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VIADUCT LIKE A RAINBOW.

into pictures by these massive lines of architecture, may here see effects even bolder and finer.

The entrance to the Storucco reminded me of a call I once made upon a lady in Venice-my gondolier gliding into the very centre of the tall palace in which she lived, by a dark canal leading to a stair on the water level. The road turns into the Storucco at the point where the stream comes to the Susquehannah, and the beauty of the place is reached by a long ascent. The glen itself is fine enough to repay a journey from New York to see a fissure of a cracked-open mountain, with two or three different streams pouring into it but the look upward, as you stand between two sky-reaching precipices, spanned across at the top by a single arch, is truly most impressive. A rainbow, turned into a railroad bridge for the passing of a chasm between two clouds, would certainly look no more remarkable.

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A friend of mine in the Navy calls brandy and water a fine institution," and, if I had had more of two "institutions" for which I will borrow the phrase-time and a sandwich—I should have been delighted to make a day's exploration of the Storucco. It looks like a far-reaching cavern of the picturesque, of which we saw only the entrance-grandeur and darkness tempting powerfully on. Of the cascade we could hardly judge, the long drought having reduced its sheet to a mere trickle down the face of the rock; but a fall of such a depth, and into such a chasm of darkness, must be magnificent at some seasons. We mounted to the bridge and looked over into the deep fissure which it spans. It is a startling wonder of mechanism, and the most educated man may, at first sight, marvel how it was thrown over. The men at work upon it while we were there, looked so like ants, as

A KIND LANDLORD.

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we saw them from the base, that it seemed impossible the bridge could be the work of creatures of their size.

We had a curiosity to follow the bank of the Susquehannah to Great Bend, nine miles, and our landlord, (who kindly thought us worthy of trout and venison, and promised to send to me in the city what we should by rights have eaten at Lanesboro',) gave us a sort of top-less omnibus, and a pair of hardy little horses, with which we made the trip very comfortably. The scenery is much finer, this way, than seen from the window of a rail-car. The reaches of view, fore and after, were of perpetual beauty.. My companions, who had not been in this part of the country before, felt abundantly repaid for their trouble in coming, and stayed at Great Bend, to return, the next day, with daylight, to see the Delaware.

Obliged, myself, to be in town the next morning, I took the evening train, and slept over the track again most comfortably, all the way to Piermont, having passed a long and delightful day two hundred miles from the city, and yet absent from it, altogether, but thirty-six hours! Things are getting handy, in these days, my dear General!

Yours, here and there.

LETTER FROM COZZENS'S HOTEL.

Name of the Place whence the Letter is Dated-Cozzens's new HotelCloven-Rock Road-Waterfall Ladder-Fanny Kemble's Bath-Weir's Chapel-General and Mrs. Scott-River-God's Hair-Theory of June and August-Charade by a Distinguished Hand.

June, 1849.

You will see by my erasures, dear Morris, that I have tried hard to date my letter with a word descriptive of the place where it is written. Like most new things, babies included, this new resort, which is still in its infancy, goes by the handiest name— but, as there is a time when "poppet" or "blessing" is formally exchanged for John or Thomas, so should we be thinking of the period when "New West Point Hotel," or Cozzens's West Point Hotel," should be graced with an appellation both more distinctive and more ambitious. Grudging, as I mortally do, any time wasted on in-door work in June, I am not going to throw away the half-hour for which I have bothered my brains with this matter, and shall therefore record, in print that "will pay," my bibliographical, geographical and euphonious ransack for a name to this Hotel.

"West Point Hotel" it is not—though it sits in the high lap

HIGHLAND TERRACE.

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of the same West Point Mountain-for the old and well-known Hotel of that name is still in existence, and, as the landings to the two places are but a short distance apart, it would be a constant embarrassment to strangers, if, in their names, there were even a resemblance. Then the old West Point Hotel having been made famous by Cozzens's keeping, the name of "Cozzens's West Point Hotel" would of course lead the remembering public only to the old and upper landing. Palpable mis-namings as these evidently are, however, the beautiful place from which I write is known at present, by no other.

To find a name, then, and a descriptive one: Let us look first into its geographic peculiarities.

The new Hotel stands within the portals of the Highlands, with mountains enough, between it and New York, to insure the change of climate so healthful in the resorts of residents on the sea-board; and, if this were its only great advantage, it might be called, with descriptive propriety, the Transalpine Hotel-a name neither unmusical nor inexpressive. Its leading attraction, however, in the way of position, is the lofty bank on which it stands—the grounds of the house occupying a highland terrace, one hundred and fifty feet above the river, and the magnificent mountain which rises immediately behind it seeming literally to hold Cozzens and his caravanserai in its leafy lap. For position merely, Highland Terrace would be a name tolerably expressive.

But, in creating an access to the place from the river, there was an enterprise shown by Mr. Cozzens, that would not be unduly commemorated in its name. Two years ago, a precipitous rock, of near two hundred feet, "set its face" against any approach to the spot from the river; and the engineer, first consulted as to the cost of a wharf at the foot of this perpendicular

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BUTTERMILK FALLS.

wall, thought Mr. Cozzens a little "out of his mind." Carriages, now, wind easily from its base to its summit-a spiral road having been blown out of the flinty mountain-side, and the broad track, up which a four-horse omnibus goes with a trot, being as smooth as the Russ Pavement in Broadway. It struck me that Cloven-Rock Hotel would describe this feature pretty fairly, and as the road up is most picturesquely seen from the river, it would have a certain finger-post indicativeness that is desirable.

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The most enjoyable peculiarity of the scenery is still unnamed, however. The thickly-wooded banks of a bright, rocky and musical brook-with a descent so rapid that, at every few feet, you come to a mimic waterfall-tempt you from the hotelgrounds to a long ramble up the valley in the rear. There is nothing one wants more, at a public place, than the neighborhood of just such a shaded brook-to escape to, from too much society; to seek with a book or a pencil; to muse by, in idleness to track with friends, one or more, and, with the delicious accompaniment of swift running water, talk philosophy or love. It is a clean, clear, darkly-shaded mountain rivulet, picturesque at every inch of its way, and worthy, in itself, of a name and a moderate immortality. It is better known in its death than in its life; for, though few ever heard of the portion of its course I have been describing, everybody has seen where it slides over a rock, a hundred feet into the Hudson, and by the name (oh cacophonous horror !) of "Buttermilk Falls!" It would truly describe this pretty stream to call it Waterfall Ladder, and, if the Hotel (of which it is but a musical corridor) could afford to be named after so lesser an appendage, we might descriptively call it Shady Brook Hotel. Hudson Terrace is a well sounding name of which it is capable, also; or, as the Eagle Valley opens