Letters of a Traveller; Or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America

by William Cullen Bryant

But I should mention that before leaving Mackinaw, we did not fail to visit the principal curiosities of the place, the Sugar Loaf Rock, a remarkable rock in the middle of the island, of a sharp conical form, rising above the trees by which it is surrounded, and lifting the stunted birches on its shoulders higher than they, like a tall fellow holding up a little boy to overlook a crowd of men—and the Arched Rock on the shore. The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and through the opening spanned by the arch of the rock I saw the long waves, rolled up by a fresh wind, come one after another out of the obscurity, and break with roaring on the beach.

The path along the brow of the precipice and among the evergreens, by which this rock is reached, is singularly wild, but another which leads to it along the shore is no less picturesque—passing under impending cliffs and overshadowing cedars, and between huge blocks and pinnacles of rock.

I spoke in one of my former letters of the manifest fate of Mackinaw, which is to be a watering-place. I can not see how it is to escape this destiny. People already begin to repair to it for health and refreshment from the southern borders of Lake Michigan. Its climate during the summer months is delightful; there is no air more pure and elastic, and the winds of the south and southwest, which are so hot on the prairies, arrive here tempered to a grateful coolness by the waters over which they have swept. The nights are always, in the hottest season, agreeably cool, and the health of the place is proverbial. The world has not many islands so beautiful as Mackinaw, as you may judge from the description I have already given of parts of it. The surface is singularly irregular, with summits of rock and pleasant hollows, open glades of pasturage and shady nooks. To some, the savage visitors, who occasionally set up their lodges on its beach, as well as on that of the surrounding islands, and paddle their canoes in its waters, will be an additional attraction. I can not but think with a kind of regret on the time which, I suppose is near at hand, when its wild and lonely woods will be intersected with highways, and filled with cottages and boarding-houses.

Letter XXXVIII.

An Excursion to the Water Gap.

Stroudsberg, Monroe Co., Penn. October 23, 1846.

I reached this place last evening, having taken Easton in my way. Did it ever occur to you, in passing through New Jersey, how much the northern part of the state is, in some respects, like New York, and how much the southern part resembles Pennsylvania? For twenty miles before reaching Easton, you see spacious dwelling-houses, often of stone, substantially built, and barns of the size of churches, and large farms with extensive woods of tall trees, as in Pennsylvania, where the right of soil has not undergone so many subdivisions as with us. I was shown in Warren county, in a region apparently of great fertility, a farm which was said to be two miles square. It belonged to a farmer of German origin, whose comfortable mansion stood by the way, and who came into the state many years ago, a young man.

"I have heard him say," said a passenger, "that when his father brought him out with his young wife into Warren county, and set him down upon what then appeared a barren little farm, now a part of his large and productive estate, his heart failed him. However he went to work industriously, practicing the strictest economy, and by applying lime copiously to the soil made it highly fertile. It is lime which makes this region the richest land in New Jersey; the farmers find limestone close at hand, burn it in their kilns, and scatter it on the surface. The person of whom I speak took off large crops from his little farm, and as soon as he had any money beforehand, he added a few acres more, so that it gradually grew to its present size. Rich as he is, he is a worthy man; his sons, who are numerous, are all fine fellows, not a scape-grace among them, and he has settled them all on farms around him."

Easton, which we entered soon after dark, is a pretty little town of seven thousand inhabitants, much more substantially built than towns of the same size in this country. Many of the houses are of stone, and to the sides of some of them you see the ivy clinging and hiding the masonry with a veil of evergreen foliage. The middle of the streets is unpaved and very dusty, but the broad flagging on the sides, under the windows of the houses, is sedulously swept. The situation of the place is uncommonly picturesque. If ever the little borough of Easton shall grow into a great town, it will stand on one of the most commanding sites in the world, unless its inhabitants shall have spoiled it by improvements. The Delaware, which forms the eastern bound of the borough, approaches it from the north through high wooded banks, and flows away to join the Susquehanna between craggy precipices. On the south side, the Lehigh comes down through a deep, verdant hollow, and on the north the Bushkill winds through a glen shaded with trees, on the rocky banks of which is one of the finest drives in the world. In the midst of the borough rises a crag as lofty as that on which Stirling Castle is built—in Europe, it would most certainly have been crowned with its castle; steep and grassy on one side, and precipitous and rocky on the other, where it overhangs the Bushkill. The college stands on a lofty eminence, overlooking the dwellings and streets, but it is an ugly building, and has not a tree to conceal even in part its ugliness. Besides these, are various other eminences in the immediate vicinity of this compact little town, which add greatly to its beauty.

We set out the next morning for the Delaware Water Gap, following the road along the Delaware, which is here uncommonly beautiful. The steep bank is mostly covered with trees sprouting from the rocky shelves, and below is a fringe of trees between the road and the river. A little way from the town, the driver pointed out, in the midst of the stream, a long island of loose stones and pebbles, without a leaf or stem of herbage.