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Chapter 17
Directions For Visiting The Scenes Of The
Mountains
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The Cauterskill Falls, by Bryant.-Road to the
Mountains, and the building of Hotels there.-Catskill.-How
Reached.-Road and Conveyances from it.-Objects and Places of
Interest.-Underground Stream.-The Abeel House.-Moses Rock.-North
Mountain.- Precipice Echoes.-Bear Den.Road through
Palensville.-Ravine and Falls.-A Toast to the Bee.-Falls near
Palensville.-T. A. Richards.-The Clove.-Haines Falls.-North Lake. -
South Mountain. - Pudding-stone Hall.-Portico Rocks.-Fairy
Spring.-Elfin Pass.- South Lake.-Prospect Rock.-Maiden's Glen.-The
Enchanting Vale.-The Sunset Tree.- Bear Track.-Trout Brook-Juniper Springs.-Trout
Fishing.-Plattekill Clove.-Emerald Pool.-Mountain
Scenery.-Waldensian Hymn.
THE CAUTERSKILL FALLS.
BY WILLIAM C. BRYANT.
Midst greens and shades the Cauterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;
All summer he moistens his verdant steps,
With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;
And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,
When they drip with the rains of autumn tide.
But when in the forest bare and old,
The blast of December calls-
He builds in the starlight, clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls;
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.
For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,
In the cold and cloudless night?
Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought,
In forms so lovely and hues so bright?
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell.
'Twas here a youth of dreamy mood,
Had wandered over the mighty wood,
Where the panther s track was fresh on the snow;
And keen were the winds that came to stir
The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir.
Too gentle of mien he seemed, and fair,
For a child of those rugged steeps;
His home lay down in the valley where
The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps;
But he wore the hunter's frock that day,
And a slender gun on his shoulder lay.
And here he paused, and against the trunk
Of a tall gray linden leant;
Where the broad, clear orb of the sun had sunk
From his path in the frosty firmament;
And over the round dark edge of the hill,
A cold green light was quivering still.
And the crescent moon, high over the green,
From a sky of crimson shone;
On that icy palace where towers were seen,
To sparkle as if with stars of their own;
While the water fell with a hollow sound,
'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around.
Is that a being of life that moves
Where the crystal battlements rise?
A maiden watching the moon she loves,
At the twilight hour with pensive eyes?
Was that a garment which seemed to gleam,
Betwixt the eye and the falling stream?
'Tis only the torrent tumbling o'er,
In the midst of those glassy walls;
Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor
Of the rocky basin in which it falls;
'Tis only the torrent, but why that start?
Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart?
He thinks no more of his home afar,
Where his sire and his sister wait;
He heeds no longer how star after star,
Looks forth on the night as the hour grows late
He heeds not the snow-wreath, lifted and cast
From a thousand boughs by the rising blast.
His thoughts are alone of those who dwell
In the halls of frost and snow;
Who pass where the crystal domes upswell,
From the alabaster floors below;
Where the frost-trees bourgeon with leaf and spray,
And frost-gems scatter a silvery day.
And oh! that those glorious haunts were mine!
He speaks, and throughout the glen,
Their shadows swim in the faint moonshine,
And take a ghastly likeness of men;
As if the slain by the wintry storms
Came forth to the air in their earthly forms.
There pass the chasers of seal and whale,
With their weapons quaint and grim ;
And bands of warriors in glittering mail,
And herdsmen and hunters, huge of limb;
There are naked arms with bow and spear,
And furry gauntlets the carbine rear.
There are mothers, and oh! how sadly their eyes,
On their children's white brows rest!
There are youthful lovers -- the maiden lies,
In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast
There are fair, wan women, with moonstruck air,
And snow-stars flecking their long loose hair.
They eye him not as they pass along,
But his hair stands up with dread ;
When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng,
Till those icy turrets are over his head ;
And the torrent's roar as they enter, seems
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.
The glittering threshold is scarcely passed,
When there gathers and wraps him round,
A thick white twilight, sullen and vast,
In which there is neither form nor sound
The phantoms, the glory, vanish all,
With the dying voice of the waterfall.
Slow passes the darkness of that trance,
And the youth now faintly sees-
Huge shadows, and gushes of light that dance
On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees;
And walls where the skins of beasts are hung,
And rifles glitter, on antlers strung.
