Guernsey, Bookseller and Publisher. 1875. Public domain image

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SCENERY IN NEW-HAMPSHIRE.    563

Alps, the tiger and condor of the Andes, the cougar and rattle-
snake of the Alleganies are not here. The associations of child-
L    hood and youth become a part of our being, and it is only when

they are disruptured by transition, that we realize their existence.

Place a mountaineer upon the prairies, and he longs for the scene-
ry of his youth ; he returns to behold with rapture the beauties
of landscape which before he had passed with careless indifference.

We have passed the magnificient gorge of the White Hills, and
viewed with enthusiasm the wild sublimity around us. We have
entered the defile of Franconia, and beheld with astonishment and
admiration the Old Man of the Mountain and his wild domain.
We have scaled the summit of Mount W ashington, and at one time
beheld the thunder cloud, hundreds of feet below us, the lightning
playing over its surface, and a brilliant sun irradiating the sky.
Again we viewed from its summit the valley of the Connecticut
spread out like a map before us; the rays of light, reflected by a
dark cloud that hung upon the Green Mountains, brought into dis-
<4,.    tinct view the streams, the cottages, the fields, the villages, the

***    hills and valleys, the waving forests and vast amphitheatre of

mountains supporting the blue vault around and above us; we
felt that the beautiful and sublime were here mingled upon a scale
never to be surpassed, and hallowed by a thousand associated ideas
of fond remembrances never to be forgotten.

We have stood on the shores of the ocean and contemplated the
vast and almost illimitable world of waters before us, and viewed
in imagination the innumerable ships and vast navies that float upon
her bosom. We have sailed upon the waters of Ontario, when the
departing sunbeams cast their gorgeous shades of green and gold
over its surface—transcendently beautiful—far beyond the most
splendid drapery of the imagination. Finally, descending Ipto the
awful chasm of Niagara, we have approached in a frail boat the
tremendous cataract of the Western seas, until repelled by the
rolling surges of its abyss, we were warned that nearer approxima-
tion might be death. No-person can describe the sublimity of this
scene—its grandeur-is overwhelming, and the vast display of mag-
nificence and power presented at a single glance to our view shows
j.    how puny are the efforts of man compared with the omnipotence

£    of God. But with the ocean, with the lake and with the cataract

^    were associated in our minds the ideas of loneliness, of solitude—al-

V    most of desolation. We longed for the early visions of life, for