Page:Pioneersorsource01cooprich.djvu/49

 under the hands of man, that it only resembled, in its outlines, the picture she had so often studied, with delight, in her childhood. On the right, and stretching for several miles to the north, lay a narrow plain, buried among mountains, which, falling occasionally, jutted in long low points, that were covered with tall trees, into the valley; and then again, for miles, stretched their lofty brows perpendicularly along its margin, nourishing in the crags that formed their sides, pines and hemlocks thinly interspersed with chesnut and beech, which grew in lines nearly parallel to the mountains themselves. The dark foliage of the evergreens was brilliantly contrasted by the glittering whiteness of the plain, which exhibited, over the tops of the trees, and through the vistas formed by the advancing points of the hills, a single sheet of unspotted snow, relieved occasionally by a few small dark objects that were discovered, as they were passing directly beneath the feet of the travellers, to be sleighs moving in various directions. On the western border of the plain, the mountains, though equally high, were less precipitous, and as they receded, opened into irregular valleys and glens, and were formed into terraces and hollows that admitted of cultivation. Although the evergreens still held dominion over many of the hills that rose on this side of the valley, yet the undulating outlines of the distant mountains, covered with forests of beech and maple, gave a relief to the eye, and the promise of a kinder soil. Occasionally, spots of white were discoverable amidst the forests of the opposite hills, that announced, by the smoke which curled over the tops of the trees, the habitations of man, and the commencement of agriculture. These spots were sometimes, by the aid of united labour, enlarged into what were called settlements; but more frequently were small and insulated;