Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/99

 scarcely passable by enormous and fallen trunks, accumulated by the storms of ages, and forming, by their slow decay, a moss-covered soil, the haunt of rabbits and lizards. These spots are obscured by the melancholy umbrage of pines, whose eternal murmurs are in unison with vacancy and solitude, with the reverberations of the torrents, and the whistling of the blasts. Hiccory and poplar, which abound in the low lands, find here no fostering elements.

A sort of continued vale, winding and abrupt, leads into the midst of this region and through it. This vale serves the purpose of a road: it is a tedious maze and perpetual declivity, and requires from the passenger a cautious and sure foot. Openings and ascents occasionally present themselves on each side, which seem to promise you access to the interior region; but always terminate, sooner or later, in insuperable difficulties, at the verge of a precipice, or the bottom of a steep.

Perhaps no one was more acquainted with this wilderness than I; but my knowledge was extremely imperfect. I had traversed parts of it at an early age, in pursuit of berries and nuts, or led by a roaming disposition; afterwards the sphere of my rambles was enlarged, and their purpose changed. When Sarsefield came among us, I became his favourite scholar and the companion of all his pedestrian excursions: he was fond of penetrating into these recesses, partly from the love of picturesque scenes, partly to investigate its botanical and mineral productions, and partly to carry on more effectually that species of instruction which he had adopted with regard to me, and which chiefly consisted in moralising narratives or synthetical reasonings. These excursions had familiarised me with its outlines and most accessible parts; but there was much which, perhaps, could never be reached without wings, and much the only paths to which I might for ever overlook.

Every new excursion, indeed, added somewhat to my knowledge; new tracks were pursued, new prospects detected, and new summits were gained: my rambles were productive of incessant novelty, though they always terminated in the prospect of limits that could not be overleaped. But none of these had led me wider from my