Young America finds himself "used up," and is recommended to try Sea-Bathing to recruit himself. He goes down to Fire Island, and proceeds to prepare for a Bath. He finds it rather chilly. Not being accustomed to this kind of amusement, he assumes a position exactly the reverse of the one he had calculated upon. He finds the taste of Salt Water any thing but agreeable. VOL. IX-No. 49.-I* He then tries a Sail, with a little Trolling; but he is struck by He comes to the conclusion that the Salt Water Exercises do not agree with his Constitution. He therefore reverts to First Principles, and enjoys himself hugely. HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. L-JULY, 1854.-VOL. IX. THE THE CATSKILLS. BY T. ADDISON RICHARDS. THE CATSKILL CREEK. THE Catskills follow a grand course from north to south in the eastern part of the State of New York. Their position is at an aggregate remove of ten miles west of the Hudson. The interval of undulating and fertile country is thickly studded with cities and villages and highly cultivated farms. Geologically speaking, the Catskills occupy the counties of Sullivan, Ulster, Greene, Schoharie, and Albany; but pictorially considered, they are in the county of Greene alone; within whose limits are found all the loftiest peaks, and all the chief resorts of the tourist and the artist. VOL. IX.-No. 50.-K The village of Catskill, upon the Catskill Creek,. near its confluence with the Hudson, is one hundred and eleven miles above New York; and is accessible from that city almost hourly by steamboat or railway. Good coaches are always waiting to convey travelers thence, over a glorious route of twelve miles of enchanting valley and hill country, to the regal halls of that famous cloud-capped palacethe Mountain House. This noble edifice, lifting its grand façade above a rocky cliff twenty-five hundred feet in air, forms a curious and beautiful feature of the mountain landscape, in the passage of the river, from all the distant towns and elevations to the eastward; and as it comes again and again into view in the gradual approach from Catskill; and finally, as it rises proudly above our | between Hermitages, 'white' or 'red,' Burgunheads, while slowly ascending the precipices dies, Madeiras, French dishes and French dances, which it so grandly caps. The Mountain House is a spacious structure of wood, originally built by the people of Catskill at a cost of more than twenty thousand dollars. It has from time to time been since refitted and enlarged, until it now affords all the conveniences and elegances of our most recherché metropolitan hotels. "How the proprietor," says Mr. Willis, "can have dragged up, and keeps dragging up, so many superfluities from the river level to that eagle's nest, excites your wonder. It is the more strange, because in climbing a mountain, the feeling is natural that you leave such enervating luxuries below. The mountain-top is too near heaven. It should be a monastery to lodge in, so high-a St. Gothard or a Vallombrosa. But here you choose as if you had descended upon Capua." The grand and precipitous height of the Mountain House, reveals a scene which in extent and beauty is scarcely rivaled by any " panoramic" view in the land. The eye glories in a boundless sweep of cultivated champaign, sparkling with busy towns and happy homes, bending rivers and mystic mountain chains, between the remote hills of Vermont on the one hand, and the dim waters of the Atlantic on the other. Miss Martineau, musing here on a sunny, quiet Sabbath morn, thus records her impressions of the morale of this suggestive picture: "To the philosopher what is it not?...... The fields and waters seem to him to-day no more truly property than the skies which shine down upon them; and to think how some below are busying their thoughts about how they shall hedge in another field, or multiply their flocks in yonder meadows, gives him a taste of the same pity which Jesus felt in his solitude, when his followers were contending about which should be greatest." Every fashionable "resort" has its especial points or lions-its great staple "sights." The staple, par excellence, of the Mountain House is the "sunrising." Though every body does the "sunrise," and every body rhapsodizes thereon, and though it forms now one of our own themes, yet it never has been and never can be looked, or talked, or scribbled up or down. the intelligent and philosophic mind satisfied with its grand beauties; the simply wondering observer gazing with new and pleased astonishment; down through all the shades of coolness and insensibility-lazily scanning the scene from chamber window, or enduring terrible martyrdom, standing in the shivering chilliness of the early morning air. A pleasant morning may be spent in a tramp to the North Mountain, a neighboring eminence, overlooking the Mountain House and its surroundings. The "Two Lakes," of which anon, sleep peacefully below in their soaring hammocks, while the great valley of the Hudson spreads away to the east and south. Glorious is the sparkle and There are here extraordinary facilities for en- freshness of the air at this lofty altitude, giving one joying this high delight of nature. The orient is a feeling and relish of life, of a vigor and intensbefore you, unobstructed by intervening hill or ity undreamed of in the thronged city. We may object whatsoever. The first smiles of the mon- perhaps be permitted to relate here a little adarch of the morn are yours, dimmed by the inter- venture incident to our first pilgrimage to the North vention of a few jealous or, perhaps, welcoming Mountain. This part of the Catskills was always clouds, for they laugh and dance with radiant a favorite range of the bear; and they may yet be beauty and grace as his burning caress calls the readily found here when sought at the proper searoses to their cheeks. The dense sea of vapor son. We were duly posted in respect to this fact, which overhangs the wide valley far below, is as also touching a habit this animal has of leavbroken as by the wand of an enchanter, and it ing marks of his passage, in the shape of up-turnrises into the upper air, like the smoke of a thou- ed stones. Our companion kept a sharp eye upon sand watch-fires, bringing hill, and vale, and all the rocks in our path, and seemed to be in stream, with all their myriad details into active mortal fear of encountering one of the black gentry. and joyous life and motion. It is a curious and It so happened that in returning we lost our way, oftentimes an amusing study, to observe the vary- and the better to re-find it, we agreed to search ing degrees of emotion or indifference with which each in a different direction, being careful, howmore poetic or obtuser natures witness this sub-ever, not to lose one another. We at length dislime spectacle: the highly spiritual temperament covered the path, and our fancy was so enlivened worshiping with religious oneness and fervor; by our good fortune that it suggested to us a |