You look down three thousand feet into a valley, stretching over an hundred miles in one direction, and more than half that distance in the other, in the midst of which runs the river Hudson, covered at this season with craft of various descriptions, which, from that great elevation, seem mimic boats upon a rivulet. At your feet a rocky precipice descends perpendicularly, the depth of which it is impossible to estimate, as it has never been explored, and loses itself, to the eye of the gazer from the summit, amidst the rude and tangled masses of primeval forest, stretching downward to the distant valley, verdantly sloping to the river's banks. This is the scene presented to the sojourner at the Mountain House, and its many changes, like those of a panorama, render the prospect intensely interesting, in every aspect of the weather.
Having enjoyed this first gush of picturesque beauty, you are reminded, by the daily arrival of the proper vehicles at the door, of a scene of yet more mingled romance,—the cascades of Canterskill. These lie at the termination of a delightful woodland path, along the side of which flows a smooth and quiet stream, taking its rise in a lake upon which you bestow, as you pass, a gratified glance. Following this rivulet you come suddenly to the brink of a tremendous precipice, shelving down between woody mountains, with rough rocky ravines, seemingly unattainable by human feet. But your guide holds a clue, following which you soon attain a level formed of sandstone and gray-wacke, and await the fall of the water from the edge of the precipice, one hundred and seventy-five feet above. As the water at this season runs low, the proprietor has taken the precaution to dam it up above the precipice, and so lets it fall when a company of visiters demand it. This fall is very beautiful. No obstacle intervenes to break the silvery sheet as it descends, and, as it comes over the rough edges of the rock at top, it assumes a form as of feathery spray, which is sometimes so thin and vapory, as to float away without reaching the level at all. Descending eighty feet farther, you see the second fall, the termination of which is even more grand and savage than the upper level. Here you may see both falls at the same instant, and from a situation which challenges another attribute of grandeur and sublimity to enhance the perfect enchantment of the scene.
We lingered at Catskill several days in a sort of dreamy state of quiet enjoyment,—now fishing, now roving among the woods, now stretched on the brink of the Pine Orchard looking listlessly down upon the impenetrable forests, the smiling, sunny valleys, or the silver thread of water, on which seemed
“———the tall anchoring bark
Diminished to her cock,—her cock a bouy
Almost too small for sight”
and where the many steamers that smoke their daily course along the Hudson, seemed like some tiny utensil discharging its culinary office. There would we gaze upon the lifting fog-banks at morning, watching the sunbeams as they gradually struggled forth to irradiate, first the distant valley, and so diffusing thin yellow glory upward and upward, until, at length, we stood in the midst of their effulgence, and saw their vapory veil floating away over our heads, like gossamer web of the dew spider.
Nor were our household attractions few or powerless. Many visiters were at the Orchard, but there was a coterie of young ladies with their brothers and husbands from the neighboring village of the Catskill, from whose good offices and gentle hospitality we derived a great deal of additional enjoyment. Music, books, and conversation drove away ennui during those hours, when the inclemency of the weather or fatigue compelled us to suspend our out-of-door amusements, and we were thus enabled to enjoy the everlasting scenery of the Catskill, under auspices the most favorable.
New Lebanon Springs next attracted us. They lie about twenty-seven miles from Hudson, which is ten miles up the river on the opposite side, whither we went by the same steamer that had landed us at Catskill, and thence by stages to New Lebanon.