Far ahead the land rose in gentle undulations like a many
colored sea. When the sun shone forth for a little while we saw
a picture against the dark clouds as a background that was
almost unreal in its ethereal beauty. One rarely sees a picture
so bright and at the same time clothed in alluring distance as
these perspectives where hill rose above hill and mingled their
various hues of vegetation in clustering abysses of verdure
through which the flashing stream pursued its winding course
under mounds of foliage. The beech, maple, elm and oak sprinkled
now and then with evergreens, revealed a richness in coloring
unsurpassed. It was indeed a fairy landscape, leaving little for
the imagination; luring us on toward it with a glamour we could
not resist. Over the stone walls the groups of shrubbery lifted
their wealth of foliage; and the sumac sprinkled against this
background were like coals of fire.
The distance from Utica to Trenton cannot be more than twenty
miles, yet traveling as we did, making detours around roads with
missing bridges, it seemed six times as far.
The varied features of the landscape began to change but still
appeared quiet and lonely. Soon we saw a spacious hotel standing
on the edge of a wood that overhung a precipice. The broken
window-panes, through which twittering swallows darted, the gray
weather-beaten sides end unpatched moss-covered roof proclaimed
that Trenton falls had had its day.
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