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I have travelled the woods for fifty-three years, and have made them my home for more than forty,
and I can say that I have met but one place that was more to my liking; and that was only to eyesight, and not for hunting or fishing."
"And where was that?" asked Edwards.
"Where! why, up on the Catskills.
I used often to go up into the mountains after wolves’ skins and bears;
once they paid me to get them
a stuffed painter, and so I often went. ‘there’s a place in them hills that
I
used to climb to when I wanted
to see the carryings on of the world, that would well pay any man for a
barked shin or a torn moccasin.
You know the Catskills, lad; for you must have seen them on your left, as
you followed the river up from
York, looking as blue as a piece of clear sky, and holding the clouds on
their tops, as the smoke curls
over the head of an Indian chief at the council fire. Well, there’s the
High-peak and the Round-top, which
lay back like a father and mother among their children, seeing they
are far above all the other hills.
But the place I mean is next to the river, where one of the ridges juts out
a
little from the rest, and where
the rocks fall, for the best part of a thousand feet, so much up and down,
that a man standing on their edges
is fool enough to think he can jump from top to bottom."
"What see you when you get there?" asked Edwards,
"Creation," said Natty, dropping
the end of his rod into the water, and sweeping one hand around him in a
circle, "all creation, lad. I
was on that hill when Vaughan burned ‘Sopus in the last war; and I saw the
vessels come out of the Highlands
as plain as I can see that lime- scow rowing into the Susquehanna,
though one was twenty times farther
from me than the other. The river was in sight for seventy miles,
looking like a curled shaving under
my feet, though it was eight long miles to its banks. I saw the hills in
the
Hampshire grants, the highlands
of the river, and all that God had done, or man could do, far as eye could
reach-you know that the Indians
named me for my sight, lad ; and from the flat on the top of that mountain,
I have often found the place where
Albany stands. And as for ‘Sopus, the day the royal troops burnt the
town, the smoke seemed so nigh,
that I thought I could hear the screeches of the women."
"It must have been worth the toil to meet with such a glorious view."
If being the best part of
a mile in the air and having men’s farms and houses your feet, with rivers
looking
like ribbons, and mountains bigger
than the ‘Vision seeming to be hay-stacks of green grass under you,
gives any satisfaction to a man,
I can recommend the spot. When I first came into the woods to live, I used
to have weak spells when I felt
lonesome: and then I would go into the Catskills, and spend a few days on
that hill to look at the ways
of man; but it’s now many a year since I felt any such longings, and I am
getting
too old for rugged rocks. But
there’s a place, a short two miles back of that very hill, that in late times
I
relished better than the mountains:
for it was more covered with the trees, and nateral."
"And where was that?" inquired
Edwards, whose curiosity was strongly excited by the simple description
of the hunter.
"Why, there’s a fall in the
hills where the water of two little ponds. that lie near each other, breaks
out of
their bounds and runs over the
rocks into the valley. The stream is, maybe, such a one as would turn a mill,
if so useless thing was wanted
in the wilderness. But the hand that made that ‘Leap’ never made a mill.
There the water comes crooking
and winding among the rocks, first so slow that a trout could swim in it,
and then starting and running like
a creatur’ that wanted to make a far spring, till it gets to where the
mountain divides, like the cleft
hoof of a deer, leaving a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. The first
pitch is nigh two hundred feet,
and the water looks like flakes of driven snow afore it touches the bottom;
and there the stream gathers itself
together again for a new start, and maybe flutters over fifty feet of flat
rock before it falls for another
hundred, when it jumps about from shelf to shelf, first turning this-away
and
then turning that-away, striving
to get out of the hollow, till it finally comes to the plain."
"I have never heard of this spot before; it is not mentioned in the books."
"I never read a book in my
life," said Leather-Stocking; "and how should a man who has lived in towns
and schools know anything about
the wonders of the woods? No, no, lad; there has that little stream of
water been playing among the hills
since He made the world, and not a dozen white men have ever laid
eyes on it. The rock sweeps like
mason-work, in a half-round, on both sides of the fall, and shelves over
the bottom for fifty feet; so
that when I’ve been sitting at the foot of the first pitch, and my hounds
have run
into the caverns behind the sheet
of water, they’ve looked no bigger than so many rabbits. To my
judgment, lad, it’s the best piece
of work that I’ve met with in the woods; and none know how often the
hand of God is seen in the wilderness,
but them that rove it for a man’s life,"
"What becomes of the water? In which direction does it run? Is it a tributary of the Delaware?"
"Anan!" said Natty.
"Does the water run into the Delaware?"
"No, no; it’s a drop for the
old Hudson, and a merry time it has till it gets down off the mountain. I’ve
sat
on the shelving rock many a long
hour, boy, and watched the bubbles as they shot by me, and thought
how long it would be before that
very water, which seemed made for the wilderness, would be under the
bottom of a vessel, and tossing
in the salt sea. It is a spot to make a man solemnize. You go right down
into the valley that lies to the
east of the High Peak, where, in the fall of the year, thousands of acres
of
woods are before your eyes, in
the deep hollow, and along the side of the mountain, painted like ten
thousand rainbows, by no hand
of man, though without the ordering of God’s providence."
"You are eloquent, Leather-Stocking," exclaimed the youth.
Quoted from Chapter 26 of Cooper's The Pioneers.
The full text and commentary on The Pioneers can be found at:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/cooper/cooperhome.html