:

sometimes spreads its dreamy enchantment over its surface in
the summer calms, mixing islands, clouds, and water in strange
confusion, the beautiful lines of Southey, on Virginia Water,
may be well applied.

"Soul of these sylvan haunts, delicious lake;
E'en when the flickering clouds obscure the sun,
And the sky shows in spots,—give me to muse
On thy untroubled banks, when the warm air
Lies like an infant on thy cradling breast.
Then the gull screams not, but the trilling thrush
Makes glorious music in thy skirting woods,
And midst her gusts of song there is a stillness
Which not a ripple stirs, while the hushed soul
Hugs up its thoughts, as if it feared to wake
The spirit that sleeps upon thy quiet breadth.
Or let me gaze on thee, when the soft moon
Sheds a perfusive gentleness around,
While wood, and water, and the cloudless sky
Lose each their features and peculiar hues,
In something lovelier than the eye can pierce,—
A subtle,-viewless,-mute indefinite joy.
Waveless or rippling,, thou art beauteous ever,
Sweet Lake! and beauteous are thy shadowing banks;
Thou art a place for pure and gentle thoughts;

Thou hast a charm to free the entangled heart

From low and earthly chains; thy calm makes audible
The voice of Omnipresence."

Nor are the scenes now described altogether destitute of
historical and legendary associations. It was near these en-
chanting lakes that the British and American forces contended
in the earlier period of the war with such desperate valour. Fort
Detroit, Fort Teconderago, Crown Point, Saratoga-the melan-
choly scene of General Burgoyne's surrender, as well as of
Andre's execution,-are localities that excite strong emotions in
the mind of a stranger as he reviews the cause, progress, and
results of this unnatural contest between a great country and
her colonists.

Lest the descriptions of the face and general aspect of the country thus drawn should be thought by some to be exaggerated or too highly coloured, the writer once more appeals to the authority of the Earl of Carlisle :

"North America, viewed at first with respect to her natural surface, exhibits a series of scenery various, rich, and in some of its features, unparalleled; though she cannot on the whole equal Europe in her mountain elevations, how infinitely does she surpass her in her rivers, estuaries, and lakes. This variegated

surface of earth and water, is seen under a warm, soft, and balmy, in some cases, blue and brilliant sky, in all its latitudes with a transparency of atmosphere which Italy does not reach,with varieties of forest growth and foliage unknown to Europe, -and with a splendour of view in autumn before which painting must despair.'

1

V

NATURAL PHENOMENA.—The Notch on Mount Washington. Hawk's nest. Natural bridge of Virginia. Gorge near Harper's Ferry, Maryland. Maiden Rock. Enchanted mountain in Tennessee. Sulphuretted springs in Virginia, Arkansas, Saratoga, Lebanon, &c. Caverns, and subterraneous temples. Remarkable mountains. Catskill Falls. Cascades in Georgia, and on the Mohawk. Particular description of Niagara Falls in summer and winter. Beautiful lines by Brainard. Reflections.

Natural curiosities and picturesque features in the United States are numerous and striking. It is only possible, however, to select the principal, and we can give them no more than a passing notice.

What is called the Notch on Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, with its silvery cascade, and the Profile Rock,—a desolate mass of granite, are especially attractive. The latter presents the appearance of a large human head and face, about forty feet from the chin to the top of the forehead, delineated in the solid rock with great exactness;-conjectured by some (though the conjecture is generally discredited) to have been thus shaped by the Indians, and to have been worshipped by them as a divinity. The mass of rock forming this extraordinary profile is said to be eighty feet in height, fifteen hundred feet above the lake, and about half a mile from a spectator on the road; from a certain point of which it appears to be at the top of the mountain, though it is in reality five hundred feet below the summit.

The Hawk's Nest, in western Virginia, a vast mass of shelving rock, is so called on account of its resemblance to the nest of a mammoth bird.

With the great geological phenomenon the Natural Bridge of Virginia-every reader must be familiar; as also with Wier's and Madison's Caves in the same State; they are, perhaps, among the most beautiful and extensive of the kind yet discovered in the world.