On a couch of shaggy skins he lies,
As he strives to raise his head;
Hard-featured woodmen, with kindly eyes,
Come round him and smoothe his furry bed;
And bid him rest, for the evening star
Is scarcely set, and the day is far.
They had found at eve the dreaming one,
By the base of that icy steep;
When over his stiffening limbs begun
The deadly slumber of frost to creep;
And they cherished the pale and breathless form,
Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm.
Early in the present century a citizen of
Catskill obtained a charter for a turnpike road over the mountains,
west, to Unadilla, but having failed to carry out the enterprise, a
company was formed, with a view to prosecute the work, but the road
was made only some eight or ten miles from the eastern base of the
mountains, to the road leading through the Cauterskill Clove, to
Hunter, and further west. There was at first a rude building, or
shanty, where the Mountain House now is, for the accommodation of
summer parties and excursions, but not for lodgers. Soon after 1820,
a company was organized, mostly in Catskill, with a capital of more
than twenty thousand dollars, which built a hotel, three stories
high, with a piazza in front, for the accommodation of summer
travelers and boarders. About twenty years later, Mr. Charles L.
Beech bought the house, which he has greatly enlarged and improved,
and purchased most of the stock of the turnpike company, so as to
have the control of the road, which he keeps in excellent order. This
whole speculation, or enterprise, rather, has been a peculiarly
successful and popular one.
At the Cauterskill Falls there was for some
time only a small, white building, overhanging the Upper Fall, kept
by Mr. Peter Schutt, father of the present proprietor of the Laurel
House. Then there was a small house for boarders, which has since
been much enlarged. Gray's Hotel, on the Clove road, has been in
successful operation for quite a number of years, while the Haines
House is of recent construction. There is also a house on the
southern slope of the mountains, in Woodstock, and there should be
one at the Plattekill Clove.
Catskill is commonly reached by travelers, in
summer, by the way of the Hudson River Railroad, stopping at the
Catskill Station, crossing the river to the opposite landing ; or by
means of the large steamers which run daily between New York and
Albany; or by the smaller steamers which connect Catskill with New
York, Newburgh, Albany, and other places on the river. From the point
where the steam ferry-boat lands, carriages and omnibuses take
passengers to the village, half a mile distant, or carry them
directly to the mountains or elsewhere, as they may desire. The
hotels and some of the larger boarding-houses have carriages, or
stages, which run daily, or oftener, to and from them and the landing
and village, while from other houses carriages are sent to meet such
as are coming to them as boarders, at times previously agreed upon.
Most of the wealth, taste, and beauty of
Catskill, so far as houses, gardens, and ornamental grounds are
concerned, are on the hill, east of the business part of the village,
where are beautiful views of the Catskill mountains on one side, and
the river and the distant heights of the Taghkanic range on the
other. There, too, is the quiet and richly-shaded cemetery, while
from the roads leading from the village north, to Hudson on the
right, and to Leeds on the left, are striking and inspiring views of
the long and widely-varied range of mountain scenery, some ten miles
distant, and stretching far away to the north and south. |
One mile west of the village, on the way to the
mountains, the road, for some distance, is cut from the side of a
woody, rocky precipice, on the left of which may be seen the distant
eastern mountains, the river, with the fair and fertile valley
through which it flows, and the village, with its rural cemetery, all
forming a landscape peculiarly picturesque, varied, and beautiful.
Passing on thence, by a pleasant forest road, through the toll-gate,
a mile beyond it, is a clump of trees, just where the road begins to
descend, by a winding, rocky way, to a fertile meadow below. In the
field just back of these trees, may be seen a deep rocky chasm, into
which a small stream flows, passing from thence under the solid mass
or mound of rocks on the right, and coming out near the foot, of the
hill, ten or fifteen rods distant, and at a point thirty feet or more
lower than the rocky mound beneath which it flows. When the snow
melts in spring there is more water than can pass under the hill, and
thus a lake is formed by the roadside above, some forty or fifty rods
in length.
