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    country would be sensibly diminished . Down the mountain sides rills of water are perpetually gushing , and the traveller can take no step where his ear is not saluted with the murmur of a falling stream .

    A few miles' travel now lead you to the boundary between Massachusetts and New York ; and just within the limits of the latter state stands New Lebanon , celebrated foT its spring , and its community of Shakers . The hills which enclose the valley of New Lebanon slope very gracefully in all directions , and the beauty of the spot has made this watering-place one of great resort ,, although the water of the spring has no remarkable

    medicinal properties . A more singular and interesting object is the Shaker village ,, which exhibits the perfection of neatness and thrift . It occupies a little lap of land above the bottom of the valley ; nothing can surpass the rich cultivation of the fields , the commodiousness of the buildings , and the spectacle of industry , skill , and prosperity ^ which the abode of this strange community of beings offers to the view : the public buildings are in a style

    worthy of a great city . One cannot help wishing to see their industry , neatness , honesty , and peaceful habits imitated by all mankind ; though should all mankind become Shakers , it would be extending these good qualities at a little too much cost in the end . From this point to Albany the road offers little that is remarkable . The land slopes gradually to the Hudson , which here sweeps its broad and rapid current between lofty banks covered with wood . Albany rises fairly to the sight on the western shore , its thick cluster of buildings crowned by a white marble

    nothing ever looked so fantastically and horribl y scraggy . Stopping at an inn by the way-side , I witnessed a strange trial of prowess which , I trow , must have been learnt from the Indians . Two country fellows sat puffing tobacco-smoke in each other ' s face , to see which would hold out longest : — * Puff in thy teeth , most recreant coward base !'

    edifice with a gilt dome . The interior of the city presents striking contrasts of architecture ; the fresh-looking and tasteful structures of the present day stand by the side of the odd old piles of the ancient Dutch burghers . Rail-roads and locomotives now whisk you off to Schenectady , across the great canal to Ballston and Saratoga , gay watering places , amidst a wilderness of pine woods . The fences round about here are made of the stumps of enormous trees , and the first sight of one of them would startle a war-horse :

    From hence to Lake George , the road lies through the woods over a hard country , with a log cabin and a corn field here and there . At Glen ' s Falls , a bridge crosses the Hudson at the spot where the river falls in a fine cataract over a precipice of blue limestone . Below the falls are several narrow caverns in the

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    98 American Sketches .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1835, page 98, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2642/page/18/