2.
a sober beauty the laughing earth and water below.  Farther
on yet up the river.    Leaping fish and a swift gyrating
bird or so.      The �Highlands�,  high bluffs, mountain
rising above mountain; � at every wind and turn of the
Hudson some new panorama of tranquil delight is out-
spread.     West Point,  with fellows bathing, or watching
us from the banks, where they undergo  strict drill for sucking
salamanders in the U.S. service.          We stop at Po�keep-
sie, and another and larger town, the name of which I
recollect not.    Wooden frame houses, barks and boats, clean
streets, white churches and publish buildings, and fellows
firing off a cannon in honor of the day.        On again;  � an
hour past noon, and we descend to dinner.    That completed
we are at Catskill,  Kaatskill or Kanterskill, for �tis
spelled all three ways.     Debarkation, and baggage being
stowed in each for the �Mountain House�    I and Mr Hart
ascend to either side of the driver, and are driven some
three minutes space into the village, where the coach halts at
a tavern door and we do the like for two tedious hours.
Meantime Dillon & Waud holding to their intention of walking
up the mountains have tramped on under the burning sun-blaze.
I doze awhile,  look around, notice precociously sassy boys
reviling a partially inebriated nigger, other boys letting off
crackers fitfully, greatly to the terror of the horses attached
to our vehicle.   There are a small posse of young men,
brown, thin and sinewy-looking indulging in the exciting pastime
of dragging a small cannon hither and thither, and firing