Further on, after descending a long hill, and
crossing the Cauterskill Creek, the road passes through the beautiful
valley elsewhere described in this work. On ascending the bill
beyond, a long low stone house may be seen, half a mile up the
valley, to the left, from which the Abeels, father and son, were
taken by the Indians and Tories, during the Revolutionary war, and
carried away captives to Canada. In the deep woody ravine on the
hill, by the roadside further on, are beautiful cascades, much
frequented by boarders in the neighborhood. Just beyond the
"Half-Way House," or "Catskill Mountain Retreat "
of Mr. Bloom, the road divides; the branch to the right, leading
directly on, past the Dutch church, up the mountain, by the Rip Van
Winkle Ravine, and the grandly solitary, and sublime wooded road,
with its lofty overhanging cliffs, to the Mountain House. Half a mile
or more before reaching the summit, there is an old road on the left,
leading down the mountain, to Palensville, some two miles south.
Passing down this road threefourths of a mile, there is a precipice
or cliff, some thirty feet high and eighty long, covered with moss,
near the base of which, except in very dry weather, a stream of water
gushes from a circular opening, in the cliff; and this has given to
it the name of Moses Rock, in allusion to that, or rather to those,
from which the Israelites were supplied in the wilderness; for two
miracles, with an interval of many years between them, were
performed, in order to call forth from rocks water to quench their
thirst, and save them from death.
In ascending the mountain, there are points
where glimpses may be had of the wide landscape to the east, and just
before reaching the Mountain House, you see it on an almost
overhanging cliff above you. A little higher up, a path on the right
leads to the North Mountain, following which, half a mile or more,
you come to an abrupt rock, from the top of which the lakes and the
high mountains to the south can be seen. On the north side of this
rock a fine echo may be heard with four distinct reverberations.
Further on is a precipice, ascended by a ladder, where is a large
cavern, formed of immense rocks rudely thrown together, and called
the Bear's Den. From the summit there, the Mountain House and lakes,
with distant towns, cities, far-off mountains, and wide-spread bills
and valleys, can be seen.
The road, which inclines to the left soon after
leaving Bloom's, on the way to the mountains, through the Cauterskill
Clove, just beyond the flats, and where it crosses the road to
Saugerties, goes over a bridge, about thirty rods above which is a
narrow, wild, rough, shady ravine, where the water pours over a high
rock, falling twenty feet or more, and after a heavy rain making a
rush and a roar peculiarly impressive and imposing. The entire
seclusion of the place, its glittering spray and refreshing coolness,
made it a favorite retreat for friends who were with us in summer as
a path through the woods, of half a mile, led from our house to the
Falls. One lady, an artist, made a sketch of the scenery there for an
oil-painting, while another -- a pupil of mine in Greek, Latin, and
Hebrew, the gifted authoress of "Geoffrey the Lollard," and
"Marcella of Rome," whose nom de plume is Frances Eastwood,
who spent much time in this wild and lovely ravine -- as the result
of one of her visits there wrote the playful and beautiful lines
which follow. They were published in that able and popular magazine,
"Hours at Home," from which I copy them:
A TOAST TO THE BEE.
Down in the glen, where the waters fall,
Sparkling over the rocky wall,
With its dripping moss, and lichens gray,
And bushes wet with the glittering spray
Where the jealous trees shut out the sun,
That they may enjoy the wild beauty alone
I stretched me at ease, by the fountain's side,
And dipped my cup in the bubbling tide.
Out of its sheltered stony bed,
One little clover raised its head;
But a busy bee, that had lost its way,
In the lonely glen, that summer's day,
Spied the treasure, and holding fast,
Drained from its cup his sweet repast.
And this was the toast I gave the bee:
To friends that I love, and friends that love me.
We drank it in silence-the bee and I,
He could not, I would not, have made reply
Then away on his swift wing flew the bee,
And away fled my thoughts much swifter than he,
Far from the lonely glen, far from the rill,
Over the valley, over the bill,
Over the land, and over the sea,
To the friends that I love, and the friends
that love me.
I found them all-not one did I miss
I greeted each with a loving kiss;
All the dear faces I ever have known,
Looked with true sympathy into my own
Curly heads were laid on my breast,
Baby lips to my own were pressed;
Love leaped up with enkindled flame,
As I called each dear-loved face by name.
My foot slid down from the slippery stone,
I started, and found I was all alone!
