me on a new and
lovelier prospect--a narrow deep vale scarce a mile in breadth--scooped,
as it were, out of the mighty mountains which embosomed it on every
side--in the highest state of culture, with rich orchards, and deep
meadows, and brown stubbles, whereon the shocks of maize stood fair and
frequent; and westward of the road, which, diving down obliquely to the
bottom, loses itself in the woods of the opposite hill-side, and only
becomes visible again when it emerges to cross over the next summit--the
loveliest sheet of water my eyes has ever seen, varying from half a mile
to a mile in breadth, and about five miles long, with shores indented
deeply with the capes and promontories of the wood-clothed hills, which
sink abruptly to its very margin.

"That is the Greenwood Lake, Frank, called by the monsters here Long
Pond!--'the fiends receive their souls therefor,' as Walter Scott says--
in my mind prettier than Lake George by far, though known to few except
chance sportsmen like myself! Full of fish, perch of a pound in weight,
and yellow bass in the deep waters, and a good sprinkling of trout,
towards this end! Ellis Ketchum killed a five-pounder there this spring!
and heaps of summer-duck, the loveliest in plumage of the genus, and the
best too, me judice, excepting only the inimitable canvass-back. There
are a few deer, too, in the hills, though they are getting scarce of
late years. There, from that headland, I killed one, three summers
since; I was placed at a stand by the lake's edge, and the dogs drove
him right down to me; but I got too eager, and he heard or saw me, and
so fetched a turn; but they were close upon him, and the day was hot,
and he was forced to soil. I never saw him till he was in the act of
leaping from a bluff of ten or twelve feet into the deep lake, but I
pitched up my rifle at him, a snap shot! as I would my gun at a cock in
a summer brake, and by good luck sent my ball through his heart. There
is a finer view yet when we cross this hill, the Bellevale mountain;
look out, for we are just upon it; there! Now admire!"

And on the summit he pulled up, and never did I see a landscape more
extensively magnificent. Ridge after ridge the mountain sloped down from
our feet into a vast rich basin ten miles at least in breadth, by
thirty, if not more, in length, girdled on every side by mountains--the
whole diversified with wood and water, meadow, and pasture-land, and
corn-field--studded with sm