"Through this stern barrier, all the great rivers of the States, through which they run, have rent themselves a passage, exhibiting in every instance the most sublime and boldest scenery, while many of the minor, though still noble streams, come forth sparkling and bright and cold from the clear lakes and lonely springs embosomed in its dark recesses. "Possessing, for the most part, a width of eight or ten miles, this chain of hills consists, at some points, of a single ridge, rude, forest-clad and lonely--at others, of two, three, or even four distinct and separate lines of heights, with valleys more or less highly cultured, long sheets of most translucent water, and wild mountain streams dividing them. "With these hills--known as the Highlands--where the gigantic Hudson has cloven, at some distant day, a devious path for his eternal and resistless waters, and by a hundred other names, the Warwick Hills, the Greenwoods, and yet farther west, the Blue Ridge and the Kittatinny Mountains, as they trend southerly and west across New York and New Jersey--with these hills I have now to do. "Not as the temples meet for the lonely muse, fit habitations for the poet's rich imaginings! not as they are most glorious in their natural scenery--whether the youthful May is covering their rugged brows with the bright tender verdure of the tasseled larch, and the yet brighter green of maple, mountain ash and willow--or the full flush of summer has clothed their forests with impervious and shadowy foliage, while carpeting their sides with the unnumbered blossoms of calmia, rhododendron and azalea!--whether the gorgeous hues of autumn gleam like the banners of ten thousand victor armies along their rugged slopes, or the frozen winds of winter have roofed their headlands with inviolate white snow! Not as their bowels teem with the wealth of mines which ages of man's avarice may vainly labor to exhaust! but as they are the loved abode of many a woodland denizen that has retreated, even from more remote and seemingly far wilder fastnesses, to these sequestered haunts. I love them, in that the graceful hind conceals her timid fawn among the ferns that wave on the lone banks of many a nameless rill, threading their hills, untrodden save by the miner, or the infrequent huntsman's foot--in that the noble stag frays oftentimes his antlers against their giant trees--in that the mighty bear lies hushed in grim repose amid their tangled swamps--in that their bushy dingles resound nightly to the long-drawn howl of the gaunt famished wolf--in that the lynx and wild-cat yet mark their prey from the pine branches--in that the ruffed grouse drums, the woodcock bleats, and the quail chirrups from every height or hollow--in that, more strange to tell, the noblest game of trans-atlantic fowl, the glorious turkey--although, like angels' visits, they be indeed but few and far between--yet spread their bronzed tails to the sun, and swell and gobble in their most secret wilds.