86

VIEW FROM MOUNT IDA.

not what they did. The stranger came, a timid suppliant, few and feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bear-skin, and warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads out his parchment over the whole, and says, It is mine. Stranger, there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit has not made us to live together. There is poison in the white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red man's heels. If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the groves of the Pequots ? Shall I wander to the west? the fierce Mohawk-the maneater-is my foe. Shall I fly to the east?—the great water is before me. No, stranger, here have I lived, and here will I die! and if here thou abidest, there is eternal war between me and thee! Thou hast taught me thy arts of destruction, for that alone I thank thee; and now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe. When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle by thee; when thou liest down at night, my knife is at thy throat. The noon-day sun shall not discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood! thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes! thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after with the scalping-knife! thou shalt build, and I will burn, till the white man or the Indian shall cease from the land. Go thy way for this time in safety, but remember, stranger, there is eternal war between me and thee!"

As the same writer afterwards observes, however, the Pilgrim Fathers "purchased the land of those who claimed it, and paid for it-often, more than once. They purchased it for a consideration, trifling to the European, but valuable to the Indian. There is no overreaching in giving but little for that which, in the hands of the original proprietors, is worth nothing."

VIEW FROM GLENMARY LAWN,

THE RESIDENCE OF N. P. WILLIS.

(AT THE JUNCTION OF THE OWAGA AND SUSQUEHANNAH.)

THE Owaga here is scarce a quarter of a mile from its junction with the Susquehannah, and the lawn of Glenmary is the western limit of the star of interval land formed by the union of two broad valleys. The river here is a secluded stream, shadowed originally with dark forest trees, and running deep and still. The farm of Glenmary, part of which is presented in the drawing, was once an Indian burialplace-warrant enough for its possessing the highest rural beauty. The plough has turned up many skeletons in the fields above, and a small museum of Indian weapons and domestic implements was collected by the gentleman from whom the land was bought by the writer. Off to the left of the drawing, (too far off to be brought into the sketch,) a bright and brawling brook comes leaping down from the hills, and passing by the cottage door crosses the meadow to pay tribute to the Owaga; and back from the meadow, by broad and easy terraces, the land rises to the summit of a mountain ridge, crowned with primeval and gigantic forest trees. Having possessed the reader thus of the principal features of the spot, I may be excused for filling a page from an epistle to a friend, descriptive of the artist's visit to Glenmary.

"This is not a very prompt answer to your last, my dear doctor, for I intended to have taken my brains to you bodily, and replied to all your 'whether-or-noes' over a broiled oyster at Downing's. Perhaps I may bring this in my pocket. A brace of ramblers, brothers of my own, detained me for a while, but are flitting today; and Bartlett has been here a week, to whom, more particularly, I wish to do the honours of the scenery. We have climbed every hill-top that has the happiness

88

VIEW FROM GLENMARY LAWN.

of looking down on the Owaga and Susquehannah, and he agrees with me that a more lovely and habitable valley has never sat to him for its picture. Fortunately, on the day of his arrival, the dust of a six-weeks' drought was washed from its face, and, barring the wilt that precedes Autumn, the hill-sides were in holiday green, and looked their fairest. He has enriched his portfolio with four or five delicious sketches, and if there were gratitude or sense of renown in trees and hills, they would have nodded their tops to the two of us. It is not every valley and pine-tree that finds painter and historian, but these are as insensible as beauty and greatness were ever to the claims of their trumpeters.

"How long since was it that I wrote to you of Bartlett's visit to Constantinople? Not more than four or five weeks, it seems to me; and yet here he is, on his return from a professional trip to Canada, with all its best scenery snug in his portmanteau! He steamed to Turkey and back, and steamed again to America, and will be once more in England in some twenty days-having visited and sketched the two extremities of the civilized world. Why, I might farm it on the Susquehannah, and keep my town-house in Constantinople, (with money.) It seemed odd to me to turn over a drawing-book, and find on one leaf a freshly pencilled sketch of a mosque, and on the next a view of Glenmary-my turnip-field in the foreground. And then the man himself-pulling a Turkish para and a Yankee shin-plaster from his pocket. with the same pinch-shuffling to breakfast in my abri on the Susquehannah, in a pair of peaked slippers of Constantinople, that smell as freshly of the bazaar as if they were bought yesterday—waking up with "pekke! pekke! my good fellow!" when William brings him his boots-and never seeing a blood-red maple (just turned with the frost), without fancying it the sanguine flag of the Bosphorus or the bright jacket of a Greek! All this unsettles me strangely. The phantasmagoria of my days of vagabondage flit before my eyes again. This, By-the-by, do you remember, in Smyrna?' and, 'The view you recollect from the Seraglio!' and such like slip-slop of travellers, heard within reach of my corn and pumpkins, affects me like the mad poet's proposition,

To twitch the rainbow from the sky,
And splice both ends together.'

"I have amused my artist friend since he has been here, with an entertainment not quite as expensive as the Holly Lodge fireworks, but quite as beautiful—the burning of log-heaps. Instead of gossipping over the tea-table these long and chilly evenings, the three or four young men who have been staying with us, were very content to tramp into the woods, with a bundle of straw and a match-box; and they have been