ast bank of the stream, from this to the village of
Manayunk, you have a very pretty ride; and crossing the bridge at the
"Falls of the Schuylkill,"--falls no longer, thanks to the dam at
Fair-mount,--the way back winds along by, or hangs above, the canal and
river, here marching side by side; offering, in about four miles, as
charming a succession of river views as painter or poet could desire. It
is a lovely ramble by all lights, and I have viewed it by all,--in the
blaze of noon, and by the sober grey of summer twilight; I have ridden
beneath its wooded heights, and through its overhanging masses of rare
foliage, in the alternate bright cold light and deep shade of a
cloudless moon; and again, when tree, and field, and flower were yet
fresh and humid with the heavy dew, and sparkling in the glow of early
morning.

At the period of my first visit, the huge piers of a new bridge,
projected by the Columbian Railroad Company, were just appearing in
different degrees above the gentle river's surface. The smoke of the
workmen's fires rising from the wood above, and the numerous attendant
barges moored beneath the tall cliff from which the road was to be
thrown, added no little to the effect. I have since seen this viaduct
completed, and have been whirled over it in the train of a locomotive;
and, although it is a fine work, I cannot but think every lover of the
picturesque will mourn the violation of the solitude so lately to be
found here.

I could not refrain from picturing to myself the light canoes of the
Delaware Indians as at no very remote period they lay rocking beneath
the shelter of that very bluff where now were moored a fleet of
deep-laden barges: indeed these ideas were constantly forcing
themselves, as it were, into my mind as I wandered over the changeful
face of this singular land, where the fresh print of the moccasin is
followed by the tread of the engineer and his attendants, and the light
trail of the red man is effaced by the road of iron: hardly have the
echoes ceased to repeat through the woods the Indian's hunter-cry before
this is followed by the angry rush of the ponderous steam-engine, urged
forward! still forward! by the restless pursuer of his fated race.

Wander whither you will,--take any direction, the most frequented or the
most secluded,--at every and at all points do these lines of railway
intercept your path. Each state, north, south, and west, is eagerly
thrusting forth these iron ar