Chapter IX.
"Yet art thou prodigal of smiles
-Smiles, sweeter than thy frowns are stern:
Earth sends from all her thousand isles,
A shout at thy return.
The glory that comes down from thee
Bathes, in deep joy, the land and sea."
Bryant, 'The Firmament," 11.19-24
It may assist the reader in understanding the events we are about
to record, if he has a rapidly sketched picture of the scene, placed
before his eyes at a single view. It will be remembered that the
lake was an irregularly shaped basin, of an outline that, in the
main, was oval, but with bays and points to relieve its formality
and ornament its shores. The surface of this beautiful sheet of
water was now glittering like a gem, in the last rays of the evening
sun, and the setting of the whole, hills clothed in the richest
forest verdure, was lighted up with a sort of radiant smile, that
is best described in the beautiful lines we have placed at the head
of this chapter. As the banks, with few exceptions, rose abruptly
from the water, even where the mountain did not immediately bound
the view, there was a nearly unbroken fringe of leaves overhanging
the placid lake, the trees starting out of the acclivities, inclining
to the light, until, in many instances they extended their long
limbs and straight trunks some forty or fifty feet beyond the line
of the perpendicular.
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