orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern
roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only
prophecies of the sturdy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea,
the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye
looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed
mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the
central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism,
Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not
wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet
the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are
brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in
all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds
still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold
bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the
river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of
solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant
race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there
overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and
manifold leafage, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer.
It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River
entrance to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs
break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above
their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of
mountains standing sentinels on the shores, almost leaning over the
river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their
awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs
recede into distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green
levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the
river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future
homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and
cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science and all the
amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet
them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills
overshadow us, the solitude closes around us.

[Footnote 60: Born in Massachusetts, author of numerous magazine articles
of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her
readers as