Over the rocks dashed the noisy rill,
The spray was dripping from branches still
The bushes bent from the mossy wall,
And the soft clouds floated over all;
And fresh and strong the mountain breeze,
Stirred the boughs of the jealous trees
This, and no more, my eyes could see,
No friend that I loved, nor friend that loved me.
Passing on west, from the point just described
to the church in Palensville, and there turning to the left, there is
a beautiful fall of twenty or thirty feet, half a mile south-west of
the church. Returning to the main road, on crossing the bridge at the
foot of the Clove, there are rapids and cascades above and below; of
which, and of much of the scenery in the mountains, including that of
Plattekill Clove, spirited engravings may be seen, in connection with
an article by T. Addison Richards, in Harper's Magazine of July,
1854. There are also similar sketches in Harper's Weekly of July 21, 1866.
The little village at the lower extremity of
the Cauterskill Clove, with the region for a mile or more east of it,
is known by the name of "Palensville," from a worthy family
of that name who removed there some seventy years since, and erected
and long carried on an extensive tannery. Speaking of the Clove, in
connection with this point, Mr. Richards truly says: "Very few
of the thousands who annually visit the Mountain House, ever explore
this, the most charming part of the Catskills. Here, at the portals
of the hills, you have an equal and ready access to the great valley
on one side and the mountain solitudes on the other. Eastward from
the hamlet half a mile, is a most lovable cascade, too much neglected
by the few travelers who come to the Clove. A minute's walk through a
dense copse will bring you to a fine point of observation. Seated on
a moss-grown rock, and shaded by the sloping eaves of giant hemlocks,
you muse on flood and fell. At your feet lies the deep basin of dark
waters, the clustering foliage toying with their busy bubbles. The
cascade and its accompanying rock ledges fill the middle ground,
exposing beyond the entire stretch of the southern line of hill,
until it is lost in the golden haze of the setting sun. A little way
below and this picture occurs again, in a scarcely less pleasing
form. The greater beauties, however, lie west of the village and
along the bed of the torrent flowing through the Clove, rather than
on the road which passes near it. You must make a thousand detours to
properly explore the varying course of the stream, which dashes and
leaps through this magnificent pass. You must risk your neck now and
then in descend into the arena of a ghostly glen, far below the
roadside; and then you must struggle manfully to pull your aching
limbs back again. Ascending a mile and a half, you cross the stream
on a wooden bridge at the picturesque and favorite point of 'High
Rocks.' Below this bridge is a fall of great extent and beauty. To
see it to advantage you must take the foot-paths leading to the edge
of the water, on the upper bank, where a good granite lounge looks
the roystering spray full in the face.
"Beyond this point the stream may be
followed two or three hundred yards, to the base of another fall,
known as the 'Dog Hole.' It is a perpendicular leap of some thirty
feet, and the stream, here extremely narrowed by the rocky banks,
rushes over an immense concave ledge into a cauldron from which a
fish could scarcely emerge. Passing the ruins of the tanneries above
the Dog Hole, and again springing and tumbling from rock to rock and
from log to log, we make our way up the stream. Leaving on our right
the brook which comes down from the lakes and falls on the mountain,
we pass up the left branch, which leads to Haines' Falls, at the head
of the Clove. Here is the favorite studio of the many artists who
visit the Catskills. Nowhere else do they find, within the same
narrow range, so great and rich a field for study. Every step is over
noble piles of well-marked rocks, and among the most grotesque forest
fragments, while each successive bend in the brook discloses a new
and different cascade. Often in these wild glens have we looked
upward, where
'Higher yet the pine tree hung
Its darksome trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
His bows athwart the narrowed sky.'
"Or we have gazed below, where
'Rock on rock incumbent hung,
And torrents down the gullies flung,
Joined the rude river that brawled on,
Recoiling now from crag and stone.'
"As we walked joyously along up the
mountain we spoke of the comparative charms of Nature, in the various
seasons of the year. One loved the fresh and sparkling emeralds of
Spring, and her pure and buoyant airs. Another rejoiced and dreamed
happy dreams, fanned by the warm and soothing breezes of summer;
while a third reveled in the fanciful and gorgeous appareling of
motley autumn, in the rainbow beauty of the forest leaves. Our guide
preferred the terrors of winter, when the fathomless depths of snow
buried the hills. and the giant stalactites of ice sentinelled their
narrow passes. 'You should see ,' said he, as we stood beneath the
towering rocks of Haines Falls, 'you should see those thousand rills
trickling and leaping down so merrily from the summit of the
mountains as they appear in winter, in the shape of glittering
icicles a hundred feet in length. You should look upon these waters
when bitter frosts have chilled them into icy monuments.'"
