There was not a stir in the air; there was not a ripple on the water, except those which the oars made, and the long widening mark of disturbance the little boat left behind it.  Still —­ still, —­ surely it was Summer’s siesta; the very birds were still; but it was not the oppressive rest before a thunderstorm, only the pleasant hush of a summer’s day.  The very air seemed blue —­ blue against the mountains, and kept back the sun’s fierceness with its light shield; and even the eye was bid to rest, the distant landscape was so hidden under the same blue.

No distant landscape was to be seen, until they had rowed for several minutes.  Winthrop had turned to the north and was coasting the promontory edge, which in that direction stretched along for more than a quarter of a mile.  It stretched west as well as north, and the river’s course beyond it was in a north-easterly line; so that keeping close under the shore as they were, the up view could not be had till the point was turned.  First they passed the rock-bound shore which fenced in the home valley; then for a space the rocks and the heights fell back and several acres of arable ground edged the river, cut in two by a small belt of woods.  These acres were not used except for grazing cattle; the first field was occupied with a grove of cylindrical cedars; in the second a soft growth of young pines sloped up towards the height; the ground there rising fast to a very bluff and precipitous range which ended the promontory, and pushed the river boldly into a curve, as abrupt almost as the one it took in an opposite direction a quarter of a mile below.  Here the shore was bold and beautiful.  The sheer rock sprang up two hundred feet from the very bosom of the river, a smooth perpendicular wall; sometimes broken with a fissure and an out-jutting ledge, in other parts only roughened with lichens; then breaking away into a more irregular and wood-lined shore; but with this variety keeping its bold front to the river for many an oar’s length.  Probably as bold and more deep below the surface, for in this place was the strength of the channel.  The down tides rushed by here furiously; but it was still water now, and the little boat went smoothly and quietly on, the sound of the oars echoing back in sharp quick return from the rock.  It was all that was heard; the silence had made those in the boat silent; nothing but the dip of the oars and that quick mockery of the rowlocks from the wall said that anything was moving.

But as they crept thus along the foot of the precipice, the other shore was unfolding itself.  One huge mountain had been all along in sight, over against them, raising its towering head straight up some fourteen hundred feet from the water’s edge; green, in the thick luxuriance of summer’s clothing, except where here and there a blank precipice of many hundred feet shewed the solid stone.  Now the fellow mountain, close beyond, came rapidly in view, and, as the point