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Updated: July 5, 2025


All the country between Dives and Caen seemed one vast farm, beautifully tilled, with its meadow-lands dipping seaward. For several miles, perhaps, the agricultural note alone would be the dominant one, with the fields full of the old, the eternal surprise the dawn of young summer rising over them.

The ruddy light of evening, bursting from clouds of crimson and purple, and shooting down through gaps of the hills in cascades of fire, fell brightly and sweetly on the little prairies, or natural meadow-lands; which, dotted over with clumps of trees, and watered by a fairy river, a tributary of the rapid Miami, winding along from side to side, now hiding beneath the shadow of the hills, now glancing into light, gave an air of tender beauty to the scene better befitting, as it might have seemed, the retreat of the innocent and peaceful sons of Oberon, than the wild and warlike children of the wilderness.

He looked up at the veiled heavens, then down at the little lake with the deceptive, marshy meadow-lands beyond, with the old gray mist hovering over it as usual. He seemed to see again the will-o'-the-wisp darting in and out, that spirit of the marsh at which he had often gazed in the long ago over his mother's shoulder, and while listening to her seductive words.

As soon as she saw that he understood, and was coming, she swung herself lightly up into the branches. He ran to the tree, climbed after her, and followed her to the very top, where she awaited him. The tree was taller than any of its neighbors, and commanded a clear view of the meadow-lands that lay a half mile back from the lagoon. His mate was pointing eagerly to these meadows.

Crops more profitable than hay vegetables, fruit, apple orchards, vineyards are taking the place of meadow-lands. In a few years we shall see milk sent to Paris by the mail-coaches as they now send fish. What is going on around Paris is also going on round all the large cities of France; the land will thus be used up before many years are gone.

The voyager may judge if I am right when I say that the Pacific coast, or the coast of California, Oregon and Washington, is the selvage side of the American continent. I believe this is evidenced in the well-rounded lines of the shore; the smooth meadow-lands that not infrequently lie next the sea, and the comparatively few island-fragments that are discoverable between Alaska and Mexico.

And now shall queenly Libya of broad meadow-lands well-pleased receive for thee within a golden house thy glorious bride, and there make gift to her of a portion in the land, to be an inhabiter thereof with herself, neither shall it be lacking in tribute of plants bearing fruit after all kinds, neither a stranger to the beasts of chase.

As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea how they might be readily turned into cash and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness.

Again, in the north we see a monotonous continuity of wheat-fields, potato-grounds, meadow-lands, and vast heaths, and there is the same uniformity of culture over large surfaces in the southern table-lands and the Alpine pastures.

"As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchard burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land and shingle palaces in the wilderness.

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