How long is't,
Cale, since we had six on them all at once in the water--six--seven--
eight! well, I swon, it's ten years agone now! But come, we mus'nt stand
here talkin, else we'll get a dammin when they drives down a buck into
the pond, and none of us in there to tackle with him!"
So without more ado, we got into our boats, disposed our guns, with the
stocks towards us in the bows, laid in our stock of tinder, pipes, and
liquor, and rowed off merrily to our appointed stations.
Never, in the whole course of my life, has it been my fortune to look
upon more lovely scenery than I beheld that morning. The long narrow
winding lake, lying as pure as crystal beneath the liquid skies,
reflecting, with the correctness of the most perfect mirror, the abrupt
and broken hills, which sank down so precipitously into it--clad as they
were in foliage of every gorgeous dye, with which the autumn of America
loves to enhance the beauty of her forest pictures--that, could they
find their way into its mountain-girdled basin, ships of large burthen
might lie afloat within a stone's throw of the shore--the slopes of the
wood-covered knolls, here brown, or golden, and interspersed with the
rich crimson of the faded maples, there verdant with the evergreen
leaves of the pine and cedar--and the far azure summits of the most
distant peaks, all steeped in the serene and glowing sunshine of an
October morning.
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