LETTERS FROM THE BACKWOODS. LETTER I. MOUNT TAHAWUS. June 18. I CAN scarcely believe, as I stand this evening and look around on the forest that girdles me in, and hear naught but the dash of the waterfall at the base of yonder gloomy mountain, or the rapid song of the whippowil as it rings like the notes of a fife through the clear air, that I stood a few days ago in Broadway, and heard only the surge of human life as it swept fiercely by. The change could not be greater if I had been transferred to another planet. The paved street changed for the mountain slope-the rattle of omnibuses and carriages for the rush of streams and music of wind amid the tree tops-the voices of the passing multitude for the song of birds and chirp of the squirrel. It seems but a day since I with markets. Soon as the sun mounts the dusty heavens, New York seems to open its mouth and rush for the markets. But here by the forest, as the unclouded sun wheels with a lordly majestic motion above the mountain, ten thousand birds seem to have awakened at once. I would you could listen a moment. It is a perfect storm of sound. From the soft warble of the robin to the shrill scream of the woodpecker, there is every variety of note, and yet all in accord. I said nature was quiet, and leisure; but I was mistaken. in a hurry, as if they had not music; and they pour it forth in such rapid, thrilling strains, that the ear is perfectly confused. every moving thing at These birds seem to be time to utter all their Ah! there are other times when nature is not tranquil; for now, while I am writing, a dark shadow has fallen on my paper, and as I look up I see the sun has left the blue sky and buried his burning forehead in a black thunder cloud that is heaving, gloomy as midnight, over the mountain. The lightning searches its bosom, as with an assassin's knife, and the deep low growl that follows is like the slow waking up of wrath. The distant tree tops rock to and fro in the gathering blast, and a hush like death is on everything. Still I love it. I love the strong movement of those black masses. They seem conscious of power and of the terror of their frown, as it darkens on the crouching earth. It is black as midnight; but I know before long the sunbeams will burst forth like the smile of God, the birds break out in sudden thanksgiving, and the blue sky kiss the green mountain in delight. Thus does nature change-yet is ever beautiful in her changes. I did not design, when I commenced this letter, to fill it up with such a diary of my feelings; but the truth is, when I first get into the country, at least into the backwoods, I wish to do nothing for the first two or three days but lie down on the hillside, and look at the trees and sky, and think of the strange contrast between the life I have just left and the one that surrounds me. It takes some time to adjust myself to it—quite a preparation—before I can enter on that active life of fishing, tramping, and camping out in the woods, which my health demands; and it is but natural you should have my transition At least, it is natural I should write out that which is uppermost in me. state. I expect soon to start for the Adirondac Mountains, at whose broken terminations I now rest. I have some things to say about Long Lake and Mr. Todd's colony there, which will put your readers right respecting it. You know, two years ago, that Mr. Todd took me up rather sharply in your paper on account of some statements I made respecting that country. I made no reply then; but I will now show that I was not only right in every particular, but that every prediction I then made of the fate of the colony has already proved true. LETTER II. LOG DRIVING. BACKWOODS, July 6th. DID you ever witness a log driving? It is one of the curiosities of the backwoods, where streams are made to subserve the purpose of teams. On the steep mountain side, and along the shores of the brook which in spring time becomes a swollen torrent, tearing madly through the forest, the tall pines and hemlocks are felled in winter and dragged or rolled to the brink of the streams. Here every man marks his own, as he would his sheep, and then rolls them in, when the current is swollen by the rains. The melted snow along the acclivities comes in a perfect sheet of water down, and the streams rise as if by magic to the tops of their banks, and a broad, resistless current goes sweeping like a live and gloomy thing through the deep forest. The foam-bubbles sparkle on the dark bosom that floats them on, and past the boughs that bend with the stream, and by the precipices that frown sternly down on the tumult. The rapid waters shoot onward like an arrow, or rather a visible spirit on some mysterious errand, seeking the loneliest and most fearful passages the |