There were forests scattered athwart it, and single great trees, and little ridges, too, but at the height where we stood it seemed to the eye to be one verdant meadow as trim and shapely as the lawn of a garden.

A noble river, the child of many hill streams, twined through it in shining links.

I could see dots, which I took to be herds of wild cattle grazing, but no sign of any human dweller.
"What is it ?" I asked unthinkingly.
"The Shenandoah," Shalah said, and I never stopped to ask how he knew the name.

He was gazing at the sight with hungry eyes, he whose gaze was, for usual, so passionless.
That prospect gave me a happy feeling of comfort; why, I cannot tell, except that the place looked so bright and habitable.

Here was no sour wilderness, but a land made by God for cheerful human dwellings.