Passing the ravine, where the immortal Rip Van Winkle played his game of nine-pins with the wizards of that neighborhood, and quaffed huge draughts of those bewildering flagons, which made him sleep for years, I flung myself impatiently from the 'quarter-deck' of the postillion whose place I had shared; I grasped that goodly globe of gold and ivory which heads my customary cane—the present of 'My Hon. friend' S——, and which once drew into itself the sustenance of life from that hallowed mound which guards the dust of Washington—and pushed gaily on, determined to pause not, until my weary feet stood on the Platform. The road was smooth and good; the air refreshing and pure, beyond description. The lungs play there without an effort; it is a luxury to breathe. How holy was the stillness! Not a sound invaded the solemn air; it was like inhaling the sanctity of the empyrean. The forest tops soon began to stir with a mighty wind. I looked, and on both sides of the road there were trees whose branches had been broken, as if by the wings of some rushing tempest. It was the havoc of winter snows.
There is a wonderful deception in the approach to the Mountain-House, which, when discovered, will strike the traveller with amazement. At one point of the road, where the mansion which is to terminate your pilgrimage heaves its white form in view, (you have seen it from the river for nearly half a day,) it seems not farther than a hundred rods, and hangs apparently on the verge of a stupendous crag over your head; the road turns again, it is out of sight, and the summits, near its locus in quo, are nearly three miles off. The effect is wonderful. The mountain is growing upon you.
I continued to ascend, slowly, but with patient steps, and with a flow of spirit which I cannot describe. Looking occasionally to the east, I saw a line of such parti-colored clouds, (as then I deemed them,) yellow, green, and purple, silver-laced, and violet-bordered, that it meseemed I never viewed the like kaleidoscopic presentments. All this time, I wondered that I had seen no land for many a weary mile.
Hill after hill, mere ridges of the mountain, was attained—summit after summit surmounted—and yet it seemed to me that the house was as far off as ever. Finally it appeared, and a-nigh; to me the 'earth's one sanctuary.' I reached it; my name was on the book; the queries of the publican, as to 'how many coach-loads were behind,' (symptoms of a yearning for the almighty dollar, even in this holy of nature's holies) were answered, and I stood on the Platform.
Good Reader!—expect me not to describe the indescribable. I feel now, while memory is busy in my brain, in the silence of my library, calling up that vision to my mind, much as I did when I leaned upon my staff before that omnipotent picture, and looked abroad upon its God-written magnitude. It was a vast and changeful, a majestic, an interminable landscape; a fairy, grand, and delicately-colored scene, with rivers for its lines of reflection; with highlands and the vales of states for its shadowings, and far-off mountains for its frame. Those parti-colored and varying clouds I fancied I had seen as I ascended, were but portions of the scene. All colors of the rainbow—all softness of harvest-field, and forest, and distant cities, and the towns that simply dotted the Hudson—and far beyond where that noble river, diminished to a brooklet, rolled its waters, there opened mountain after mountain, vale after vale, state after state, heaved against the horizon, to the north-east and south, in impressive and sublime confusion; while still beyond, in undulating ridges, filled with all hues of light and shade, coquetting with the cloud, rolled the rock-ribbed and ancient frame of this dim diorama. As the sun went down, the houses and cities diminished to dots; the evening guns of the national anniversary came booming up from the valley of the Hudson; the bonfires blazed along the peaks of distant mountains, and from the suburbs of countless villages along the river; while in the dim twilight,
'From coast to coast, and from town to town,
You could see all the white sails gleaming down.'
The steam-boats, hastening to and fro, vomited their fires upon the air, and the circuit of unnumbered miles sent up its sights and sounds, from the region below, over which the vast shadows of the mountains were stealing.
Just before the sun dropped behind the west, his slant beams poured over the south mountain, and fell upon a wide sea of feathery clouds, which were sweeping midway along its form, obscuring the vale below. I sought an eminence in the neighborhood, and with the sun at my back, saw a giant form depicted in a misty halo on the clouds below. He was identified—insubstantial but extensive Shape! I stretched forth my hand, and the giant spectre waved his shadowy arm over the whole county of Dutchess, through the misty atmosphere; while just at his supernatural coat-tail, a shower of light played upon the highlands, verging toward West Point, on the river, which are to the eye, from the Mountain-House, level slips of shore, that seem scarce so gross as knolls of the smallest size.