Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of
the finest sunsets that ever enriched, this world. A little cowboy,
trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying
about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking,
too, a moment, he said approvingly, "That sun looks well enough"; a
speech worthy of Shakespeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to
everything from the cradle, as you please to take it.

Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in
a prince's palace, or "stumping," as he boasts to have done, "up the
Vatican stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boots," I felt
here; it looks really _well enough_, I felt, and was inclined, as you
suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world
that would not disappoint.

But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so
easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful
observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these
proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I
got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before
coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After
a while it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread,
such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about
to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the
waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near,
could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I
realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters
were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the
Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came,