Throughout
the whole of that defile, nothing can possibly surpass the loveliness of
nature; the road hard, and smooth, and level, winding and wheeling
parallel to the gurgling river, crossing it two or three times in each
mile, now on one side, and now on the other--the valley now barely broad
enough to permit the highway and the stream to pass between the abrupt
masses of rock and forest, and now expanding into rich basins of green
meadow-land, the deepest and most fertile possible--the hills of every
shape and size--here bold, and bare, and rocky--there swelling up in
grand round masses, pile above pile of verdure, to the blue firmament of
autumn. By and by we drove through a thriving little village, nestling
in a hollow of the hills, beside a broad bright pond, whose waters keep
a dozen manufactories of cotton and of iron--with which mineral these
hills abound--in constant operation; and passing by the tavern, the
departure of whose owner Harry had so pathetically mourned, we wheeled
again round a projecting spur of hill into a narrower defile, and
reached another hamlet, far different in its aspect from the busy
bustling place we had left some five miles behind.
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