PREFACE.

THE Letters which form the present volume, were written in the Valley of the Susquehannah, from a beautiful glen some eighty miles above Wyoming. The author, after many years' travel in Europe and the East, has there "pitched his tent." The letters were addressed to the friend to whom they are inscribed; but, as they embody a freshly-drawn picture of the scenery and mode of life on the banks of the beautiful river, celebrated by the muse of Campbell, it has been thought worth while to collect them in a volume for publication. For two or three exquisite sketches of this part of the Valley of the Susquehannah, the reader is referred to the work on American Scenery now in publication from drawings by Bartlett.

THE TENT PITCH'D.

LETTER I.

MY DEAR DOCTOR.-Twice in the year, they say, the farmer may sleep late in the morning-between hoeing and haying, and between harvest and thrashing. If I have not written to you since the frost was out of the ground, my apology lies distributed over the "spring work," in due proportions among ploughing, harrowing, sowing, plastering and hoeing. We have finished the lastsome thanks to the crows, who saved us the labor of one acre of corn, by eating it in the blade. Think what times we live in, when even the crows are obliged to anticipate their income!

When I had made up my mind to write to you, I cact about for a cool place in the shade-for, besides the changes which farming works upon my epidermis, I find some in the inner man, one of which is a vegetable necessity for living out of doors. Between five in the morning and "flower-shut," I feel as if four walls and a ceiling would stop my breath. Very much to the disgust of William, (who begins to think it was infra dig. to have followed such a hob-nail from London,) I showed the first symptom of this chair-and-carpet asthma, by ordering my breakfast under a balsam-fir. Dinner and tea soon followed; and now, if I go in-doors by daylight,

it is a sort of fireman's visit-in and out with a long breath. I have worn quite a dial on the grass, working my chair around with the sun.

"If you ever observed," (a phrase with which a neighbor of mine ludicrously prefaces every possible remark,) a single tree will do very well to sit, or dine, or be buried under, but you cannot write in the shade of it. Beside the sun-flecks and the light all around you, there is a want of that privacy, which is necessary to a perfect abandonment to pen and ink. I discovered this on getting as far as "dear Doctor," and, pocketing my tools, strolled away up the glen to borrow "stool and desk " of Nature. Half open, like a broad-leafed book, (green margin and silver type,) the brook-hollow of Glenmary spreads wide as it drops upon the meadow, but above, like a book that deserves its fair margent, it deepens as you proceed. Not far from the road, its little rivulet steals forth from a shadowy ravine, narrow as you enter, then widening back to a mimick cataract; and here, a child would say, is fairy-parlor. A small platform, (an island when the stream is swollen,) lies at the foot of the fall, carpeted with the fine silky grass which thrives with shade and spray. The two walls of the ravine are mossy, and trickling with springs; the trees overhead interlace, to keep out the sun; and down comes the brook, over a flight of precipitous steps, like children bursting out of school, and after a laugh at its own tumble, it falls again into a decorous ripple, and trips murmuring away. The light is green, the leaves of the overhanging trees look translucent above, and the wild

blue grape, with its emerald rings, has wove all over it a basket-lattice so fine, that you would think it were done to order-warranted to keep out the hawk, and let in the humming-bird. With a yellow pine at my back, a moss cushion beneath, and a ledge of flat stone at my elbow, you will allow I had a secretary's outfit. I spread my paper, and mended my pen ; and then, (you will pardon me, dear Doctor,) I forgot you altogether. The truth is, these fanciful garnishings spoil work. Silvio Pellico had a better place to write in. If it had been a room with a Chinese paper, (a bird standing for ever on one leg, and a tree ruffled by the summer wind, and fixed with its leaves on edge, as if petrified with the varlet's impudence,) the eye might get accustomed to it. But first came a gold-robin, twittering out his surprise to find strange company in his parlor, yet never frighted from his twig by pen and ink. By the time I had sucked a lesson out of that, a squirrel tripped in without knocking, and sat nibbling at a last-year's nut, as if nobody but he took thought for the morrow. Then came an enterprising ant, climbing my knee like a discoverer; and I wondered whether Fernando Cortes would have mounted so boldly, had the peak of Darien been as newdropped between the Americas, as my leg by his ant-hill. By this time, a small dripping from a moss-fringe at my elbow betrayed the lip of a spring; and, dislodging a stone, I uncovered a brace of lizards lying snug in the We flatter ourselves, thought I, that we drink first of the spring. We do not know always whose lips were before us.

ooze.