A gallop among American scenery: or, Sketches of American scenes and military adventureSilliman, Augustus E. (Augustus Ely)
History
A gallop among American scenery: or, Sketches of American scenes and military adventure
Silliman, Augustus E. (Augustus Ely)
Atlantic States -- Description and travel
[To the untiring exertions of Major D. B. Douglass, Messrs.
Joseph A. Perry, Henry E. Pierrepont, Gerrit G. Van Wagenen,
and a few other liberal minded gentlemen, the public are
indebted for the design and completion of this beautiful place
of repose for the dead. It is anticipated that ten miles of
avenue will be completed during the coming summer, and when the
whole is laid out, according to the proposed plan, that there
will be fifteen miles of picturesque road within its precincts.
Part of the battle of Long Island in the Revolution was fought
upon its grounds, and it is intended at no distant day, to
remove the remains of those that perished in the Prison Ships
to the Cemetery, where they will sleep undisturbed beneath an
appropriate monument. The views from Mount Washington, and
other eminences, within its precincts, embrace the entire
bay and harbour of New-York, with their islands and forts:
the cities of New-York and Brooklyn; the shores of the North
and East Rivers; New-Jersey, Staten Island, the Quarantine;
unnumbered towns and villages sprinkled over the wide expanse
of the surrounding country, and the margin of the broad
Atlantic, from Sandy Hook, to a distance far beyond the
Rockaway Pavilion. The fine old forest which covers the greater
part of the grounds, shrouding and almost concealing from
sight, several beautiful lakes and sheets of water suggested
the name, with which it has been consecrated, the Green-Wood
Cemetery.]
WHERE, THEN, IS DEATH!—and my own voice startled me from my reverie
as, leaning on my saddle-bow on the summit of Mount Washington in the
Greenwood Cemetery, I asked—_Where, then, is death!_ The golden sun of a
delicious summer’s afternoon was streaming o’er the undulating hills of
Staten Island lighting more brilliantly the snow-white villas and emerald
lawns:—the Lazaretto—its fleet gay with the flags of all the nations, was
nestling like a fairy city at its feet:—the noble bay before me was one
great polished mirror—motionless vessels with white sails and drooping
pennants, resting on its surface, like souls upon the ocean of Eternity,
and every thing around was bright and still and beautiful as I asked
myself the question—_Where, then, is death!_
The islands with their military works lay calm and motionless upon
the waters—the grim artillery, like sleeping tigers crouched upon the
ramparts and the castle’s walls—but the glistening of the sentry’s
polished musket, and the sudden clamorous roll of drums showed me,
that—_not there was death_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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