We hear in the thunder that reverberates from crag to crag the echo of long silent artillery; we see in the mists of morning the smoke of British guns, and under the downright rays of noon seem to distinguish the entrenchments of patriotic levies. But when night falls the mysterious significance of nature asserts a sway that is stronger than embattled arms and older than history. Then the passions and the conquests of man are forgotten and the abiding mystery of immemorial hills possesses the soul. The pen of Irving has fixed on an inimitable page the subtle charm of a nio^ht in the Hio^hlands:

390 The Hudson River The moon had just raised her silver horns above the round back of old Bull Hill, and lit up the grey rocks and shagged forests, and glittered on the waving bosom of the river. The night-dew was falling, and the late gloomy mountains began to soften and put on a grey, aerial tint in the dewy light. The hunters stirred the fire, and threw on fresh fuel to qualify the damp of the night -air. Thev ^hen prepared a bed of branches and dry leaves under a ledge of rocks for Dolph ; while Antony Vander Heyden, wrapping himself in a huge coat of skins, stretched himself before the fire. It was some time, however, before Dolph could close his eyes. He lay contemplating the strange scene before him: the wild woods and rocks around; the fire throwing fitful gleams on the faces of the sleeping savages; and the Heer Antony, too, who so singularly, yet vaguely, reminded him of the nightly visitant to the haunted house. Now and then he heard the cry of some animal from the forest ; or the hooting of the owl; or the notes of the whippoorwill, which seemed to abound among these solitudes ; or the splash of a sturgeon leaping out of the river and falling back full-length on its placid surface.