the waters, he who wants to get a good appetite and allay it too, will do well to come here, to eat mutton and venison. You gentry who get a saddle of mutton a month old, and then hang it up till its juice exhales, and it becomes as dry as the remainder biscuit after a long voyage,' dont know what venison is, when brought down from the mountains fresh. I am no great epicure you know-that is, I neither like terrapins, tripe, beavers' tails, hog-fish, nor any other of the great dishes; but I confess to the Virginia venison.

There is plenty to eat here; but they give you very little time to eat it in. Just fifteen minutes, and the table begins to be cleared. For my part, I like to masticate before I swallow my victuals; so that, before I had half finished, some confounded Dr. Pedro Positive de Bodeille of a fellow, would whip off the dishes one by one, and leave the dinner entirely extinct. It may be urged in extenuation of this haste, that people who drink plentifully of this water, cease to be free agents, and must make the most of their time in eating. The visitors here are mostly invalids, either real or imaginary; if there be any such thing as imaginary sickness. It has always struck me as a great piece of assurance in one man to tell another that he was hipped, as the phrase is;-as if a man was not a better judge of his own feelings, than any body else can possibly be. For my part, I believe by far the most common imaginary complaint is that of fancying ourselves wiser than other people; and, under the influence of this species of the hypocondriac, pretending to decide on their internal ailments. I believe a person may suffer much, and yet the hours of health and of sickness be so equally balanced, that, to the eye of an observer, nothing seems to be the matter; and thus the poor soul is deprived of sympathy; because he dont waste away and die.

The country people often stop here to take a glass of the water, and I had opportunities of seeing numbers of them. They are very much like the country people in all the remote parts of the United States; and appear at the spring, among the fashionable ladies and gentlemen, without the least embarrassment. There is a striking air of conscious independence about them, which, to me, is the finest charac teristic of our countrymen, and gives assurance of long continued freedom. At first, it seems a little unpleasant; but reflection soon reconciles us to this proud badge of liberty. This feature of character is, perhaps, stronger in the south than elsewhere; for where there are a great many blacks, it is, in itself, no small distinction to be white. In Virginia,

too, the free holders give their votes viva voce, in the presence of the candidates: and this, doubtless, gives them a character of more sturdy independence.

Here, too, the hunters are seen coming down with their deer to sell; for the mountains in this region abound; with mighty hunters before the Lord; who cultivate a little land, and hunt a great deal. These are the people to make soldiers of; for they endure more hardships, and encounter more fatigues to kill one deer, than would killt wenty of the stoutest bucks in all Christendom. In the morning, they are at their posts in the pathless mountains, in the depths of winter; often all night out; and often bewildered in these recesses, for two or three days. They are patient of cold and hunger; but dont bear thirst well; and always carry a bottle of whiskey. It is an utter disgrace to one of these mountain spirits, to draw the blood of a squirrel in killing it; they just hit the bark to which he clings, and bring him down by the shock, stone dead, without touching the body, or breaking the skin. An army of these fellows would march to the north pole, and shoot out the wind's eye, if it were no bigger than the point of a needle. I noticed one of these men last Sunday, down at the spring; and such a lad you wont always see. He was at least six feet high; all bone and sinew; and had but one eye; which by the way was not in the middle of his forehead; else he might have passed for Polyphemus, in a hunting shirt. Whether his having but one eye was the consequence of an amusement said to have been fashionable hereabout, some years ago; or whether it was put out designedly, that he might take sight, without the trouble of shutting it, I am unable to tell; for I reckon the man that asked him, might chance to get knocked down, with something betwixt a fist and a sledge-hammer. He was followed by two dogs, lank and fierce, looking somewhat like their master; who, however, talked with a degree of manliness, intelligence, and decorum, that would have astonished people, who measure the fineness of a man's intellect by the texture of his coat. The fact is, that these people are not altogether dependent on hunting; but cultivate little farms; and there is, in the peaceful labours of agriculture, some thing, that softens and harmonizes the heart of man; just as its influence ameliorates the climate, and smoothes the rugged face of nature. This hunter told me he had a little farm, in a glen in the mountains; of which he was to have the produce of all he cleared to himself for three yearsafter which one-third was to be given to the proprietor. I

believe these are the usual terms on which land is taken up in this region; where it is less valuable because situated just between the navigable rivers, that centre in the Atlantic, on one hand; the Mississippi, on the other, and a number of miles distant from each. The roads, too, are inconvenient for wagons; and the produce of these little farms finds its prinpal market at the springs; which are an immense advantage to this country; not only by helping the people off with their surplus produce; but by their visitors affording such excellent examples of refined manners, and models for caps and Cossack breeches. Good night.

Letter XXII.

DEAR FRANK, Nature or education, or that mysterious influence, whatever it may be, which inclines the human mind to certain pursuits, and fits it to derive enjoyment from the contemplation of particular objects, has made me a great admirer of mountain scenery. Whether it be the silence and solitude, that reign in these lofty regions, which naturally calls the imagination into action; or the magnitude of the objects every where presenting themselves to the eye; or the vivifying elasticity of the air we breathe, that separate or combined, produce, in me, the sensation of elevated pleasure, I neither know, nor do I much care. Let philosophers analyze their feelings, while I content myself with feeling, without philosophizing. You, I know, have never been among the mountains; for I remember your father, the worthy alderman, had an idea there was nothing worth seeing out of the great cities. He sent you from one to the other, with store of money and recommendations, to see mankind, without being aware that the politer sort of people in cities, are like mould candles, all of a size and shape, and taking the same number to the pound. He thought the whole world could be seen at the Coffee-House.

