Guy Rivers | Page 2

indicate her mineral treasures, rise
themselves into attractions; and the perverted heart, striving with
diseased hopes, and unnatural passions, gladly welcomes the
wilderness, without ever once thinking how to make it blossom like the
rose.
Cheerless in its exterior, however, the season of the year was one--a
mild afternoon in May--to mollify and sweeten the severe and sterile
aspect of the scene. Sun and sky do their work of beauty upon earth,
without heeding the ungracious return which she may make; and a rich
warm sunset flung over the hills and woods a delicious atmosphere of
beauty, burnishing the dull heights and the gloomy pines with golden
hues, far more bright, if for less highly valued by men, than the metallic
treasures which lay beneath their masses. Invested by the lavish
bounties of the sun, so soft, yet bright, so mild, yet beautiful, the waste
put on an appearance of sweetness, if it did not rise into the picturesque.
The very uninviting and unlovely character of the landscape, rendered
the sudden effect of the sunset doubly effective, though, in a colder
moment, the spectator might rebuke his own admiration with question
of that lavish and indiscriminate waste which could clothe, with such
glorious hues, a region so little worthy of such bounty; even as we
revolt at sight of rich jewels about the brows and neck of age and

ugliness. The solitary group of pines, that, here and there, shot up
suddenly like illuminated spires;--the harsh and repulsive hills, that
caught, in differing gradations, a glow and glory from the same bright
fountain of light and beauty;--even the low copse, uniform of height,
and of dull hues, not yet quite caparisoned for spring, yet sprinkled
with gleaming eyes, and limned in pencilling beams and streaks of fire;
these, all, appeared suddenly to be subdued in mood, and appealed,
with a freshening interest, to the eye of the traveller whom at midday
their aspects discouraged only.
And there is a traveller--a single horseman--who emerges suddenly
from the thicket, and presses forward, not rapidly, nor yet with the
manner of one disposed to linger, yet whose eyes take in gratefully the
softening influences of that evening sunlight.
In that region, he who travelled at all, at the time of which we write,
must do so on horseback. It were a doubtful progress which any vehicle
would make over the blind and broken paths of that uncultivated realm.
Either thus, or on foot, as was the common practice with the mountain
hunters; men who, at seventy years of age, might be found as lithe and
active, in clambering up the lofty summit as if in full possession of the
winged vigor and impulse of twenty-five.
Our traveller, on the present occasion, was apparently a mere youth. He
had probably seen twenty summers--scarcely more. Yet his person was
tall and well developed; symmetrical and manly; rather slight, perhaps,
as was proper to his immaturity; but not wanting in what the
backwoodsmen call heft. He was evidently no milksop, though slight;
carried himself with ease and grace; and was certainly not only well
endowed with bone and muscle, but bore the appearance, somehow, of
a person not unpractised in the use of it. His face was manly like his
person; not so round as full, it presented a perfect oval to the eye; the
forehead was broad, high, and intellectual--purely white, probably
because so well shadowed by the masses of his dark brown hair. His
eyes were rather small, but dark and expressive, and derived additional
expression from their large, bushy, overhanging brows, which gave a
commanding, and, at times, a somewhat fierce expression to his

countenance. But his mouth was small, sweet, exquisitely chiselled,
and the lips of a ripe, rich color. His chin, full and decided, was in
character with the nobility of his forehead. The tout ensemble
constituted a fine specimen of masculine beauty, significant at once of
character and intelligence.
Our traveller rode a steed, which might be considered, even in the
South, where the passion for fine horses is universal, of the choicest
parentage. He was blooded, and of Arabian, through English, stocks.
You might detect his blood at a glance, even as you did that of his rider.
The beast was large, high, broad-chested, sleek of skin, wiry of limb,
with no excess of fat, and no straggling hair; small ears, a glorious
mane, and a great lively eye. At once docile and full of life, he trod the
earth with the firm pace of an elephant, yet with the ease of an antelope;
moving carelessly as in pastime, and as if he bore no sort of burden on
his back. For that matter he might well do so. His rider, though well
developed, was too slight to be felt by