Sunday.—My father has brought us up to so scrupulous an observance of the Puritan Sabbath, that I was rather surprised, this morning, by his proposition to drive over to the Flume. His equanimity had been disturbed by finding one of the horses that had brought us here, seemingly in a dying condition. He was one of the 'team' that had taken us on to Mount Willard, and my father had then prophesied that he would suffer from the driver's neglect to blanket him. He was in nowise comforted by the verification of his 'I told you so!' but walked to and fro from the stable, watching the remedies administered, and vituperating all youth as negligent, reckless, and hard-hearted. I think it was half to get rid of this present annoyance that he proposed the drive to the Flume, saying, as he did so: 'These mountains are a great temple, my children; it matters not much where we stand to worship.'
We stopped for a half-hour at a little fall just by the roadside, called by the mountain-folk 'The Basin,' and by fine people, 'The Emerald Bowl,' a name suggested by the exquisite hue of the water, which truly is of as soft and bright a green as an emerald's. The stream has curiously cut its way through a rock, whitened, smoothed, and almost polished by its fretting, which overhangs the deep, circular bowl like a canopy, or rather, like a half-uplifted lid, its inner side being mottled and colored like a beautiful shell. The stream glides over the brim of its sylvan bowl and goes on its way rejoicing. We loitered here for a half-hour watching the golden and crimson leaves that had dropped in, and that lay in rich mosaics in the eddies of the stream.
The morning was misty, and the clouds were driven low athwart the mountains, forming, as Alice well said, pedestals on which their lofty heads were upreared. No wonder that people in mountainous and misty regions become imaginative, even superstitious. These forms, falling, rising, floating, over the eternal hills, susceptible of heavenly brightness, and deepening into the gloomiest of earth's shadows, spur on fancy and fear to act at will.
I shall not attempt, my friend, to describe this loveliest of all five-mile drives, from the Profile House to the Flume under the Eagle's Cliff, and old 'Prospero,' and beside his lake, and the Emerald Bowl, and then finished by the most curious, perhaps the most beautiful passage we have yet seen in the mountains—'The Flume'—thus called, probably, from a homely association with the race-way of a mill. The ravine is scarcely more than a fissure, probably made by the gradual wearing of the stream. I am told the place resembles the Bath of Pfeffers, in Switzerland. That world's wonder can scarcely be more romantically beautiful than our Flume.
The small stream, which is now reduced to a mere rill by the prolonged droughts, forces its way between walls of rock, upheaved in huge blocks like regular mason-work. Where you enter the passage, it may be some hundred yards wide, but it gradually contracts till you may almost touch either side with your outstretched arms. I only measured the height of the rock-walls with my eye—and a woman's measure is not very accurate—it may be one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet. Tall trees at the summits interlace, and where they have fallen, bridge the passage from one side to the other. Rich, velvety mosses cover the rocks like a royal garment, and wild vines, almost glittering in their autumnal brightness, lay on them like rich embroidery, so that we might say, as truly as was said of the magnificence of oriental nature, that 'Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.'
But how, dear Susan, am I to show the picture to you—the sun glancing on the brilliant forest above us, and the indescribable beauty of the shrubs—golden, and crimson, and fine purple—that shot out of the crevices of the rocks? It is idle to write or talk about it; but only let me impress on you that this enchanting coloring is limited to the first days of October. I am afraid it may be said of scenery as has been said of lover's tête-à-tête talks, that it resembles those delicate fruits which are exquisite where they are plucked, but incapable of transmission. As my father can never enjoy any thing selfishly, he was particularly pleased with the nice little foot-path won from the mountain-side, and the frequent foot-bridges that indicate the numbers that have taken this wild walk before us. My father fancies he enjoys our security from the summer swarms, but the social principle born in him masters his theories.
Alice and I were amused this morning, just at the highest access of our enthusiasm, while we stood under a huge rock wedged in between the two walls, on looking back, to see my father sitting on a bench arranged as a point of sight, not gazing, but listening profoundly, his graceful person and beautiful old head inclined in an attitude of the deepest attention to a loafer who had unceremoniously joined us, and who, as my father afterwards rather reluctantly confessed, was recounting to him the particulars of his recent wooing of a third Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown, or whatever might be her name. And when we returned to our quarters at the Profile House, and came down to dinner, we met our landlord at the door, his face even more than usually effulgent with smiles.
'There has a lady and gentleman come in,' he said, 'and your father has no objection to their dining at table with you?'
His voice was slightly deprecatory; I think he didn't quite give us credit for our father's affability. Of course we acquiesced, and were afterwards edified by our brief acquaintance with the strangers, a mother and son, who had come up from the petty cares of city life for a quiet ramble among the hills to find here
'A peace no other season knows.'