Everything around realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who: "Hewed the dark old woods away, And gave the virgin fields to the day And the pea and the bean beside the door Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before; And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky." Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm, the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy silence of natural decay.

Before the dwellings of the white adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn.
The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom.

It was like some vivid picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors.

The oak upon the hillside stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz- colored walnut.

The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming, with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty.