which no European eye had ever seen, and sprinkled the hill-tops
with gold and russet, he must indeed have felt that he was living an
enchanted life, or journeying in a fairy land!

How graphically the poet Willis has put the picture in musical prose:
"Fancy the bold Englishman, as the Dutch called Hendrick Hudson,
steering his little yacht the 'Haalve Maan,' for the first time
through the Highlands. Imagine his anxiety for the channel forgotten,
as he gazed up at the towering rocks, and round the green shores, and
onward past point and opening bend, miles away into the heart of the
country; yet with no lessening of the glorious stream before him and
no decrease of promise in the bold and luxuriant shores. Picture him
lying at anchor below Newburgh with the dark pass of the Wey-Gat
frowning behind him, the lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the
hillsides around covered with lords of the soil exhibiting only less
wonder than friendliness."

If Willis forgot the season of the year and left out the landscape
glow which the voyager saw, Talmage completed the picture in a rainbow
paragraph of color: "Along our river and up and down the sides of the
great hills there was an indescribable mingling of gold, and orange
and crimson and saffron, now sobering into drab and maroon, now
flaring up into solferino and scarlet. Here and there the trees looked
as if their tips had blossomed into fire. In the morning light the
forests seemed as if they had been transfigured and in the evening
hours they looked as if the sunset had burst and dropped upon the
leaves. It seemed as if the sea of divine glory had dashed its surf to
the top of the crags and it had come dripping down to the lowest leaf
and deepest cavern."