| | 1 | Author: | Thompson
Daniel P.
(Daniel Pierce)
1795-1868 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | May Martin, or, The money diggers  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | In one of those rough and secluded
towns, situated in the heart of the Green
Mountains, is a picturesque little valley,
containing, perhaps, something over two
thousand acres of improvable land, formerly
known in that section of the country
by the appallation of The Harwood Settlement,
so called from the name of the original
proprietor of the valley. As if formed
by some giant hand, literally scooping
out the solid mountain and moulding it
into shape and proportion, the whole valley
presents the exact resemblance of an
oval basin whose sides are composed of a
continuous ridge of lofty hills bordering it
around, and broken only by two narrow
outlets at its northerly and southerly extremities.
The eastern part of this valley
is covered by one of those transparent
ponds, which are so beautifully characteristic
of Vermontane scenery, laying in the
form of a crescent, and extending along
beneath the closely encircling mountains
on the east nearly the whole length of the
interior landscape, forever mirroring up
from its darkly bright surface, faintly or
vividly, as cloud or sunshine may prevail,
the motley groups of the sombre forest,
where the more slender and softer tinted
beech and maple seem struggling for a
place among the rough and shaggy forms
of the sturdy hemlock, peering head over
head, up the steeply ascending cliffs of
the woody precipice. While here and
there, at distant intervals, towering high
over all, stands the princely pine, waving
its majestic head in solitary grandeur, a
striking but melancholy type of the aboriginal
A*
Indian still occasionally found lingering
among us, the only remaining representative
of a once powerful race, which
have receded before the march of civilized
men, now destined no more to flourish
the lords of the plain and the mountain.
This pond discharges its surplus
waters at its southern extremity in a pure
stream of considerable size, which here,
as if in wild glee at its escape from the embrace
of its parent waters, leaps at once,
from a state of the most unruffled tranquility,
over a ledgy barrier, and, with noisy
reverberations, goes bounding along from
cliff to cliff, in a series of romantic cascades,
down a deep ravine, till the lessening
echoes are lost in the sinuosities of
the outlet of the valley. From the western
shore of this sheet of water the land
rises in gentle undulations, and with a
gradual ascent, back to the foot of the
mountains, which here, as on every other
side, rear their ever-green summits to
the clouds, standing around this vast fortress
of nature as huge centinels posted along
the lofty outworks to battle with the
careering hurricanes that burst in fury on
their immovable sides, and arrest and receive
on their own unscathed heads the
shafts of the lightning descending for its
victims to the valley below, while they
cheerily bandy from side to side the voicy
echoes of the thunderpeal with their
mighty brethren of the opposite rampart. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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