For the last two days farm-houses and cultivated fields had been growing
rarer and rarer, and the road rougher and wilder. At times it made a
sudden detour, to avoid the outcropping of a monster stratum of granite,
and in places became so narrow that the rank huckleberry-bushes swept
the mare's flanks. Lynde found it advisable on the morning in question
to pick his way carefully. A range of arid hills rose darkly before him,
stretching east and west further than his eye could follow--rugged,
forlorn hills covered with a thick prickly undergrowth, and sentinelled
by phantom-like pines. There were gloomy, rocky gorges on each hand, and
high-hanging crags, and where the vapor was drawn aside like a veil, in
one place, he saw two or three peaks with what appeared to be patches of
snow on them. Perhaps they were merely patches of bleached rock.

Long afterwards, when Edward Lynde was passing through the valley of the
Arve, on the way from Geneva to Chamouni, he recollected this bit of
Switzerland in America, and it brought an odd, perplexed smile to his
lips.

The thousand ghostly shapes of mist which had thronged the heights,
shutting in the prospect on every side, had now vanished, discovering as
wild and melancholy a spot as a romantic heart could desire. There was
something sinister and ironical even in the sunshine that lighted up
these bleak hills. The silver waters of a spring--whose source was
hidden somewhere high up among the mossy boulders--dripping silently
from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears. The deathly stillness was
broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a
blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin skin glimmered
spectrally among the sombre foliage.