At his left hand sat I, while Tom, in honor of his superior bulk and weight, occupied with his magnificent and portly person the whole of the back seat, keeping his countenance as sanctified as possible, and nodding, with some quaint and characteristic observation, to each one of the scattered groups of country-people, which we encountered every quarter of a mile for the first hour of our route, wending their way toward the village church--but, when we reached the forest-mantled road which clombe the mountain, making the arched woods resound to many a jovial catch or merry hunting chorus.
Mounted sublime on an arm-chair lashed to the forepart of the pig-box, sat Timothy in state--his legs well muffled in a noble scarlet-fringed buffalo skin, and his body encased in his livery top-coat--the setters and the spaniels crouching most meekly at his feet, and the two noble bucks--the fellow on whose steaks we had already made an inroad, having been left as fat Tom's portion--securely corded down upon a pile of straw, with their sublime and antlered crests drooping all spiritless and humble over the backboard, toward the frozen soil which crashed and rattled under the ponderous hoofs of the magnificent roan horse--Tom's special favorite--which, though full seventeen hands high, and heavy in proportion; yet showing a good strain of blood, trotted away with his huge load at full ten miles an hour.
Plunging into the deep recesses of the Greenwoods, hill after hill we scaled, a toilsome length of stony steep ascents, almost precipitous, until we reached the back-bone of the mountain ridge--a rugged, bare, sharp edge of granite rock, without a particle of soil upon it, diving down at an angle not much less than forty-five degrees into a deep ravine, through which thundered and roared a flashing torrent. This fearful descent overpast, and that in perfect safety, we rolled merrily away down hill, till we reached Colonel Beam's tavern, a neat, low-browed, Dutch, stone farmhouse, situate in an angle scooped out of a green hill-side, with half a dozen tall and shadowy elms before it--a bright crystal stream purling along into the horse-trough through a miniature aqueduct of hollowed logs, and a clear cold spring in front of it, with half a score of fat and lazy trout floating in its transparent waters.
A hearty welcome, and a no less hearty meal having been here encountered and despatched, we rattled off again, through laden orchards and rich meadows; passed the confluence of the three bright rivers which issue from their three mountain gorges, to form, by their junction, the fairest of New Jersey's rivers, the broad Passaic; reached the small village noted for rum-drinking and quarter racing--high Pompton--thence by the Preakness mountain, and Mose Canouze's tavern--whereat, in honor of Tom's friend, a worthy of the self-same kidney with himself, we paused awhile--to Paterson, the filthiest town, situate on one of the loveliest rivers in the world, and famous only for the possession, in the person of its Catholic priest, of the finest scholar and best fellow in America, whom we unluckily found not at home, and therefore tasted not, according to friend Harry's promise, the splendid Innishowen which graces at all times his hospitable board.
Eight o'clock brought us to Hoboken, where, by good luck, the ferry boat lay ready--and nine o'clock had not struck when we three sat down once again about a neat small supper-table, before a bright coal fire, in Archer's snuggery--Tom glorying in the prospect of the races on the morrow, and I regretting that I had brought to its conclusion--MY FIRST WEEK IN THE WOODLANDS
THE WARWICK WOODLANDS: ON A SECOND VISIT
THE WAYSIDE INN
On a still evening in October, Frank Forester and Harry Archer were sitting at the open window of a neat country tavern, in a sequestered nook of Rockland County, looking out upon as beautiful a view as ever gladdened the eyes of wandering amateur or artist.
The house was a large old-fashioned stone mansion, certainly not of later date than the commencement of the revolution; and probably had been, in its better days, the manor-house of some considerable proprietor--the windows were of a form very unusual in the States, opening like doors, with heavy wooden mullions and small lattices, while the walls were so thick as to form a deep embrasure, provided with a cushioned windowseat; the parlor, in which the friends had taken up their temporary domicile, contained two of these pleasant lounges, the larger looking out due south upon the little garden, with the road before it, and, beyond the road, a prospect, of which more anon--the other commanding a space of smooth green turf in front of the stables, whereon our old acquaintance, Timothy, was leading to and fro a pair of smoking horses. The dark green drag, with all its winter furniture of gaily decorated bearskins, stood half-seen beneath the low-arched wagon-shed.
The walls of the room--the best room of the tavern--were paneled with the dark glossy wood of the black cherry, and a huge mantel-piece of the same material, took up at least one-half of the side opposite the larger window, while on the hearth below reposed a glowing bed of red-hot hickory ashes, a foot at least in depth, a huge log of that glorious fuel blazing upon the massive andirons. Two large, deep gun-cases, a leathern magazine of shot, and sundry canisters of diamond gunpowder, Brough's, were displayed on a long table under the end window--a four-horse whip, and two fly-rods in India-rubber cases, stood in the chimney-corner; while reveling in the luxurious warmth of the piled hearth lay basking on the rug, three exquisitely formed Blenheim spaniels of the large breed--short-legged and bony, with ears that almost swept the ground as they stood upright, and coats as soft and lustrous as floss silk.