Chapter 1

The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;
My temple, Lord! that arch of thine;
My censer's breath the mountain airs,
And silent thoughts my only prayers.
MOORE

The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every eye. The
most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened
of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into
the depths of the illimitable void. The expanse of the ocean is
seldom seen by the novice with indifference; and the mind, even in
the obscurity of night, finds a parallel to that grandeur, which
seems inseparable from images that the senses cannot compass.
With feelings akin to this admiration and awe -- the offspring of
sublimity -- were the different characters with which the action
of this tale must open, gazing on the scene before them. Four
persons in all, -- two of each sex, -- they had managed to ascend a
pile of trees, that had been uptorn by a tempest, to catch a view
of the objects that surrounded them. It is still the practice
of the country to call these spots wind-rows. By letting in the
light of heaven upon the dark and damp recesses of the wood, they
form a sort of oases in the solemn obscurity of the virgin forests
of America. The particular wind-row of which we are writing lay
on the brow of a gentle acclivity; and, though small, it had opened
the way for an extensive view to those who might occupy its upper
margin, a rare occurrence to the traveller in the woods. Philosophy
has not yet determined the nature of the power that so often
lays desolate spots of this description; some ascribing it to the
whirlwinds which produce waterspouts on the ocean, while others
again impute it to sudden and violent passages of streams of the
electric fluid; but the effects in the woods are familiar to all.
On the upper margin of the opening, the viewless influence had
piled tree on tree, in such a manner as had not only enabled the
two males of the party to ascend to an elevation of some thirty
feet above the level of the earth, but, with a little care and
encouragement, to induce their more timid companions to accompany
them. The vast trunks which had been broken and driven by the force
of the gust lay blended like jack-straws; while their branches,
still exhaling the fragrance of withering leaves, were interlaced
in a manner to afford sufficient support to the hands. One tree
had been completely uprooted, and its lower end, filled with earth,
had been cast uppermost, in a way to supply a sort of staging for
the four adventurers, when they had gained the desired distance
from the ground.

The reader is to anticipate none of the appliances of people of
condition in the description of the personal appearances of the
group