A  forester  here  has  requested  me"  to  give  it  a  name,
promising  it  shall  keep  it. If  you  will  send  me  one,
I  will  see  to  the  baptism,  and  you  shall  have  the
honor  of  naming  a  mountain ;  which  is  far  more  im-
posing than  giving  a  name  to  a  baby. It  deserves  a
good  one,  for  insignificant  as  it  may  seem,  to  plant
your  feet  on  an  "  owl's  head,"  it  looks  off  on  a  pro-
spect that  would  make  your  heart  stand  still  in  your
bosom. Look  away  toward  that  distant  horizon  !  In
its  broad  sweep  round  the  heavens,  it  takes  in  nearly
four  hundred  miles,  while  between  slumbers  an  ocean
— but  it  is  an  ocean  of  tree  tops. Conceive,  if  you
can,  this  vast  expanse  stretching  on  and  spreading
away,  till  the  bright  green  becomes  shaded  into  a  deep
black,  with  not  a  sound  to  break  the  solitude,  and  not
a  hand's  breadth  of  land  in  view  throughout  the
whole. It  is  a  vast  forest-ocean,  with  mountain-
ridges  for  billows,  rolling  smoothly  and  gently  on  like


GLORIOUS    PROSPECT. 145

the  subsiding  swell  of  a  storm. I  stand  on  the  edge
of  a  precipice  which  throws  its  naked  wall  far  down  to
the  tops  of  the  fir  trees  below,  and  look  off  on  this
surpassingly  wild  and  strange  spectacle. The  life  that
villages,  and  towns,  and  cultivated  fields  give  to  a
landscape  is  not  here,  neither  is  there  the  barrenness
and  savageness  of  the  view  from  Tahawus. It  is  all
vegetation — luxuriant,  gigantic  vegetation  ;  but  man
has  had  no  hand  in  it. It  stands  as  the  Almighty
made  it,  majestic  and  silent,  save  when  the  wind  or
the  storm  breathes  on  it,  waking  up  its  myriad  low-
toned  voices,  which  sing

"  The  wild  profound  eternal  bass
In  nature's  anthem."

Oh,  how  still  and  solemn  it  slumbers  below  me  ;
while  far  away  yonder,  to  the  left,  shoot  up  into  the
heavens  the  massive  peaks  of  the  Adirondack  chain,
mellowed  here,  by  the  distance,  into  beauty. Yet
there  is  one  relief  to  this  vast  forest  solitude — like
gemxS  sleeping  in  a  moss  bed,  lakes  are  everywhere
glittering  in  the  bright  sunshine. 