In the afternoon we came in sight of the Monongehala river; and its banks gave us for several miles a beautiful succession of wild and domestic scenery.  In some points, the black rock rises perpendicularly from its margin, like those at Chepstow; at others, a mill, with its owner’s cottage, its corn-plat, and its poultry, present a delightful image of industry and comfort.

Brownsville is a busy looking little town built upon the banks of this river; it would be pretty, were it not stained by the hue of coal.  I do not remember in England to have seen any spot, however near a coal mine, so dyed in black as Wheeling and Brownsville.  At this place we crossed the Monongehala, in a flat ferry-boat, which very commodiously received our huge coach and four horses.

On leaving the black little town, we were again cheered by abundance of evergreens, reflected in the stream, with fantastic piles of rock, half visible through the pines and cedars above, giving often the idea of a vast gothic castle.  It was a folly, I confess, but I often lamented they were not such; the travelling for thousands of miles, without meeting any nobler trace of the ages that are passed, than a mass of rotten leaves, or a fragment of fallen rock, produces a heavy, earthly matter-of-fact effect upon the imagination, which can hardly be described, and for which the greatest beauty of scenery can furnish only an occasional and transitory remedy.

Our second night in the mountains was past at a solitary house of rather forlorn appearance; but we fared much better than the night before, for they gave us clean sheets, a good fire, and no scolding.  We again started at four o’clock in the morning, and eagerly watched for the first gleam of light that should show the same lovely spectacle we had seen the day before; nor were we disappointed, though the show was somewhat different.  The vapours caught the morning ray, as it first darted over the mountain top, and passing it to the scene below, we seemed enveloped in a rainbow.

We had now but one ridge left to pass over, and as we reached the top, and looked down on the new world before us, I hardly knew whether most to rejoice that

      “All the toil of the long-pass’d way”

was over, or to regret that our mountain journey was drawing to a close.

The novelty of my enjoyment had doubtless added much to its keenness.  I have never been familiar with mountain scenery.  Wales has shewn me all I ever saw, and the region of the Alleghany Alps in no way resembles it.  It is a world of mountains rising around you in every direction, and in every form; savage, vast, and wild; yet almost at every step, some lovely spot meets your eye, green, bright and blooming, as the most cherished nook belonging to some noble Flora in our own beautiful land.  It is a ride of ninety miles through kalmies, rhododendrons, azalias, vines and roses; sheltered from every blast that blows by vast masses of various coloured rocks, on which