"Never;" said AGASSIZ, "and I'll go and see it the very day I reach the city."
| The next day Mr. P. made the ascent of High Peak. Everybody does that; and so, with a small party, Mr. P. started out--gaily enough. On reaching the place where the heavy climbing begins, they met the New York Fat Men's Club coming down, and the peculiar appearance of the members deterred most of Mr. P.'s party from attempting the great feat. It was proposed that Mr. P. alone should make the ascent. He assented--and being thus, in a manner, ordered up--went it alone. It was not an easy thing--that climbing of High Peak--as any one will be apt to conclude after attentively studying this picture of the ascent. But an indomitable will can conquer all obstacles that are not too much for it, and at last Mr. P. balanced himself on the extreme point of the Peak. The view was so glorious that he instantly hastened down to inform his companions that they too must not miss it upon any account. Several of them, JOHN BINGHAM, of Ohio; SIMON CAMERON, and HENRY WILSON, of Massachusetts, objected very strongly to the proposed climb, as they were never in the habit of occupying very high ground. But Mr. P. insisted that they would there obtain what they needed more than anything else in the world, and he begged their pardon if he referred to extended views. So at last they all went up, and when they reached the topmost point Mr. P. placed himself so as to cut off his companions' retreat, and then he delivered to them a discourse that they will not soon forget. |
| When from his remarks, and the practical illustration which lay beneath them, they had been made aware that it was a great country of varied interests, and not a few little sections, for which they should legislate, Mr. P. let them down. The following morning, after testing an admirable specimen of horn-blending--offered him by Mr. BEACH, and not Prof. AGASSIZ, Mr. P. set out alone for the Kauterskill Falls. His trip was wonderful. He went in a wagon. The scene was sublime. At one place he came across a bevy of New York artists sketching the scenery, and their sensations when he suddenly cut off their north light must have been peculiar. But they regained their accustomed pallor as the old horse struggled manfully, and the danger passed away. At last, after an exciting ride over roads that had perhaps never been trod before by human wheels, Mr. P. reached the great Kauterskill Falls--that lovely freak of nature which has been celebrated in all ages, and of which the poet says: |
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"The noble splash Niagara gives, In thee, fair Kauterskill, still lives; All but the mighty roar and size. And clamor of wild hackmen's cries." |
This view of the Falls is from a sketch by Mr. P. himself.
(He will send a beautiful chromo of it--seventeen and a fourteenth by eighteen and thirteen fifteenths of an inch--life size,--and a copy of the paper for nine years, for thirty-four dollars and a quarter--postage paid.)