There were a few farms scattered along at
different elevations, each commanding a fine prospect of the
mountains to the north, and a stream ran down the middle of the
valley on which near the head there was a mill. It seemed a road
for the pilgrim to enter upon who would climb to the gates of
heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, and now over the brook on a
slight bridge, still gradually ascending all the while with a
sort of awe, and filled with indefinite expectations as to what
kind of inhabitants and what kind of nature I should come to at
last. It now seemed some advantage that the earth was uneven,
for one could not imagine a more noble position for a farm-house
than this vale afforded, farther from or nearer to its head, from
a glen-like seclusion overlooking the country at a great
elevation between these two mountain walls.
It reminded me of the homesteads of the Huguenots, on Staten
Island, off the coast of New Jersey. The hills in the interior
of this island, though comparatively low, are penetrated in
various directions by similar sloping valleys on a humble scale,
gradually narrowing and rising to the centre, and at the head of
these the Huguenots, who were the first settlers, placed their
houses quite within the land, in rural and sheltered places, in
leafy recesses where the breeze played with the poplar and the
gum-tree, from which, with equal security in calm and storm, they
looked out through a widening vista, over miles of forest and
stretching salt marsh, to the Huguenot's Tree, an old elm on the
shore at whose root they had landed, and across the spacious
outer bay of New York to Sandy Hook and the Highlands of
Neversink, and thence over leagues of the Atlantic, perchance to
some faint vessel in the horizon, almost a day's sail on her
voyage to that Europe whence they had come.
Pages:
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278