Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/14

 behind the shelter of lofty elms, exhibit the appearance of comfort and respectability. Travelling southward about two miles, through the principal road, the rural features of the landscape are lost, in the throng of houses, and bustle of men. The junction of two considerable streams here forms a beautiful river, which, receiving the tides of the sea, rushes with a short course into its bosom.

Masts peer over ware-houses, and streets rise above streets, with such irregularity that the base of one line of buildings sometimes overlooks the roofs of another. Here Man, incessantly combating the obstacles of Nature, is content to hang his dwelling upon her rocks, if he may but gather the treasures of her streams. Yet spots of brightness, and of beauty occur amid these eagle-nests upon the cliff; gardens of flowers; bold and romantic shores; pure, broad, sparkling waters; white sails dancing at the will of the breeze; boats gliding beneath bridges, or between islands of verdure, with sportive and graceful motion, like the slight gossamer in the sun-beam.

Between these two sections of the town, which, though sisters, bear no family resemblance, is a landscape, which some writer of romance might be pleased to describe. It is about a mile from the mouth of the smallest of the two streams just mentioned, which, winding its way through green meadows with a mild course, is fringed with the willow, and many aquatic shrubs, bending their drooping branches to kiss its noiseless tide. Suddenly it assumes the form of a cataract. Dashing tumultuously from rock