| | 1 | Author: | Cooper
James Fenimore
1789-1851 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Pathfinder, Or, the Inland Sea  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every
eye. The most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the
most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination
as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable void. The expanse
of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference,
and the mind, even in the obscurity of night, finds a parallel
to that grandeur, which seems inseparable from images
that the senses cannot compass. With feelings akin to this admiration
and awe—the offspring of sublimity—were the different
characters with which the action of this tale must open,
gazing on the scene before them. Four persons in all—two
of each sex—they had managed to ascend a pile of trees,
that had been uptorn by a tempest, to catch a view of the
objects that surrounded them. It is still the practice of the
country to call these spots wind-rows. By letting in the
light of heaven upon the dark and damp recesses of the
wood, they form a sort of oases in the solemn obscurity of
the virgin forests of America. The particular wind-row of
which we are writing, lay on the brow of a gentle acclivity,
and, though small, it had opened the way for an extensive
view to those who might occupy its upper margin, a rare
occurrence to the traveller in the woods. As usual, the spot
was small, but owing to the circumstances of its lying on the
low acclivity mentioned, and that of the opening's extending
downward, it offered more than common advantages to the
eye. Philosophy has not yet determined the nature of the
power that so often lays desolate spots of this description:
some ascribing it to the whirlwinds that produce water-spouts
on the ocean; while others again impute it to sudden and
violent passages of streams of the electric fluid; but the effects
in the woods are familiar to all. On the upper margin
of the opening to which there is allusion, the viewless influence
had piled tree on tree, in such a manner as had not only
enabled the two males of the party to ascend to an elevation
of some thirty feet above the level of the earth, but, with a
little care and encouragement, to induce their more timid
companions to accompany them. The vast trunks that had
been broken and driven by the force of the gust, lay blended
like jack-straws, while their branches, still exhaling the
fragrance of wilted leaves, were interlaced in a manner to
afford sufficient support to the hands. One tree had been
completely uprooted, and its lower end, filled with earth,
had been cast uppermost, in a way to supply a sort of
staging for the four adventurers, when they had gained the
desired distance from the ground. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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