"The river sends forth glad sounds and tripping o'er its
bed
Of pebbly sands or leaping down the rocks,
Seems with continuous laughter to rejoice
In its own being."
How these songful streams beguile you to the woodland and through tangles of tall ferns and grasses, until they emerge in some meadow where they loiter among the tall sedges and iris or "lose themselves in a tangle of alder to emerge again in sweet surprise, then as if remembering an important errand, they bound away like a school boy who has loitered along the road all morning until he hears the last bell ring."
We have heard of Artists' brook in the Saco valley in New England, but here every stream is clothed in exquisite tangles of foliage and light. The pleasant reaches and graceful curves through charming glens that are part in shadow and part in light, what artist ever caught their subtile charm? Over the rough boulders draped with moss and lichens we catch the mellow gleam of light as it filters through the fluttering birch leaves or falls upon the lovely gray bolls of aged beech trees. Then they flow more slowly over some level stretch or stop to cool themselves in the shadows of some graceful elms that rear their green fountains of verdure above them. What joy it brings to you as you sit musing by their sides, listening to their songs.
They all are excellent musicians, but we fear they are very poor mathematicians, for how little they seem to know about straight lines. But all are expert landscape gardeners, making graceful loops and curves as they go meandering on their songful way. How like a mountain road they are, "sinuous as a swallow's flight." Often we have followed them as the sycamores and willows do, drawn by an irresistible charm and found new and rare delight in every turn. In places they rest in shady pools or pour their wealth of sparkling waters over ledges of rocks or seek deep coverts where tall ferns wave and the birch "dreams golden dreams where no sunlight comes."
In regions as lovely as the highlands of New York, you are reminded many times of that sweet singer who dwelt at Sunnyside, and wrought the legends of these hills into the most exquisite forms of beauty.
Out over the hills we beheld one of Nature's poems of twilight. The vapors seemed to be gathering over the high ridges, but the western sky was almost clear. It was evident that Nature was preparing for a magnificent farewell today. Soon the west was overrun with a golden flush that began to reveal a pink as delicate as peach bloom and the vapors began to glow with ineffable splendor.
As we watched the fantastic cloud-wreathed summits whose colors were altogether indescribable, we noted the intensity of coloring and rapid kaleidoscopic changes they underwent. Suddenly a veil of mist would shut out the view for a time, then grow luminous in the evening light, then fade; revealing new and more glorious combinations of color until the clear outlines of the mountains were etched against the sky. Again we asked ourselves the perplexing question, which mountain scene is loveliest? Before us rose visions of the airy forms of the Alps, the beautiful and majestic wall of the Pyranees, the dark, forbidding masses of the Eifel, and then the various ranges of the Appalachians.
The answer was that all are beautiful, each possessing its own peculiar charm. All are ours to enjoy as long as we behold their outlines; yes, longer, for no one can erase them from our memory. Each is loveliest for the place it occupies. The Catskills could not well change places with the White mountains or the Berkshire hills with the Blue ridge, for the Creator has fashioned woodland, valley, and river to harmonize. Why choose between the melody of the hermit and woodthrush? Both are gifted singers whose notes, rising serene in far mountain haunts, touch our spirits like a prayer. The melody of the woodthrush is not so wild, so ethereal and so far away as the hermit's, but when he rings his vesper bell in his divine contralto voice, no other sound in Nature can excel it. We have heard many nightingales and skylarks singing, but their songs do not attain that depth of soul-thrilling harmony found alone in the song of the thrush. So, too, here in the lovely Catskill region, you will see a kind of beauty that nowhere else can be obtained.
The hostess told us how on a mild March morning, she had witnessed the funeral procession escorting the mortal remains of John Burroughs over this scenic highway. She said she saw Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford gazing out over the lovely hills their dear departed friend loved so well. It was not with sadness we listened to her words, for we know this gentle lover of Nature had only wandered a little farther to lovelier hills and fairer scenes.
Morning dawned, bringing the mingled blessings of sunlight and song to this lovely glen. Rain had fallen during the night, making the grass take on new life and washing the leaves of every particle of dust. How they reflected the morning light! How fresh and new all Nature appeared after the cleansing she received!