The Gorge near Harper's Ferry, on the borders of Maryland, where the confluent streams of the Potomac and Shenandoah

have worn their channel across the blue ridge of the Alleghanies to the sea, is celebrated by Mr. Jefferson, in his notes of the Ancient Dominion,"* as one of the most stupendous scenes in nature, and as being worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see.

The Chimney Rocks, on the highway from North Carolina to Tennessee along the broad French River, are also marvellous works of nature. They rise perpendicularly to a vast height, and are about two hundred yards in diameter at the base. Being of sandstone formation, and the water having worn the ridges smooth, they present the appearance of a solitary gigantic pillar of granite rising from the prairies.

Nor must the Cascade in Georgia, called Toccoa, and the series of beautiful and sparkling falls in the deep gorge of Tallulah, be regarded as undeserving a passing observation.

These, and other such manifestations of the wonder-working power of the Almighty, have been well described as epics in the poetry of nature.

The Enchanted Mountains of Tennessee are remarkable for the vivid impressions of human feet and those of lower animals than man upon what is now become solid sandstone rock.

The Sulphuretted Springs with which this and the neighbouring States of Virginia and Arkansas abound, as also those of Saratoga and New Lebanon in New York, are so celebrated for their natural beauties as to require little or no description.

The Virginian mineral waters contain sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid gas, evolved in. bubbles, rising at intervals from the bottom of the spring. By analysis, the minerals in combination are found to be sulphate of lime, carbonate of magnesia, carbonate of lime, sulphate of magnesia, chloride of sodium, and iron. Some of the springs are thermal, and may be said to exhibit the same phenomena as the celebrated Fountain of the Sun, near the Temple of Ammon, as described by Herodotus, viz., that they are warm at midnight and cool at noon-day.

Saratoga contains four great classes of mineral springs: the acidulous, which are highly charged with carbonic acid, or acid of charcoal; the chalybeate, impregnated with iron, and of an acid taste; the saline, composed of different saline ingredients,

Virginia was so called from its being the first settlement of the English in

America.

such as sulphate of magnesia, soda, muriates, and carbonates of soda and lime; and the sulphurous, the prevailing character of which arises from the presence of sulphuretted hydrogen, either uncombined or united with lime, alkalies, iron, &c.

The Lebanon springs are similar, excepting that at neither of these are there thermal waters. The temperature of these last-named springs ranges only from between 48 and 51 degrees of Fahrenheit.

The Mammoth Cave in Rockingham County, Kentucky, is remarkable not only for its magnitude, but also for its situation, being found beneath level though broken ground, and not, as such caves commonly are, amidst mountain rocks. For more than six miles you pass underground to the principal area, which contains eight acres, without one pillar to support its magnificent vaulted roof. Many of the rooms are not only covered with sparry incrustations, but are filled with millions of stalactites, descending in all forms from the ceiling, and meeting their stalagmite kindred on the ground, and thus forming splendid crystal columns; while here and there, over the broken rocks, fall beautiful cascades, which feed the quiet lakes that are scattered over the area, occasionally adorned with moss and weeds, and cryptogamic flora, hydropores, confervæ, and occilitoriæ, together with climbing bignonia, fragrant vanillas, and golden flowered banistereas. Though not so celebrated as the ancient Antiparos in the Grecian archipelago, the stones and stalactites of which, like diamonds, are said to throw back the light of torches, it is far more extensive, and is more splendid in appearance than can be well expressed or even conceived, exceeding in every respect those of Elora and Elephanta.

The Monument Mountain, in the route from New York to Barrington by the Housalonic railroad in Connecticut, is celebrated for its relation to the romantic history of a beautiful Indian girl, who, under the influence of a passionate love for one with whom the religion of her tribe would not allow her to be united in marriage, threw herself from the mountain and perished. Every Indian who afterwards passed the place, threw a stone upon the grave to commemorate the event.

The Mammelle Mountain in Tennessee, a natural pyramid, seven hundred feet in height,-the Regicides' Cave in New Haven, the splendid Waterfalls of the Catskill in New York, of Trenton near Utica (the next to Niagara in beauty, grandeur, and extent),—the falls of the Missouri, tearing