a deep down glen, tracked but by my own tangled paths, and the wild torrent which by turns they avoid and follow. That description, which might have been written yes- terday, has been applicable for nearly fifty years. Other hands trim the lawns and repair the drives; other eyes enjoy the beauty of the successive years of growth and developmeiit, but the place is still "Wil- lis's Idlewild," as though its eariier tenant — held in mortmain still his old estate. Digitized by Microsoft® 396 The Hudson River The drives are probably better kept and the lawns better groomed than they were in the early fifties, and the shade trees are taller and more dense ; but one step aside over the edge of the wooded declivity instantly translates the pilgrim into a "land of faery," where the hand of man has not interfered except with the consummate art that conceals art. From the commencement of the descent the sound of the stream far below comes up through the rustling foliage. The tops of the trees that grow along the bottom of the glen are below the level of the eye, and the crowding companies of birch and hemlock, chest- nut and maple, swarm the hillside. The glen of Idlewild [Willis said] is but a morning's ramble in extent — a kind of Trenton Falls for one — but its stream, fall- ing over a hundred feet within one's own gate, and sometimes a cataract that would bring down a lumber sloop or raft; it has varieties of charm that will at least occupy what loving I have time for. Step by step in a zigzag course the visitor gets toward that stream that is "sometimes a cataract," and, with every moment the remoteness from human life increases. If it was ever true that " IdlewHd is getting fast peopled with the viewless crowd that will make haunted ground of it," the gentle ghosts must have departed with him for whom they first appeared. I could imagine Willis there — Willis and the Irishman who wielded axe and spade at his command; but the people he had conjured into the glen are all gone — Digitized by Microsoft® The Fisher's Reach 397 astral bodies and all. However, expectation looked for the obese old toad that used to sit in the middle of the path and moved reluctantly at a stranger's ap- proach, and peered over to see whether the great freshet of 1853 had left any discernible marks on the tree trunks, and hoped with every tread to hear the whirr of frightened quail. No one — not Willis or any other — could do justice to the beauty of the stream that is the chief charm of the glen. To appreciate its hurfyings and baitings, its cascades and pools, its encompassing boulders and bridging tree trunks, one must see and hear it. Far off, in a world that is out of sight, on that level a hun- dred feet or so above the stream, there are people. A hundred miles could not make their remoteness more complete. The trees are full of singing and calling birds, the banks covered with ferns and wild flowers; the solitude is that of a beautiful wilderness. What Idlewild was in its prehistoric days we may conjecture from a letter written by its master in Feb- ruary, 1854: We were fortunate enough to identify yesterday a mysterious inmate of Idlewild, who has been the subject of a great deal of discussion. . . . Summer before last the ox-drag turned up ... a spirited bust, carved in grey rock. The crown of the head was broken off, but the lower part of the face remained, and the neck and shoulders and the fold of drapery across the breast were still complete. The design was that of a head turned aside with a look of aroused attention, and to me it seemed exceedingly expressive and well conceived. Digitized by Microsoft® 398 The Hudson River He goes on to relate how this reHc gradually was de- graded into a mere hat-rack, until our friend Copway, the Ojibbeway Chief . stopped surprised before the nameless bust on the hat-stand. " What! " he said; "you have an Indian god there? " He looked a little closer, as I told him how we had found it. " It is the god of the winds and the birds," he continued — " Mesa- ba-wa-sin." Mesa-ba-wa-sin still presides in spirit and fact over the glen, and his altars are everywhere. The wood- thrush and the vireo sing his praises still, and the wake robins are proxies for his redskin worshippers. There is a pathetic side to the Idlewild days. In many of the cheery, entertaining letters, and increas- ingly toward