The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;
My temple, Lord ! that arch of thine;
My censer's breath the mountain airs, And silent thoughts my only prayers.
MOORE
The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every eye.The most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable void.The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference; and the mind, even in the obscurity of night, finds a parallel to that grandeur, which seems inseparable from images that the senses can-not compass.With feelings akin to this admiration and awe -- the offspring of sublimity -- were the different char-acters with which the action of this tale must open, gazing on the scene before them.Four persons in all, -- two of each ***, -- they had managed to ascend a pile of trees, that had been uptorn by a tempest, to catch a view of the objects that surrounded them.It is still the practice of the coun-try to call these spots wind-rows.By letting in the light of heaven upon the dark and damp recesses of the wood, they form a sort of oases in the solemn obscurity of the virgin forests of America.The particular wind-row of which we are writing lay on the brow of a gentle accliv-ity; and, though small, it had opened the way for an ex-tensive view to those who might occupy its upper margin, a rare occurrence to the traveller in the woods.Philosophy has not yet determined the nature of the power that so often lays desolate spots of this description; some ascrib-ing it to the whirlwinds which produce waterspouts on the ocean, while others again impute it to sudden and violent passages of streams of the electric fluid; but the effects in the woods are familiar to all.On the upper margin of the opening, the viewless influence had piled tree on tree, in such a manner as had not only enabled the two males of the party to ascend to an elevation of some thirty feet above the level of the earth, but, with a little care and encouragement, to induce their more timid companions to accompany them.The vast trunks which had been broken and driven by the force of the gust lay blended like jack-straws; while their branches, still exhaling the fragrance of withering leaves, were interlaced in a manner to afford sufficient support to the hands.One tree had been com-pletely uprooted, and its lower end, filled with earth, had been cast uppermost, in a way to supply a sort of staging for the four adventurers, when they had gained the de-sired distance from the ground.
The reader is to anticipate none of the appliances of people of condition in the description of the personal ap-pearances of the group in question.They were all way-farers in the wilderness; and had they not been, neither their previous habits, nor their actual social positions, would have accustomed them to many of the luxuries of rank.Two of the party, indeed, a male and female, be-longed to the native owners of the soil, being Indians of the well-known tribe of the Tuscaroras; while their com-panions were -- a man, who bore about him the peculiarities of one who had passed his days on the ocean, and was, too, in a station little, if any, above that of a common mariner;and his female associate, who was a maiden of a class in no great degree superior to his own; though her youth, sweetness and countenance, and a modest, but spirited mien, lent that character of intellect and refinement which adds so much to the charm of beauty in the ***.On the present occasion, her full blue eye reflected the feeling of sublimity that the scene excited, and her pleasant face was beaming with the pensive expression with which all deep emotions, even though they bring the most grateful pleasure, shadow the countenances of the ingenuous and thoughful.
And truly the scene was of a nature deeply to impress the imagination of the beholder.Towards the west, in which direction the faces of the party were turned, the eye ranged over an ocean of leaves, glorious and rich in the varied and lively verdure of a generous vegetation, and shaded by the luxuriant tints which belong to the forty-second degree of latitude.The elm wifh its graceful and weep-ing top, the rich varieties of the maple, most of the noble oaks of the American forest, with the broad-leaved linden known in the parlance of the conutry as the basswood, mingled their uppermost branches, forming one broad and seemingly interminable carpet of foliage which stretched away towards the setting sun, until it bounded the hori-zon, by blending with the clouds, as the waves and the sky meet at the base of the vault of heaven.Here and there, by some accident of the tempests, or by a caprice of nature, a trifling opening among these giant members of the forest permitted an inferior tree to struggle upward toward the light, and to lift its modest head nearly to a level with the surrounding surface of verdure.Of this class were the birch, a tree of some account in regions less favored, the quivering aspen, various generous nut-woods, and divers others which resembled the ignoble and vulgar, thrown by circumstances into the presence of the stately and great.
Here and there, too, the tall straight trunk of the pine pierced the vast field, rising high above it, like some grand monument reared by art on a plain of leaves.
It was the vastness of the view, the nearly unbroken surface of verdure, that contained the principle of grandeur.
The beauty was to be traced in the delicate tints, relieved by graduations of light and shade; while the solemn repose induced the feeling allied to awe.
