Lawrence and presume to belittle our natural
scenery, are not the most reliable persons in the world."
Let them go to the summit of Mount Marcy on a clear day and look
out over the magnificent panorama spread out before them, and
they will not say we have no natural scenery worth viewing in
the Atlantic States from Canada to New Orleans, except Niagara
and Burlington. Here in every direction countless summits pierce
the sky, and the unnumbered miles of forests that clothe with
green garments the ridges and slopes of this vast wilderness,
who can ever forget them? How wonderful are these wild and
rugged scenes, still fresh from the hand of God! Call us idle
triflers if you will, but we shall ever try to read the messages
from these stone pages from the book of God, where all day long
the breezes whisper messages fuller of meaning than any lines
from the hand of man.
But to return to the view from the mountain peak, glorious,
indeed, is the scene spread out below you from Mount Marcy. How
unlike the Alps is the prospect you obtain from its summit.
True, you will see no snow-capped peaks and shining glaciers,
but what a chaos of gray and green mountains extend as far as
the eye can reach.
One writer gives this vivid description of the scene that meets
the enraptured gaze of the traveler here: "It looked as if the
Almighty had once set this vast earth rolling like the sea; and
then, in the midst of its maddest flow, bid all the gigantic
billows stop and congeal in their places, and there they stood,
just as He froze them grand and gloomy.
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