The present autumn is, I must say, in regard to the coloring of the forests, one of the shabbiest and least brilliant I remember to have seen in this country, almost as sallow and dingy in its hues as an autumn in Europe. But here in the Water Gap it was not without some of its accustomed brightness of tints—the sugar-maple with its golden leaves, and the water-maple with its foliage of scarlet, contrasted with the intense green of the hemlock-fir, the pine, the rosebay-laurel, and the mountain-laurel, which here grow in the same thicket, while the ground below was carpeted with humbler evergreens, the aromatic wintergreen, and the trailing arbutus. The Water Gap is about a mile in length, and near its northern entrance an excellent hotel, the resort of summer visitors, stands on a cliff which rises more than a hundred feet almost perpendicularly from the river. From this place the eye follows the Water Gap to where mountains shut in one behind another, like the teeth of a saw, and between them the Delaware twines out of sight.
Before the hotel a fine little boy of about two years of age was at play. The landlord showed us on the calf of the child's leg two small lurid spots, about a quarter of an inch apart. "That," said he, "is the bite of a copper-head snake."
We asked when this happened.
"It was last summer," answered he; "the child was playing on the side of the road, when he was heard to cry, and seen to make for the house. As soon as he came, my wife called my attention to what she called a scratch on his leg. I examined it, the spot was already purple and hard, and the child was crying violently. I knew it to be the bite of a copper-head, and immediately cut it open with a sharp knife, making the blood to flow freely and washing the part with water. At the same time we got a yerb" (such was his pronunciation) "on the hills, which some call lion-heart, and others snake-head. We steeped this yerb in milk which we made him drink. The doctor had been sent for, and when he came applied hartshorn; but I believe that opening the wound and letting the blood flow was the most effectual remedy. The leg was terribly swollen, and for ten days we thought the little fellow in great danger, but after that he became better and finally recovered."
"How do you know that it was a copper-head that bit him?"
"We sent to the place where he was at play, found the snake, and killed it. A violent rain had fallen just before, and it had probably washed him down from the mountain-side."
"The boy appears very healthy now."
"Much better than before; he was formerly delicate, and troubled with an eruption, but that has disappeared, and he has become hardy and fond of the open air."
We dined at the hotel and left the Water Gap. As we passed out of its jaws we met a man in a little wagon, carrying behind him the carcass of a deer he had just killed. They are hunted, at this time of the year, and killed in considerable numbers in the extensive forests to the north of this place. A drive of four miles over hill and valley brought us to Stroudsburg, on the banks of the Pocano—a place of which I shall speak in my next letter.