_Andre_. A wild risk for a creature like that! Have these Americans no
safer place to bestow their daughters than the fastnesses of this
wilderness?
_Mait_. It would seem so. Yet it is her home. Wild as it looks here,
from the top of that hill, where our men came out on the picket just now
so suddenly, you will see as fair a picture of cultured life as e'er
your eyes looked on. No English horizon frames a lovelier one.
_Andre_. _Here_? No!
_Mait_. Between that hill and the fort, there stretches a wide and
beautiful plain, covered with orchards and meadows to the wood's edge;
and here and there a gentle swell, crowned with trees, some patch of the
old wilderness. The infant Hudson winds through it, circling in its
deepest bend one little fairy isle, with woods enough for a single
bower, and a beauty that fills and characterizes, to its remotest line,
the varied landscape it centres; and far away in the east, this same
azure mountain-chain we have traced so long, with its changeful light
and shade, finishes the scene.
_Andre_. You should have been a painter, Maitland.
_Mait_. The first time I beheld it--one summer evening it was, from the
woods on the hill's brow;--we were a hunting party, I had lost my way,
and ere I knew it there I stood;--its waters lay glittering in the
sunset light, and the window-panes of its quiet dwellings were flashing
like gold,--the old brown houses looked out through the trees like so
many lighted palaces; and even the little hut of logs, nestling on the
wood's edge, borrowed beauty from the hour.
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