Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/60

56 eye most agreeably, and passing them, the wild features of the scene are lost in high cultivation, and the embellishments of taste. A winding avenue, occasionally fringed with shades, among which the graceful acacia predominates, leads upward to the mansion-house, in the rear of which you look down six hundred feet into one of the most rich and glorious valleys upon which the sun ever shone.

From the portico in front, you gaze upon a still more surprising object. Stretching at your feet, on the brow of this beautiful mountain, is a lake, more than a mile in circumference, deep, cold, crystalline, and bordered with trees. The white bathing-house on its margin, and the pleasure-boat on its bosom, with bright streamers, and graceful gliding motion, are pleasing points in the landscape. The utmost pinnacle of the mountain, which rises northward of the lake, is surrounded by a hexagonal tower, sixty feet in height, seeming to spring from the dark, grey rock, which in color it resembles. From its summit, to which access is rendered as easy as possible, and which commands an elevation of nearly a thousand feet above the level of Connecticut river, you have a glorious view of the surrounding country, and into the adjoining States of Massachusetts and New York; the whole surrounded by an empurpled outline of mountains. The Connecticut is seen sweeping onward like a king, through its fair domain, amid the spires of numerous towns and villages, while, by the