Another writer, who sojourned at Bracket's, in
the wild depths of the Clove, where so many artists, sportsmen, and
others find a pleasant summer home, thus describes the scenery there:
"There are about here the loveliest
portions of the Catskill scenery. I do not know where to find a more
charming stretch of mountain brook, a more picturesque succession of
rock-forms, than one enters at 'Fawn's Leap' and leaves at the head
of Haines Falls. At 'Fawn's Leap' the brook falls over a
perpendicular wall, the brink of the precipice being but a
biscuit-toss across, and so broken and channeled as to separate the
water into beautifully varied masses. There is a bridge across the
stream, affording easy access to the best places from which to view
the falls, while below it is the boiling mass of waters, some twenty
yards in circumference and fifteen feet in depth.
"The whole brook-side, from 'Fawn's Leap'
to Haines Falls, is a succession of charming, dewy rock grottoes,
fresh mossy nooks, guarded by the graceful iron-wood, with its trunk
of speckled and shining chestnut color, and its profuse, delicate
spray of bright, dark green ; by lithe mountain willows and spreading
alders; by pines that nod and meet from cliff to cliff; balsams,
spruces, white cedars and junipers, which make the air as spicy as
Tidore; white, red, and holm oaks, extending their royal palms in
shadowy benediction ; the beautiful white birch, like a fair penitent
trembling in her camisole ; and maples innumerable, whose youngest
leaves, in their first unfolding, simulate the dyes they put on in
autumn, even as the peace and beauty of childhood shadow forth the
glorious heaven at the end of a good life. Until within a few days
the beautiful clustering flowers of the laurel made the woods gay
with all shades of pink and white; now the ground is starry with
blue-eyed grass, and snowy with the little trumpets of the
pipsissewa. The mountain-ashes begin to ripen their coral ear-drops,
the purple bells of the foxglove, the later anemones ; this is the
season for them all. Here are delicate maiden's-hair, and the sweet
lady-fern; the plumy branches of the millefoil, which, but for their
commonness, would be praised like any darling of the green-house ;
mosses of every shade and form, from the great mass of living velvet
which covers old decay with the symbolic emerald of young
immortality, to the straggling cluck's-foot patch of crisp little
green, which, close under the eaves of a waterfall, catches drops on
its web, and turns them to beads of iridescent crystal. The best way
to see all that can be seen of this region is to go to Haines Falls,
by the road from above or from below, up the steep ascent of a mile
or more, in which you pass a place where the road was carried away by
a tremendous land-slide, broad and deep, which has left its tawny
scar on the breast of the ridge, from the place where the road has
been mended with earth and sprucetrees, still distilling fragrance
from their dead plumes, in the sunshine, down to the bed of the
creek, hundreds of feet below. Here we pause and look back on the
gorge through which we have ascended, and have, too, a distant
glimpse of the valley of the Hudson, and the remote plains and
heights of western New England. |
"The Haines House, good-sized, cool, and
piazzied, is redolent of health, freshness, and morality. Following
the foot-path in the rear of the house to the wooded brink of the
Clove, you pass through a gate, to the stairs leading down the deep
descent. No one grudges the twenty-five cents he here pays, when,
after sending back a man to the pond above, to let on its full stream
of water, and clambering down the green bowered stairways, two
hundred feet or more, with a drink, by the way, from a spring in the
pocket of the cliff, clear as crystal and cold as ice, he stands on a
broad, flat rock, where the cataract strikes. The fall has two leaps,
the first of one hundred and fifty feet, and the second of eighty,
with a third one below of sixty feet, and others still, so that in
less than one-fourth of a mile the stream falls four hundred and
seventy-five feet. The water at the two upper falls breaks up into
snowy masses, like ghosts of naiads, plunging to the pool below, in a
wreathed procession, their shadowy arms upheld, and twining with each
other their mist finger-tips. Descending the brook, you pass over
ledges and boulders of gray lichened stone, such as Kensett loves and
