The native American., 1838-04-28


to have shut me out from the world behind me
forever. turned from them, and began to
take in by degrees chow Nature mocks the Inn
tied faculties of manly the infinite OF expansion,
and of glory, and of beauty, which lay spread
out before me, rejoicing under most azure SKY
Yes, the character there of earth and heaven Is
pure and unmixed happiness! Then saw ana
felt how the widest and fondest enthusiasm
NAV not only be pardoned but admired; Tor how
poor are our faculties when brought before the
Infinite and the Eternal! and how natural al
thing it is that we should overstrain ourselves,
and even overleap the bounds OF proplety, IN
vanly endeavoring like the Pythoness OF Virgil,
10 throw off the inspiration from our bosoms.
| Who can express any mastering passion Of our
mature? Love, for example. Move have
nothing but sighs or words, which to those who
| feel them not, would be worse than folly-even
so; but far-far more unequal is the strife of
man with Nature: for myself, perhaps, have
proved this truth more than most men. Here
was |, who from fifteen years of age, had dream
ed, or thought away my life (either term now,
know, is the same) under half the hills, and
rocks, and woods Of my country; and had las
it were) hung over her dimly setting suns, and
her evening stars, with pure love, and feel
| ing of blessing which have never half ex-
pressed-and yet how much have j struggled to
do so in writings which, some day or other, will
be better known to the world than they are at
present Here had I, al last been enabled to
leave it at the age Of thirty four, for the first
time, when the deferred hope of doing SO had
almost made my heart sick, and when my ener-
gies had been too much drawn on by years Of
intense study. All this was now passed away
like painful and yet pleasing vision! And
here stood surveying, from my Psgah height,
AZ. etl,.
years!
Ought not then to be enthusiastic? But no
idle rhapsodies can now come from me: the
quick and the subdued feelings which have
acquired, the veneration, and the troubled love,
lyet more fervent the hopes drawn from what
see, the faith built up from what feel within
me, the reflections given me from every cloud
and from every shadow, are thankfully exchsng-
ed for my once animal gladness; are blessings SO
, delicious, that they can only be appreciated by
those whose feelings have united themselves
with Nature from their childhood.
u Who can look at the tremendous cefts, and
the rending asunder of the very heart of the
J mountains here, each frowning opposite to the
other with their shattered pinnacles and ridges
Iof the same crystalized granite!-who can see
the whitened fragments lying in the very bed
Of that icy sea, crushed into every form above
Mont Blanc, and not feel, and know, as il the
truth were stamped inately in him, that this
was once the very region, the centre-place, and
the throne, Of earthquakes, Of deluges, or vol
lcanic fires?
i Here my eyes seemed as If first opened: 1
had imagined much; nOsc | saw, and seeing,
could scarcely believe. Here were mountains
hewn asunder, forced aside, or shattered into
fragments, to give passage to the fountains Of
the great deep to rush out, and to Join again
their seas. Yet, whatan opposing force must have
presented itself, even in that very hour Of chaos
for who can look for q moment, with his thoughts
awakened, on the chasms which are filed by the
Mer de Glace, and not feel and know that in the
very fullest downward sweeping tide Of those
mountain seas, even in their most rushing de-
scent, that they were arrested and frozen in one
instant. The innumerable waves seem still hang
ing on their curl, half pausing, as them ere they
broke; now become the petrifed monuments
OF undated time! Never did see and feel that
sublimest sentiment given to the Deity, so terri
bly, illustrdted-'Thus far shalt thou 90, and no
farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stay
ed What most awaking sight to the think
ing man is there! The other wonders Of nature
are alive-all life; this is sthe Dead Sea- or
rather its monument for life ITSELF if it be there
sleeps underneath, and hand-i hand with death
w dS not the sum- In tnat hOur oil destruction, in
stantly removed? or rather, was the earth hurled
from her position, and her source of light and
heat gone, Immediately frozen, the Mer de
Glace remaining now, as then, from the natural
effects of its extraordinary positions
And the chaos which they found, or made
the jarring elements of hard and soft, of hot and
cold, Of moist and dry, remain to-day as ever
and shall do SO, until time shall again cease to
be- The torrents still thunder through the
rent gorges as wrathful as then; the opposing
fierce resistance is still the same, and the war
RACES on forever. The waters which then rush
ed down from the Jura, on the one side, and
the lips on the other, are still embedded in the
Lsman Lake, that throws her azure girdle be-
tween them. The, air, chilled and damped
among the depths of those tremendous gorges,
is impassive 10 the suns rays, and, though the
earth there throws out her lighter flowers on
the very edge of the SHOWS, yet her mightier
shapes and members remain the same as ever
The SHOWS Of four thousand winters (perhaps Of
an infinite duration) lie deepening among the
shattered Iibs of her hills, and become the de.
stroying thunderbolts of the alpine storms; to
mantle him again in darkness, Mont Blanc, that
purest, surest tablet Of Almighty power, rises as
silently and as immoyahla 90 N hau h. Il n - oIor