The tall and sloping banks, covered with verdure to the
very sands, that unite with the waters lying motionless
at their base; the continuous chain of neat farm-houses
(we speak principally of Detroit and its opposite shores);
the luxuriant and bending orchards, teeming with fruits
of every kind and of every colour; the ripe and yellow
corn vying in hue with the soft atmosphere, which reflects
and gives full effect to its abundance and its
richness,--these, with the intervening waters unruffled,
save by the lazy skiff, or the light bark canoe urged
with the rapidity of thought along its surface by the
slight and elegantly ornamented paddle of the Indian; or
by the sudden leaping of the large salmon, the unwieldly
sturgeon, the bearded cat-fish, or the delicately flavoured
maskinonge, and fifty other tenants of their bosom;--all
these contribute to form the foreground of a picture
bounded in perspective by no less interesting, though
perhaps ruder marks of the magnificence of that great
architect--Nature, on which the eye never lingers without
calm; while feelings, at once voluptuous and tender,
creep insensibly over the heart, and raise the mind in
adoration to the one great and sole Cause by which the
stupendous whole has been produced.
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