* * *

  The din of toil comes faintly swelling up
  From green fields far below, and all around
  The forest sea sends up its ceaseless roar
  Like the ocean’s everlasting chime.

  Bayard Taylor.

* * *

Two miles from the summit landing are the Kaaterskill Falls.  The upper fall 175 feet, lower fall 85 feet.  The amphitheatre behind the cascade is the scene of one of Bryant’s finest poems: 

  “From greens and shades where the Kaaterskill leaps
  From cliffs where the wood flowers cling;”

and we recall the lines which express so beautifully the well-nigh fatal dream

    “Of that dreaming one
  By the base of that icy steep,
    When over his stiffening limbs begun
  The deadly slumber of frost to creep.”

About half-way up the old mountain carriage road, is the place said to be the dreamland of Rip Van Winkle—­the greatest character of American mythology, more real than the heroes of Homer or the massive gods of Olympus.  The railway, however, has rather dispensed with Rip Van Winkle’s resting-place.  The old stage drivers had so long pointed out the identical spot where he slept that they had come to believe in it, but his spirit still haunts the entire locality, and we can get along without his “open air bed chamber.”  It will not be necessary to quote from a recent guide-book that “no intelligent person probably believes that such a character ever really existed or had such an experience.”  The explanation is almost as humorous as the legend.

=The Hotel Kaaterskill=, whose name and fame went over a continent even before it was fairly completed, is located on the summit of the Kaaterskill Mountain, three miles by carriage or one by path from the Catskill Mountain House.  It is the largest mountain hotel at this time in the world, accommodating 1,200 guests, and the Catskills have reason to feel proud of this distinction.  They have for many years had the best-known legend—­the wonderful and immortal Rip Van Winkle.  They have always enjoyed the finest valley views of any mountain outlook, and they have a right to the best hotels.

* * *

There is a fall in the hills, where the water of two little ponds runs over the rocks into the valley.  The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet and the water looks like flakes of driven snow before it touches the bottom.

    James Fenimore Cooper.

* * *

It may seem antiquated and old-fashioned in the midst of elevated railroads to speak of mountain driveways, but that to Palenville, as we last saw it, was a beautiful piece of engineering—­as smooth as a floor and securely built.  It looks as if it were intended to last for a century, the stone work is so thoroughly finished.  The views from this road are superior to anything we have seen in the Catskills, and the great sweep of the mountain clove recalls a Sierra Nevada trip on the way to the Yosemite.