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presence of even the smallest isolated mountain that it is impossible not to endow it with almost human attributes.
The Indians carried this so far as to imagine a deity as presiding over each mysterious peak, and punishing those rash mortals who climbed too far. The Hebrews, with grander feeling, found the source of aid and strength in these solemn heights.
“I will look to the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
Remembering this, old Ethan Allen, the fearless, when summoned to surrender his Green Mountain settlements to the aggressions of the New York authorities, sent back to them the haughty message, “Our Gods are gods of the hills; therefore.we are stronger than you.”
It was a natural feeling.
We are stronger, at any rate, for seeking hill gods in the early summer-time.
Many old friends are there before us, constant to the season.
The woods are still thronged with mountain-laurel, but it is really past and faded and dropping from the stem, except one vast bush that stands amid the darkness of a pine grove, and is still blooming and luxuriant as if it were some semitropical magnolia or rhododendron.
The bright red lily is brilliant in the woods, and it loves to grow on the very tops of low mountains like Wachusett, concentrating its cups of crimson as earth's last defiance to the blue sky above.
The yellow flowers are just beginning — in the first weeks of
Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square, New York. 1888.
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