It Was A Bright
Morning, With A Keen Autumnal Air, And We Dismounted From Our Vehicle And
Walked Through The Gap.
It will give your readers an idea of the Water Gap, to say that it
consists of a succession of lofty peaks, like the Highlands of the Hudson,
with a winding and irregular space between them a few rods wide, to give
passage to the river.
They are unlike the Highlands, however, in one
respect, that their sides are covered with large loose blocks detached
from the main precipices. Among these grows the original forest, which
descends to their foot, fringes the river, and embowers the road.
The present autumn is, I must say, in regard to the coloring of the
forests, one of the shabbiest and least brilliant I remember to have seen
in this country, almost as sallow and dingy in its hues as an autumn in
Europe. But here in the Water Gap it was not without some of its
accustomed brightness of tints - the sugar-maple with its golden leaves,
and the water-maple with its foliage of scarlet, contrasted with the
intense green of the hemlock-fir, the pine, the rosebay-laurel, and the
mountain-laurel, which here grow in the same thicket, while the ground
below was carpeted with humbler evergreens, the aromatic wintergreen, and
the trailing arbutus. The Water Gap is about a mile in length, and near
its northern entrance an excellent hotel, the resort of summer visitors,
stands on a cliff which rises more than a hundred feet almost
perpendicularly from the river. From this place the eye follows the Water
Gap to where mountains shut in one behind another, like the teeth of a
saw, and between them the Delaware twines out of sight.
Before the hotel a fine little boy of about two years of age was at play.
The landlord showed us on the calf of the child's leg two small lurid
spots, about a quarter of an inch apart. "That," said he, "is the bite of
a copper-head snake."
We asked when this happened.
"It was last summer," answered he; "the child was playing on the side of
the road, when he was heard to cry, and seen to make for the house. As
soon as he came, my wife called my attention to what she called a scratch
on his leg. I examined it, the spot was already purple and hard, and the
child was crying violently. I knew it to be the bite of a copper-head, and
immediately cut it open with a sharp knife, making the blood to flow
freely and washing the part with water. At the same time we got a yerb"
(such was his pronunciation) "on the hills, which some call lion-heart,
and others snake-head. We steeped this yerb in milk which we made him
drink. The doctor had been sent for, and when he came applied hartshorn;
but I believe that opening the wound and letting the blood flow was the
most effectual remedy.
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