Indian life amongst the wilds and mountains.

After supper I walked on a smooth lawn by the river, to observe the
moon journeying through a world of silver clouds that lay dispersed
over the face of the heavens. It was a mild genial evening; every
mountain cast its broad shadow on the surface of the stream; lights
twinkled afar off on the hills; they burnt in silence. All were
asleep, except a female figure in white, with glow-worms shining in
her hair. She kept moving disconsolately about; sometimes I heard
her sigh; and if apparitions sigh, this must have been an apparition.
Upon my return, I asked a thousand questions, but could never obtain
any information of the figure and its luminaries.

July 13th.--The pure air of the morning invited me early to the
hills. Hiring a skiff, I rowed about a mile down the stream, and
landed on a sloping meadow, level with the waters, and newly mown.
Heaps of hay still lay dispersed under the copses which hemmed in on
every side this little sequestered paradise. What a spot for a tent!
I could encamp here for months, and never be tired. Not a day would
pass by without discovering some new promontory, some untrodden
pasture, some unsuspected vale, where I might remain among woods and
precipices lost and forgotten. I would give you, and two or three
more, the clue of my labyrinth: nobody else should be conscious of
its entrance. Full of such agreeable dreams, I rambled about the
meads, scarcely knowing which way I was going; sometimes a spangled
fly led me astray, and, oftener, my own strange fancies. Between
both, I was perfectly bewildered, and should never have found my boat
again, had not an old German naturalist, who was collecting fossils
on the cliffs, directed me to it.