Wherever the voyagers turned their eyes a new creation seemed to bloom around. No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety. Those hills, now bristled, like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil--the hardy oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm--while here and there the tulip tree reared its majestic head, the giant of the forest. Where now are seen the gay retreats of luxury--villas half buried in twilight bowers, whence the amorous flute oft breathes the sighings of some city swain--there the fish-hawk built his solitary nest on some dry tree that overlooked his watery domain. The timid deer fed undisturbed along those shores now hallowed by the lover's moonlight walk and printed by the slender foot of beauty; and a savage solitude extended over those happy regions where now are reared the stately towers of the Joneses, the Schermerhornes, and the Rhinelanders. Ah! witching scenes of foul delusion! Ah! hapless voyagers, gazing with simple wonder on these Circean shores! Such, alas! are they, poor easy souls who listen to the seductions of a wicked world--treacherous are its smiles, fatal its caresses. He who yields to its enticements launches upon a whelming tide, and trusts his feeble bark among the dimpling eddies of a whirlpool! And thus it fared with the worthies of Pavonia, who, little mistrusting the guileful scene before them, drifted quietly on until they were aroused by an uncommon tossing and agitation of their vessels. For now the late dimpling current began to brawl around them and the waves to boil and foam with horrific fury. Awakened as if from a dream, the astonished Oloffe bawled aloud to put about, but his words were lost amid the roaring of the waters. And now ensued a scene of direful consternation. At one time they were borne with dreadful velocity among tumultuous breakers; at another hurried down boisterous rapids. Now they were nearly dashed upon the Hen and Chickens (infamous rocks!--more voracious than Scylla and her whelps), and anon they seemed sinking into yawning gulfs that threatened to entomb them beneath the waves. All the elements combined to produce a hideous confusion. The waters raged, the winds howled, and as they were hurried along several of the astonished mariners beheld the rocks and trees of the neighboring shores driving through the air!