Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/161

Rh like a gleaner, wandering here and there over the fields, gathering up ears and flowers to bind into sheaves and garlands, but in order to do that, I must have more than a handful; and, as yet, I have not more.

The commencement of my wanderings in this hemisphere was in the north-eastern States of the Union. I found there earnestness and labour, restless onward-striving, power both manual and spiritual; large educational establishments, manufactories, asylums for the suffering and institutions for the restoration of fallen humanity, were all admirable there, and above all, the upward-progressive movement of society. I saw before the winter set in the glorious Hudson, with its magnificent scenery, its shores covered with wood, which at that season presented the most wonderful splendour and variety of colour; I saw the rivers of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and hills and valleys which often reminded me of Sweden, for the scenery of Sweden and that of these two States resemble each other greatly, inasmuch as they have the strong characteristics of winter, snow and ice, and the dramatic scenes which these afford both of suffering and pleasure. After that I saw in the south the Palmetto States, Carolina and Georgia, and here I was enchanted by a luxuriance in the outward life of Nature, to which I had hitherto been a stranger! Would that I were able to describe to you those red rivers, the shores of which are covered with woods as yet untouched by human hand, and where no human habitation is to be found; woods which seem to swim upon the water, and where a hundred different kinds of trees were engarlanded by hundreds of different beautiful flowering creepers—a chaotic vegetable life, but full of beauty, and the most wonderful groupings, in which one discerns all those various architectural forms which we admire in temples and churches built by human hands. The primeval forest here presents them in fantastic sport, inspired by its morning dream. The morning dream of