Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/273

Rh three hundred feet in height, the views of earth and ocean are truly magnificent. Its peculiar features have caused it frequently to be compared to the Isle of Wight, though inferior in wildness and grandeur.

A powerful pencil would be tasked to describe its diversified prospects, for instance from the Telegraph Station, the Quarantine, the Clove, or the deserted Fort Tompkins, whose outline and walls might almost cause it to pass for a modern Colliseum. New York, with its dense masses of architecture, and the shores of Long Island, exuberant in fertility, add their contrast of beauty, while the peninsular coast of New Jersey approaches as if to seek the embrace of its beautiful neighbor.

A short stay on Staten Island, in the autumn of 1843, gave a greater degree of familiarity with its scenery, than is usually acquired in a first visit, through the kind attentions of hospitable friends, who every day exhibited to us some new department of their region of beauty. In traversing it, you find interspersed among humble cottages, in the cultured vale, lofty hills, crowned by graceful mansions, and here and there a low-browed church, claiming reverence both from its sacredness and its antiquity.

The entrance to the town of Richmond, from the green hills that enclose it, as in a cup, descending which, you look down upon winding streams, green vallies, and quiet habitations,—is very beautiful. The perpetual gliding of sails, and the rapid movement of steamers, brilliant with their evening lights, give to the