paints better than any man in America. The falls are seven or eight
in number; the third and fourth of them, from a narrow flood at their
brink, spread in their descent over the sloping surface of the rocks,
to a broad and minutely broken sheet at the base, like a web of pearl
and silver gathered together at one end, in the hand, and suffered to
flow over the surface of a terraced cone, in exquisite folds and
fringes. At the foot of the fourth fall there is a covert of mossy
and lichened coolness, all silver-starred with dew, roofed in by huge
projecting tablets of rock, and at noon beautiful with an arched
portal of rainbow. This is a place to stay and dream in all day. The
fifth fall is higher, and from it you can look backwards and see the
whole succession of cataracts you have descended. Winding a little to
the left, the snowy surface of the headlong brook seems one
continuous tissue of foamy silver, now narrowing to a ribbon, now
spreading to a rainbowed sheet, curving down a bowery vista of forest
foliage, through which it reveals its beauty in coy glimpses, without
a single pool where it stops to dally or to rest. This is the most
lovely view I have found in the Catskills. Over long, shady reaches,
where filtering sunshine strikes through the leaves the crystal
waters, climbing fallen obelisks, wading amber pools, emulating
Blondin on prostrate tree trunks, crawling, jumping, climbing, like
chameleons, in fact doing everything but fly, we at length come to a
wood-path, leading through a green alley of birches to the road. Down
this gorge Gifford, McEntee and Whittridge have often gone, and from
it they have drawn some of their happiest inspirations. Near the head
of the Clove Gifford must have stood to study one of his simplest and
most tender pictures -- a view of the Clove, cradling a flood of
summer sunlight, and clothed from bed to ridges with one glory of
living. green, mellowed through golden haze.
At the point where you leave the main road to
go to the North Mountain there is a path leading to the west, and
conducting one along the shady shore of the North Lake to its head.
The path leading up the South Mountain begins
near the Mountain House, and just south of it, not far from the
eastern face of the mountain range. Two-thirds of the way up the
mountain, one enters Pudding-Stone Hall, where are large masses of
this kind of stone, and a narrow opening in the rocks, caused by the
action of frost and water. Beyond the hall, turning a little to the
east, the path then leads towards the west, under a cliff, through a
region of moss and fern, by the Portico Rocks, to the Fairy Spring, a
lonely and beautiful retreat. Returning a short distance, and then
inclining to the south, through a narrow pass, in the rocks known as
the Lemon Squeezer, or the Elfin Pass, the summit of South Mountain
is soon reached, from whence a large rock may be seen to the south,
where there is a fine view of the Clove, directly below-the
Highlands, the Hudson River, and distant mountains in New England,
New Jersey, and New York. Through a narrow pass in the rocks, a
little east of this point, is a rough path along the southern line of
the lofty precipices which overhang the Clove. There are also
pleasant paths along and near the western shores of both of the
lakes. There is a boat on the South Lake, with which some amuse
themselves, or are aided by it on their way to the Falls, instead of
walking through the beautiful forest path, or riding in an omnibus by
the carriage-road from the Mountain House. From the Laurel House,
take a path to the south-west, which leads through the woods to Cosey
Retreat, and then inclining to the east, you come to Prospect Rock,
where is a fine view of the Falls. Near the Laurel House and the
Laundry, the stream from the lakes and the other from the North
Mountain unite and form the Upper Cauterskill, near which are the
Maiden's Glen and the Enchanting Vale. The Sunset Tree is about two
miles from the Laurel House, in the direction of Hunter, with the
Bear Track below, while the high peaks beyond the Clove, Buttermilk
Falls, and Santa Cruz Creek, at their base, the Valley of Hunter, the
mountains beyond, and to the east, the Valley of the Hudson, may all
be seen from this point of view. The Trout Brook is a mountain stream
which is crossed in passing from the Mountain House to the Laurel
House, and flowing east of the latter place. Near its source are
Juniper Springs, about two miles from the road.
