Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 2).djvu/153

 The curling and spotless mists which had been seen sailing above the hills towards the north, were now returning in an interminable dusky sheet, thai was urged along by the fury of a tempest. The crowded mirror of the Horican was gone; and in its place the green and angry waters lashed the shores, as if indignantly casting back its impurities to the polluted strand. Still the clear fountain retained a portion of its charmed influence; but it reflected only the sombre gloom that fell from the impending heavens. That humid and congenial atmosphere which was wont about the view, veiling its harshness, and softening its asperities, had disappeared, and the northern air poured across the waste of water so harsh and unmingled, that nothing was left to be conjectured by the eye or fashioned by the fancy.

The fiercer element had cropped the verdure of the plain, which looked as though it were scathed by the consuming lightning. But here and there a dark green tuft rose in the midst of the desolation; the earliest fruits of a soil that had