At ten o'clock the stage came from Delhi, which place it had left at two in the morning. Seventy miles from Delhi to Catskill--a good day's journey! It was full, and our landlord put on an extra, giving me a seat beside the driver, and filling the inside with men. Said driver was a carpenter, and an excellent specimen of an American mechanic--intelligent and self-respecting. This is a great cattle and dairy region, and we passed several hundred lambs on their way to the New York market. The driver pitied the poor creatures; and, when passing through a drove, endeavored to frighten them as little as possible. 'Innocent things!' said he, 'they have just been taken from their mothers, and know not which way to turn. I hate to think of their being slaughtered, for what is so meek and so joyous as a young lamb!' I thought: 'Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis! Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis! Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem!' --the 'nobis' to include the poor lambs. At the first turn in the road we passed a great bowlder, known throughout the country as 'the big rock.' Beside the highway flows the Red Kill, a tributary of the Schoharie. There are some trout in it, but a couple of cotton factories have frightened them nearly all away. A hot political discussion soon arose among the inside passengers. Our driver seemed to think loud and angry words quite out of place, and said: 'I am a Democrat myself, but the other day I had a talk with the Republican tax collector of our place, and I concluded we both wanted about one thing--the good of our country. _Honest_ Republicans and _honest_ Democrats are not so far asunder as people usually think.' Mountain after mountain stretched away to north, south, east, and west, blue or green, bright or dark, as distance or the shadows of the beautiful cumulus clouds severally affected them. Up, up we wound, the merry kill dancing beside us, and the air growing fresher and more elastic with every foot of ascent. The country is quite well settled, and we rose through Red Falls and Ashland to Windham, a long, peculiar-looking town, where we dined, and exchanged our two stages for a large one seating eighteen persons (inside and out), and drawn by four fresh steeds. The mountains grew wilder, the air cooler, and finally Windham High Peak or Black Head, a great round-topped peak, appeared on the right. A party from Albany had that day gone up. No water can be found near the top. This is thought to be the loftiest summit of the range (3,926 feet), but our new driver said there was another peak toward the southwest, which he fancied higher.