A hundred miles could not make their remoteness more complete. The trees are full of singing and calling birds, the banks covered with ferns and wild flowers; the solitude is that of a beautiful wilderness. What Idlewild was in its prehistoric days we may conjecture from a letter written by its master in February, 1854: We were fortunate enough to identify yesterday a mysterious inmate of Idlewild, who lias been the subject of a great deal of discussion. . . . Summer before last the ox-drag turned up ... a spirited bust, carved in grey rock. The crown of the head was broken off, but the lower part of the face remained, and the neck and shoulders and the fold of drapery across the breast were still complete. The design was that of a head turned aside with a look of aroused attention, and to me it seemed exceedingly expressive and well conceived.

398 The Hudson River

He goes on to relate how this reHc gradually was degraded into a mere hat-rack, until our friend Copway, the Ojibbeway Chief . stopped surprised before the nameless bust on the hat-stand. " What! " he said; "you have an Indian god there? " He looked a httle closer, as I told him how we had found it. " It is the god of the winds and the birds," he continued -- " Mesaba-wa-sin."

Mesa-ba-wa-sin still presides in spirit and fact over the glen, and his altars are everywhere. The woodthrush and the vireo sing his praises still, and the wake robins are proxies for his redskin worshippers. There is a pathetic side to the Idlewild days. In many of the cheery, entertaining letters, and increasingly toward the last, there is an acknowledgment of illness. The man who wrote them was nearing the end of life, and he knew it.