The principal places for trout-fishing in the
mountains are Stony Clove and Warner's Kill. A few years since, some
young friends of the author caught in Stony Clove 1,600 trout in a
fishing excursion there of a few days, fifty of the largest of which
weighed thirty pounds. More recently, two of the same party caught
700 trout in Warner's Kill, in a single day. This kill, or creek, is
reached by passing through Stony Clove to near its southern
extremity, and then turning to the left up the kill and its branches,
which flow through a long winding mountain ravine, leading to the
south-east, towards the eastern front of the mountains. Gray's Hotel,
some miles west of the Clove, on the way to Hunter, is a favorite
resort of fishermen, as Stony Clove and Warner's Kill are nearer
there than to other hotels in the mountains, while the Haines House
and Bracket's are more resorted to by artists. Plattekill Clove is
some six miles south of Cauterskill Clove, and may be entered from
the lowlands at the eastern base of the mountains, or from the upper
heights to the west. The old road through the Plattekille Clove,
which overhangs the fearful chasm and raging stream on the right, as
you descend the mountain, is a very rude and rough one. On the other
side of the dark ravine, however, is a new road, from the base of the
mountains upward, which is much easier of ascent than the other. To
see either of the two great cloves, however, to the best advantage,
no other carriages should be used in passing through them than Adam
and Eve had in Eden, well shod with thick boots ; and instead of
fig-leaves, clothing short, strong, and hoopless, unless ladies, on
their return from their mountain strolls, would look as if they had
just escaped from a rag-bin.
Richards, speaking of the Plattekill Clove,
says: "It is scarcely less fruitful in the picturesque than is
the Cauterskill, while it retains more of its native luxuriance and
wildness. The stream which makes its rugged way in the gorge of the
Plattekille, in the course of two miles falls two thousand five
hundred feet. Its banks rise in colossal mountain walls, towering
high in air, and groaning, with all their mighty strength, beneath
the weight of their dense forests. A monarch among these hills is
South Peak, with its crown lifted four thousand feet towards heaven.
It is full of remarkable localities, each wrapped in legendary lore.
Not the least lovely of its possessions is a gentle lake, perched in
solitude upon its summits."
Those who have gone from the house of the
author to the Plattekill Clove have given it the precedence of all
the mountain scenery, in its rugged grandeur and wild and
widely-varied magnificence and beauty. A pool, some ten feet by
thirty, and ten feet deep, at the foot of a cascade, with overhanging
rocks, and lofty trees meeting above, giving the clear waters a deep
green hue, was named by them, Emerald Pool.
In closing these sketches of mountain scenery,
with its imposing and alluring grandeur, magnificence, and beauty,
there rises yet again to the mind the higher moral and religious
grandeur connected with those mountain heights which, as in past ages
and in other lands, have been a refuge from persecution, oppression,
and wrong; a strong tower and a rock of defence to those who, thus
sheltered, have looked down in safety on their foes below. From such
mountain fastnesses, too, how have those who there bravely fought for
their liberties and lives, like William Tell, and others, noble
patriots and grand old Christian heroes, driven down and destroyed
the armed hosts who had pursued them thither; and in their hour of
victory have made the wild ravines and cliffs to loudly echo back
their joyful hymns of triumph and of praise, as with thoughts and
words like those of the Waldensian saints and heroes, from their
hearts they sang:
"For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God -- our fathers' God;
Thou hast made thy children mighty
By the touch of the mountain sod
Thou hast fixed our rock of refuge
Where the spoiler's foot ne'er trod
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God -- our fathers' God.
"We are watchers of a beacon,
Whose light must never die
We are guardians of an altar
Midst the silence of the sky.
The rocks yield founts of courage,
Struck forth as by thy rod ;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God -- our fathers' God.
"For the dark surrounding caverns,
Where the still small voice is heard
For the strong pines of the forest,
Which by thy strength is stirred;
For the storm on whose free pinions
Thy Spirit walks abroad ;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God -- our fathers' God.
"The royal eagle darteth
From lofty mountain heights
The stag that knows no master
Seeks there his wild delights
But we for thy communion
Have sought the mountain sod;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God -- our fathers' God.
"The banner of the chieftain
The warhorse of the spearman
Cannot reach our lofty caves
The dark clouds wrap the threshold
Of freedom's last abode ;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God -- our fathers' God.
"For the shadow of thy presence
Round our mountain camp outspread
For the stem defiles of battle
Where lie our fallen dead;
For the snows and for the torrents,
For the free heart's burial sod ;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee.
Our God -- our fathers' God."
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