeared around the purple
headlands. Far as the eye could see, the undulating masses of
green hills stretched away until they towered far upward,
printing their graceful flowing outlines on the distant horizon.
The nearer hills rose on all sides like a billowy sea, with
outcropping of gray stone breakers along their green crests. On
the lower levels we saw thickets of young birch, hemlock and
willows.
"Miles upon miles of verdant meadows, farms and forests seem to
hang upon the sides of the mountains like a vast canvas or
repose peacefully across the long sloping hills; pictures of
sunny contentment and domestic serenity, scarcely conceivable in
the lowlands." There are winding roads that rise as do the old
stone buildings, one above the other until they are lost in the
purple distance.
