E-text prepared by Janet Kegg
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
A DISTANT VIEW OF SLIDE MOUNTAIN
The highest of the Catskills (Chapter VI)
IN THE CATSKILLS
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF
JOHN BURROUGHS
WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY CLIFTON JOHNSON
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1910
CONTENTS
VI. THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS
ILLUSTRATIONS
A DISTANT VIEW OF SLIDE MOUNTAIN Frontispiece
AT THE HEADWATERS OF THE DELAWARE
Overlooking Mr. Burroughs's boyhood home
THE WITTENBERG FROM WOODLAND VALLEY
INTRODUCTION
The eight essays in this volume all deal with the home region oftheir author; for not only did Mr. Burroughs begin life in theCatskills, and dwell among them until early manhood, but, as hehimself declares, he has never taken root anywhere else. Theirdelectable heights and valleys have engaged his deepest affectionsas far as locality is concerned, and however widely he journeys andwhatever charms he discovers in nature elsewhere, still theloveliness of those pastoral boyhood uplands is unsurpassed.
The ancestral farm is in Roxbury among the western Catskills, wherethe mountains are comparatively gentle in type and always gracefulin contour. Cultivated fields and sunny pastures cling to theirmighty slopes far u