the western horizon.

Irving, who has made these mountains the scene of one of his popular tales, thus describes their aspect, as viewed from the river and its banks:Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains; and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory."

The traveller, as he looks from the shore of the river to the broad woody sides of this mighty mountain range, turns his eyes from a scene rich with cultivation, populous with human beings, and ringing with the sounds of human toil, to one of primeval forest, and a solitude as perfect as when the prow of the first European navigator divided the virgin waters of the Hudson-a wide sylvan wilderness, an asylum for noxious animals, which have been chased from the cultivated region; the wild cat, the catamount, the wolf and the bear, and

a haunt of birds that love not the neighborhood of from the summit; and if it were, we could only do man. This is not the place to describe the view it justice by copying the magnificent description of a popular American novelist, written while that summit was yet untrodden but by the foot of the hunter, or the lover of nature. The view, how

ever, has now become familiar; a house of entertainment has been erected at two thousand and two hundred feet above the bed of the Hudson, on a narrow level of about seven acres, called the Pine Orchard, which, within a few years, has bemer heats. The spot, to use the language of one come a place of fashionable resort, during the sumwhose genius embellishes whatever it touches, and whose pen should have traced the description for this work, "is now desecrated; it can never more be gazed on from afar as a point in the outline of the blue figure above the horizon, which the heawith reverent footsteps-as it was gazed upon, and vens seemed to vindicate as their own, or be visited parted." For our own part, however, we are not as it was approached, in the days that have dewhen viewed from below, to know that on that sure that it does not heighten the effect of the scene, little point, scarce visible on the breast of the mountain, the beautiful and the gay are met, and the sounds of mirth and music arise, while for and the eagle is uttering his shriek, unheard by leagues around, the mountain torrents are dashing,

human ear.

ORIGINAL.

By-Past Time.

I think on childhood's glowing yearsHow soft, how bright, the scene appears! How calm, how cloudless, pass'd away The long, long, summer holiday!

I may not muse-I must not dream
Too beautiful these visions seem
For earth and mortal man; but when
Shall by-past time come back again?
I think of sunny eves so soft,
Too deeply felt, enjoy'd too oft,
When through the bloomy fields Irov'd
With her, the earliest, dearest lov'd;
Around whose form I yet survey,
In thought, a bright celestial ray,
To present scenes denied; and when
Shall by-past time come back again?

Alas, the world at distance seen,
Appear'd all blissful and serene,
An Eden, form'd to tempt the foot,
With crystal streams, and golden fruit;
The world, when tried and trod, is found
A rocky waste, a thorny ground!
We then revert to youth; but when
Shall by-past time come back again? L.

THAT part of the Andes which extending through the Republic of Colombia, descends abruptly to the sea at the port of La Guayra, abounds perhaps more than any other in scenes of sublimity and beauty. The road leading from La Guayra to Caraccas, is so steep and difficult of ascent that it is scarcely practicable for any animals but the sure footed mules to attempt its acclivities. The traveller in ascending, as he casts his eyes above him, sees others immediately over his head as it were, and whom he thinks the least slip would inevitably precipitate upon him. Around him on all sides he beholds yawning precipices, whose depths are so obscured by mists that they appear immeasurable, and lofty peaks whose wide and barren summits seem inaccessible to all but the birds of prey which frequent them. So rough, so wild, and so impregnable were the haunts which the celebrated Robber Chief Cisneros and his hardy band maintained. An Indian by birth, he had been originally a muleteer, but dissatisfied with even the little restraint and want of freedom, which that occupation imposed upon him, he collected round him a set of spirits as bold and daring as himself, and then departed for the mountains, with the passes and caves of which, he was perfectly acquainted. As fickle and variable in his political principles as some of our own worthies, he one day espoused the cause of this, and another day of that party; at one time he was a strict and zealous republican, at another, he was untiring in his persecution of the enemies of the King. In short whatever creed best suited the enterprize of the moment, was sure to be his. Yet though in many instances a ruthless bandit, he possessed many good qualities, which almost deserved the name of virtues, he levied his contributions only on the rich, to the poor he was kind and even charitable; he was never known to forget a kindness, or to fail in returning it whenever an opportunity offered; so much were the poorer classes at tached to him, that though the government had offered a large reward for his apprehension, none were found willing to betray him: though in fact he gave them little opportunity. As well acquainted with the mountains as the animals that inhabited them, he seemed to pass from one place to another by magic, and when the emissaries of the state were searching him in one part, he might be fifty or a hundred miles off. No one could ever tell the number of his band, in some expeditions it amount ed to a hundred, in others, ten or twenty, as the occasion required: in short he was a perfect mystery and a thorn in the side of the Republie, who with all their troops could not prevent his operation, or bring him to punishment. Craving pardon for this preface, we proceed to our story.

In the village of Mayquetia, (pronounced Micatia,) distant a few miles from the port of La Guayra, there lived during the presidency of Boliyar, an old Spaniard, named Pedro Alfarez. He was a

native of Old Castile, and possessed all the pride and indolence which characterize his countrymen. Though but the owner of a small hacienda, which afforded but a scanty subsistence for himself and family, he was never tired of talking boastfully to any that would listen to him, of the antiquity of his family, which was founded as he alleged, by Don Alphonso de Alfarez, one of the few immortal heroes, who with Pelagio at their head, so nobly defended their country against the Moors. His neighbors however, thought that he had better attend to his farm and let his ancestors alone, for as they told him they were doubtless very good people but that they never would put a rial in his pocket. His wife Margarita was a bustling dame, who attended to her household affairs and cared not a maravedi for the great Alphonso. His daughter Olivia was the pride of the village, she was indeed worthy to compare with the proudest of Spain's dark glancing daughters, her hair hung in glossy jet black ringlets about her face, her piercing eye, now shining with intense brilliancy, and now dimmed by the long silken lashes which surrounded them, shot admiration into all beholders; a mouth seldom free from smiles, displaying teeth of pearly whiteness, add to all these a form of exquisite symmetry, and you have a picture of Olivia de Alfarez. It will be supposed and justly too, that so fair a damsel was not left to "blash unseen," she had turned the heads of half the young men in the village who did nothing all day, but compose rude verses, and nothing all night but sing them to the accompaniment of cracked guitars under her window, till her father swore, “by the great Pelagio," that he would shoot the next one who thus disturbed his rest.

It rarely happens that a maiden remains long insensible to the attractions of some one among so many admirers. Love soon found a dwelling in her heart and Claudio de los Rios, became the object of her devoted affection, Claudio was only a poor arriero, (Muleteer,) but though poor, he possessed as true and honest a heart as ever beat. He was the first in the village, in all trials of strength and activity, the admiration of all the belles of the place, ever ready to help a friend, and moreover had the finest mules in the country. He was a great favorite too with old Alfarez. There he would sit whole evenings listening to the details of the wars of the great Pelagio, his eyes fixed on Olivia all the time, piously wishing Don Pelagio Alphonso and the other worthies at the d).

Things went on in this way, and Claudio was considered by all as the future husband of Olivia, when a rival appeared in the field. The commander of the detachment stationed at Mayquetia, had lately been removed and colonel Francisco de Raton appointed in his stead. Senor el Coronel, or el Chico, as he was called by his soldiers, was an extraordinary man, his stature might have been five