Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/38

 "You may look about here for a few moments," sail Utis, but do not wander far. I will not be long absent."

Left to myself, I first turned my eyes toward the river. The broad Hudson glittered in the rays of the sun, now descending toward the hills on the farther shore. Rivercraft of strange appearance were gliding over the faintly rippled surface, while from them strains of distant music fell with a caressing cadence upon my ear. These vessels were evidently set in motion by some internal machinery. Yet no hideous smoke-stack disfigured their decks, no pitchy train of smoke lung heavily behind. The outline of the western hills seemed familiar, though altered, like the lineaments of the friend we meet after a separation of years.

The changes were greatest in the form of the Palisades, as I subsequently had occasion to observe. The lapse of nearly eighty centuries would alone have produced considerable alteration in their outline, but the ever-active hand of man had effected far more. Instead of the bold, precipitous wall now dominating the river, like the rockbuilt ramparts of a Titan race, gentle slopes, in a state of high cultivation, extended to the water's edge. Only isolated fragments, rising at intervals in solitary grandeur, lent a savage grace to the otherwise, perhaps, too placid scene.

What chiefly had led to the extensive disappearance of the rock, was the discovery of the valuable properties of trap as the basis of certain fertilizers. First the talus, now so extensive, had been carried away for that purpose; when that was exhausted, the rock itself had been