The river only
approaches these hills in a few places and always at right angles, and
is by them deflected, leaving them always on the outer curve of the
semicircle or bend in the stream. From these points and from the summit
of these cliffs the view is very fine, stretching often in many places
far up and down the river and away over the plain west of the river,
which seems to repose upon its lap as far as the eye can view. The
scene is sombre, but grand, especially when lighted by the evening's
declining sun. The plain is unbroken by any elevation: the immense
trees rise to a great height, and all apparently to the same level--the
green foliage in summer strangely commingling with the long gray moss
which festoons from the upper to the lower limbs, waving as a garland
in the fitful wind; and the dead gray of the entire scene in winter is
sad and melancholy as a vast cemetery. There is a gloomy grandeur in
this, which is only rivalled by that of the sea, when viewed from a
towering height, lazily lolling in the quiet of a summer evening's
calm.
To encounter the perils of a pioneer to such a country required men of
iron nerve.
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