Chapter 8 - Page 2

light-footed girl found herself at once on a point where
the sight, at a few varying glances, could take in all the external
novelties of her new situation.

To the southward lay the forest, through which she had been journeying
so many weary days, and which had proved so full of dangers. It was
separated from the stockade by a belt of open land, that had been
principally cleared of its woods to form the martial constructions
around her. This glacis, for such in fact was its military uses,
might have covered a hundred acres; but with it every sign of civilization
ceased. All beyond was forest; that dense, interminable forest
which Mabel could now picture to herself, through her recollections,
with its hidden glassy lakes, its dark rolling stream, and its
world of nature.

Turning from this view, our heroine felt her cheek fanned by a
fresh and grateful breeze, such as she had not experienced since
quitting the far distant coast. Here a new scene presented itself:
although expected, it was not without a start, and a low exclamation
indicative of pleasure, that the eager eyes of the girl drank in its
beauties. To the north, and east, and west, in every direction,
in short, over one entire half of the novel panorama, lay a field
of rolling waters. The element was neither of that glassy green
which distinguishes the American waters in general, nor yet of the
deep blue of the ocean, the color being of a slightly amber hue,
which scarcely affected its limpidity. No land was to be seen,
with the exception of the adjacent coast, which stretched to the
right and left in an unbroken outline of forest with wide bays and
low headlands or points; still, much of the shore was rocky, and
into its caverns the sluggish waters occasionally rolled, producing
a hollow sound, which resembled the concussions of a distant gun.
No sail whitened the surface, no whale or other fish gambolled on
its bosom, no sign of use or service rewarded the longest and most
minute gaze at its boundless expanse. It was a scene, on one
side, of apparently endless forests, while a waste of seemingly
interminable water spread itself on the other. Nature appeared to
have delighted in producing grand effects, by setting two of her
principal agents in bold relief to each other, neglecting details;
the eye turning from the broad carpet of leaves to the still broader
field of fluid, from the endless but gentle heavings of the lake
to the holy calm and poetical solitude of the forest, with wonder
and delight.

Mabel Dunham, though unsophisticated, like most of her countrywomen
of that period, and ingenuous and frank as any warm-hearted and
sincere-minded girl well could be, was not altogether without a
feeling for the poetry of this