harvest and green orchards, white roads and clustering towns,
with here and there a little city on the bank of the mighty
river which curved in a vast line of beauty toward the blue
Catskill Range, fifty miles away. Lines of filmy smoke, like
vanishing footprints in the air, marked the passage of railway
trains across the landscape--their swift flight reduced by
distance to a leisurely transition. The bright surface of the
stream was furrowed by a hundred vessels; tiny rowboats creeping
from shore to shore; knots of black barges following the lead of
puffing tugs; sloops with languid motion tacking against the
tide; white steamboats, like huge toy-houses, crowded with
pygmy inhabitants, moving smoothly on their way to the great
city, and disappearing suddenly as they turned into the
narrows between Storm-King and the Fishkill Mountains. Down
there was life, incessant, varied, restless, intricate,
many-coloured--down there was history, the highway of ancient
voyagers since the days of Hendrik Hudson, the hunting-ground
of Indian tribes, the scenes of massacre and battle, the last
camp of the Army of the Revolution, the Head-quarters of
Washington--down there were the homes of legend and
poetry, the dreamlike hills of Rip van Winkle's sleep, the
cliffs and caves haunted by the Culprit Fay, the solitudes
traversed by the Spy--all outspread before us, and visible as
in a Claude Lorraine glass, in the tranquil lucidity of
distance. And here, on the hilltop, was our own life; secluded,
yet never separated from the other life; looking down
upon it, yet woven of the same stuff; peaceful in
circumstance, yet ever busy with its own tasks, and holding in
its quiet heart all the elements of joy and sorrow and tragic
consequence.