LETTER FROM HUDSON HIGHLANDS. HUDSON HIGHLANDS, August DEAR MORRIS-I have mended my pen to the music of a cow-bell, and sit at a cool window on the North side of a pleasant farm-house-no interruption possible except from these very communicative poultry-(and, somehow, cocks and hens seem to have a great deal to say to each other)—so that, if comfort and leisure do not prevent, I am likely to inveigle this innocent summer's morning into a letter. Really, a day as beautiful as this should have a voice to speak for itself. If there has, ever before, been one as beautiful, and if its sunshine and breezes went past unrecorded, I can only say the Past should give back its unwritten. Is there no Morse, to make the shadow of a tree work like a pen in the sun's hand, and keep a diary as it goes round-to make a breeze tell what it reads, as it turns over the leaves in the forest-to take down the meanings of Nature, and "write words" for the eternal "airs with accompaniments" given us by the winds and running brooks? What do you suppose the angels think, of our knowledge of what is about us? I shall be surprised, a hundred years hence, if I do not look back upon the world, and find that we have walked it like flies in a library-complacently philandering over the backs of volumes of secrets for which our poor buzz contained no articulation! But, you are waiting for the history of my recent explorings. I have seen the world from the seat of a farmer's wagon, for two or three weeks, and have " got in" scenery, as my landlord has got in hay-till the loft is inconveniently full. My pen, that plays pitchfork, would easier give you your fodder if it were less weighed down with what you do not want. The rack gets its name, probably, from the painful disproportion between each "feed" and the size of the "mow." What shall I ever do, with all the beautiful trees, streams and valleys, that I have taken into my memory in the last twenty days; and which I can neither forget, nor re-produce in description? Το go round behind where the thunder comes from, has always been a wish of mine, when at West Point, and this I have accomplished at last, in a trip from the other side. I am ruralizing, as you know, on the Pacific Ocean slope of the Alps which look across Fort Putnam to the Atlantic. From here, as from New York, "the Point" is, in fact, an island-no getting to it except by water-and the next easiest way to reach it seemed to be to climb up into the clouds and slide down from above, with the trick of some "gentle shower." I have done this-having fairly mounted to the cloud line, gone up through, come out on the other side, and alighted safely at Rider's. You should have witnessed mine host's astonishment at seeing me arrive by a conveyance of which he knew nothing! To describe the excursion more intelligibly : I was indebted to a kind clergyman, of the village near by, for the offer of guidance in this rather unusual trip to West Point MONUMENT TO DUNCAN. 147 over the mountains. The distance is reckoned at about eight miles, and to go and return is a fair day's work. My friend, Mr. C―, is a very public-spirited man, and he had another errand beside showing me the road. He wished to make some movement, at the Point, for the raising of a monument to Duncan, whose grave, without a stone to mark it, is on one of the eminences near this, overlooking the Hudson. Of his success in forming a plan for this purpose, and its claim on the public, I will elsewhere speak-confining my present letter to the excursion. Mr. C is the tiller of the soil of a farm, as well as of the souls of a congregation, and drove round, for me, at seven in the morning, with a very spirited pair of horses, in his open wagon. The road we were to travel was more rough than new—its most frequent traveller, at one time, having been General Washington -and the mountain stream, along whose course it makes its first mile or two of ascent, is still called "Continental Brook," after the troops who often tracked it. Any soft part that there might been washed out by the heavy ever have been to the road, had rains. Indeed, I doubt whether we touched earth after the first half hour-the wheels simply banging from rock to rock, with never a moment to catch breath between. The scenery behind us, as we ascended, grew, at every step, more extended and beautiful, however. Leaving my friend to keep his horses from falling backwards over us, I turned about, and braced my feet against the rear-board of the wagon-(almost standing erect upon it, part of the time)—to enjoy the prospect as well as was permitted by the venerable stones which had jolted the Saviour of his country. The Hudson, thence, looked less like a river than a lake, small, and with its banks sprinkled with villages. We seemed to be climbing up the side of a huge bowl, and the river was but the remaining ladle-full, "left for manners" in the bottom. The incompleteness of this bowl-the piece broken out of the side, as it were-is but the small interval of comparatively low land above Newburgh and Fishkill; the sweep of mountains which encloses this loveliest of landscape amphitheatres, forming otherwise, a romantically Alpine circle of horizon. Of the broad Highland terrace between Newburgh and West Point-known as the townships of Cornwall and New Windsor, and extending back, on a high level, four or five miles from the river to the base of the hills-I shall have more to say in another letter or two. Between the peaks of the half-dozen mountains clustered behind West Point, are table-land hollows, which give a shelflike location for a farm, and in one of these we found a very handsome young couple, with a well-built stone house, and every appearance of a comfortable home and thrifty culture. A little way from the door lay a most beautiful and bright lake, that holds the head-waters of Buttermilk Falls, (which you notice just below Cozzens's, in coming up the river.) The summits of "Black Rock" and "Sky Rock" were close by. Goshen dairies lay on one side, and our country's garden for soldiers on the other-the Hudson on the east, and the Ramapo, farther off, on the westand from hereabouts comes thunder, manufactured from the clouds caught in these hollows of His hand. In fair weather, such as we found it in, it seems a place of thin air, quite above newspaper level, and with no foot-print of mortal trouble or unrest. They should build an Inn, on the Lake shore in this Summit Valley, where one might come and lodge when he were tired |