Listen to those voiceful currents of air, traversing the vast profound below the Platform! What a mighty circumference do they sweep! Over how many towns, and dwellings, and streams, and incommunicable woods! Murmurs of the dark, sources and awakeners of sublime imagination, swell from afar. You have thoughts of eternity and power here, which shall haunt you evermore. But we must be early stirrers in the morning. Let us to bed.
You can lie on your pillow at Catskill, and see the god of day look upon you from behind the pinnacles of the White Mountains in New-Hampshire, hundreds of miles away. Noble prospect! As the great orb heaves up in ineffable grandeur, he seems rising from beneath you, and you fancy that you have attained an elevation where may be seen the motion of the world. No intervening land to limit the view, you seem suspended in mid-air, without one obstacle to check the eye. The scene is indescribable. The chequered and interminable vale, sprinkled with groves, and lakes, and towns, and streams; the mountains afar off, swelling tumultuously heavenward, like waves of the ocean, some incarnadined with radiance, others purpled in shade; all these, to use the language of an auctioneer's advertisement, 'are too tedious to mention, but may be seen on the premises.' I know of but one picture which will give the reader an idea of this ethereal spot. It was the view which the angel Michael was polite enough, one summer morning, to point out to Adam, from the highest hill of Paradise:
'His eye might there command wherever stood
City of old or modern fame, the seat
Of mightiest empire, from the destined walls
Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaïan Can,
And Sarmachand by Oxus, Temir's throne,
To Paquin of Sinæan kings; and thence
To Agra and Labor of great Mogul
Down to the golden Chersonese; or where
The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since
In Hizpahan; or where the Russian Ksar
In Mosco; or the Sultan in Bizance,
Turchestan born; nor could his eye not ken
The empire of Negus, to his utmost port,
Erocco; and the less maritime kings
Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind,
And Sofala, thought Ophir, to the realm
Of Congo and Angola, farthest south;
Or thence from Niger flood to Atlas' mount,
The kingdoms of Almanzor, Fez, and Suz,
Morocco, and Algier, and Tremizen;
On Europe thence, and where Rome was to sway
The world; in spirit perhaps he also saw
Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume,
(And Texas too, great Houston's seat—who knows?)
And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat
Of Atabalipa; and yet unspoiled
Guiana, whose great city Geyron's sons
Call El Dorado.'
Of the falls, sooth to say, little can be ejaculated in the eulogistic way. The cataract is only 'on hand' for a part of the time. It is kept in a dam, and let down for two shillings. The demand for the article has sometimes exceeded the supply, especially in dry weather. We quote the sales, as per register, while there, at perhaps some three hundred yards. Oh, Mercury! Scenery by the square foot! Sublimity by the quintal!
It looks to be a perilous enterprise, to descend the Catskills. You feel, as you commence the 'facilis descensus,' (what an unhackneyed phrase, to be sure!) very much the sort of sensation probably experienced by Parachute Cocking, whose end was so shocking. The wheels of the coach are shod with the preparation of iron slippers, which are essential to a hold-up; and as you bowl and grate along, with wilderness-chasms and a brawling stream mayhap on one hand, and horrid masses of stone seemingly ready to tumble upon you on the other—the far plain stretching like the sea beneath you, in the mists of the morning—your emotions are fidgetty. You are not afraid—not you, indeed! Catch you at such folly! No; but you wish most devoutly that you were some nine miles down, notwithstanding—and are looking eagerly for that consummation.
We paused just long enough at the base of the mountain, to water the cattle, and hear a bit of choice grammar from the landlord; a burly, big individual, 'careless of the objective case,' and studious of ease, in bags of tow-cloth, (trowsers by courtesy,) and a roundabout of the same material; the knees of the unmentionables apparently greened by kneeling humbly at the lactiferous udder of his only cow, day by day. He addressed 'the gentleman that driv' us down:'