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Show 1836- 1837I Flagg's Far West 53 fabric of a vision/' and " the beauteous eye of day " burst forth in splendour, lighting up a scene of unrivalled loveliness. Much, very much has been written of " the beautiful Ohio;" the pens of an hundred tourists have sketched its quiet waters and its venerable groves; but there is in its noble scenery an ever salient freshness, which no description, however varied, can exhaust; new beauties leap forth to the eye of the man of sensibility, and even an humble pen may not fail to array them in the drapery of their own loveliness. There are in this beautiful stream features peculiar to itself, which distinguish it from every other that we have seen or of which we have read; features which render it truly and emphatically sui generis. It is not " the blue- rushing of the arrowy Rhone,' 9 with castled crags and frowning battlements; it is not the dark- rolling Danube, shadowy with the legend of departed time, upon whose banks armies have met and battled; it is not [ 23] the lordly Hudson, roaming in beauty through the ever- varying romance of the Catskill . Highlands; nor is it the gentle wave of the soft- flowing Connecticut, seeming almost to deep as it glides through the calm, " happy valley " of New- England: but it is that noble stream, bounding forth, like a young warrior of the wilderness, in all the joyance of early vigour, from the wild twin- torrents of the hills; rolling onward through a section of country the glory of a new world, and over the wooded heights of whose banks has rushed full many a crimson tide of Indian massacre. Ohio, 8 " The River of Blood" was its fearfully significant name from the aboriginal native; La Belle Rivtire was its euphonious distinction from the simple Canadian voyageur, whose light pirogue first glided on its blue bosom. " The Beautiful River!"- it is no misnomer - from its earliest commence- 0 Ktntuche is said to have a similar meaning.- FLAOO. |