For this reason, and because I delight to recal and arrange the impressions I derived from the scene, I will sketch a mountain landscape for you, without caring so much to administer to your gratification, as to my own. I am now in the very midst of that great congregation of hills, comprising all the spurs, branches, knobs, and peaks, of the great chain which has been called with a happy aptitude, the backbone of America. From the window where I am now writing, I can see them running into each other, as when we lock our fingers together, exhibiting an infinitude of various outlines; some waving, others rising in peaks, and others straight

for many miles. Every where they are, covered from top to bottom, with every various shade of green foliage; except where, here and there, a bare rocky promontory is seen, crowned at its summit with pines. As the clouds pass over, an infinite succession of light and shadow is produced, that occasions a perpetual variety in the combinations of scenery. The sides of many of the ridges, are, at intervals, ribbed with forests of pine; the deep foliage of which fringes the rocky projections, from the foot to the summit, broad at the bottom, and ending in a point. Between these projecting ribs, in the deep glens, is seen a motley host of forest trees, all green, but all different, in proportion as they are exposed to the sun, or enveloped in the shade. In some places, appear extensive patches of deep red or brown, where the trees have been set on fire, either by accident, or with a view to turn the side of the hill into pasture. It may, perhaps, be owing to this practice, that one of the favourite Virginia reels is, Fire in the mountains, run, boys, run.'

In traversing this mountain region, one of the first things that struck me, was the solemn, severe silence which prevailed every where, and only broken, at distant intervals, by the note of the cock of the woods; the chirping of a ground squirrel; the crash of a falling tree, or the long echoes of the fowler's gun, which render the silence thus broken in upon, for a moment, still more striking. But if it should happen that a gust of wind comes on, the scene of repose is instantly changed into one of sublime and appalling noise and motion. The forest roars, the trees totter, and the limbs crack, in a way that is calculated to alarm the stoutest city tourist. You can hear it coming at a distance, roaring like far off thunder, and warning the traveller to get into some clear spot, out of the reach of the falling trees. I did not see a tree actually fall; but in many places we were obliged to turn out of the road to avoid the trunks of immense oaks and pines, that had been blown down just before. Our good mothers think only of the perils of the sea; and give up a son for lost, who becomes a sailor. But the perils of the land are far greater than those of the water; for there, whether in crowded cities, or lonely mountains, it is the fate of man ever to be exposed to dangers, which, often he cannot see, and often he cannot avoid.

Yet, though the ingredients of mountain scenes are pretty much the same, wherever we go, there is a continued variety occurring in the combination of the same materials of earth, water, wood, and rocks, that never tires. The prospect is always expanding, or contracting: as you lose sight of one

object, on one side, another gradually opens, in a different direction; and this continual change is the parent of endless diversity. From the mountains, whence you can see as far almost, as the eye can extend, you descend into little narrow glens, hemmed in, on either side, by lofty bluffs, above which you catch the clouds passing, like shadows, no sooner seen than lost. Through these glens, invariably winds a brook, or river, stealing or rushing from side to side, striking first the foot of one mountain, and rebounding back to the other, in regular meanders. The sides of these are sometimes skirted with narrow strips of meadow; and, when this is the case, you may be pretty certain somebody lives near. The traces of impetuous torrents, now dry, or only displaying here and there a pool of clear water, among the rocks, occur frequently, and sometimes form the road over which you travel. Little is seen of the traces of man, except the tracks of the road, or occasionally a column of smoke rising at a distance, which gives token of his being near, but which not seldom turns out to proceed from the unextinguished fire of a west country wagoner, who has, perhaps, encamped there the night before, or stopped to cook his supper.

Of living objects, we sometimes saw a covey of partridges, a cock of the woods, or a ground squirrel, whose tameness convinced us they were little acquainted with man; whose acquaintance, instead of ripening into familiarity, produces nothing but fear. Occasionally we saw a litter of swine, half wild, which always snorted violently, and scampered into the woods as we approached; which convinced me they had some knowledge of our race, else they would not have been so frightened. In some few instances we came suddenly upon a brace of wood-cutters, with a couple of hounds, which were occasionally employed in scouring the forest, while their masters were felling trees. In the solemn repose of the woods, we could hear the echoings of every stroke of their axes, at a great distance. They sometimes condescended to stop a moment to look at us; but often continued their work without deigning us that attention; for there is a pride in these people that prevents them from doing strangers the honour to gape at them, as our fashionable well-bred people do. It sometimes happened that we found it expedient to inquire of them our way, when they always answered very civilly, and with much intelligence. In many places the only traces of human agency, are the incisions of the sugar maple, and the little troughs at the foot of the tree turned upside down, to wait the flowing of the sap in the spring. Where these