Excerpt: "A man stood on the jutting shoulder of a mountain overlooking a long, narrow valley, whose scattering houses and irregular farm-plats, seen through the clear air of that high region, appeared scarcely a gun-shot distant, when in fact they were miles away. It was early morning; the sun had barely cleared the highest peaks in the east, and the landscape, albeit a mid-winter one, was wonderfully rich in colors. On the oak trees the leaves still clung in heavy brown, green and russet masses; the hickory forests, though leafless, made bits of tender gray along the lower valley-slopes, whilst high up toward the mountain tops, the billowy wilderness of pines, cedars and chestnut trees added their variegated patch-work that gradually rose and shaded off into the blue of distance. In some places where storms, or the needs of man, had removed the oak woods, a dense, frondous mass of young pines had leaped up with a greenness full of a soft yellow glow. The sunshine and the wind of the South were flowing over this scene, and there were fragrant odors and balsamic pungency in every wave."

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