,0^*M4^^ •J!863' DATE DUE ■ 'M^ ^.'6'^\ '3^^ univ. of massachusetts/amherst lbrary; F Q5S6 CARD TAGHCONIC THE ROMANCE AND BEAUTY OE THE HILLS. BY GODFREY GREYLOCK ^'±dL " Thou Shalt look Upon the green and rolling forest tops, And down into the Focrets of the glens And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive To hide xheir windnigs. Thou shalt gaze at once Here on white villages and tilth and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes That only hear the torrent and the wind, And Eagle's shriek." Bryant. BOSTON : LEE AND SHEPAKD, PUBLISHERS. NEW YORK : PITTSFIELD: Charles T. Dillingham. S E. Nichols 1879. UBRARV UNiVERSiry OF MASSACHUSEnS amherstTmass. TREASURE R06M COPYRIGHT BY J. E. A. SMITH, 1879. ALBANY, N. Y.: J, MUNSELL, PllINTER, 82 State Street. o<; EPISTLE DEDICATORY. ^ti Rummer lanidbUr^ m iU "gzxW^xxt %m. Friends : — From Vermont upon the north to Connecticut upon the south, for fifty miles along the eastern border of New York, extends Berkshire, the most western county of Massachusetts. It is a region of hill and valley, of lake and stream, of woodland, farm and field. Its beauty is world renowned; for the pens of Cullen Bryant and Catherine Sedgwick early made it their favorite themes, and in later years Holmes and Longfellow, Hawthorne, Melville and Thoreau have invested it with the halo of their genius. Within its limits lie Monument Mountain, Icy Glen, the Stockbridge Bowl, Green River, Octo- ber Mountain and a thousand other scenes of storied or of unsung loveliness. Bounding the valley on the north, from innumera- ble points of view, the double peaks of Greylock rise majestically three thousand five hundred feet into the air, the mountain summit of the Common- wealth. Along its western bordm-s, in curves of marvelous grace, lie the dome-like hills of the Tagh~ 2 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. conic range. Less graceful in outline, but even more romantic with broken and precipitous ascents, wild glens and tumbling brooks, the Hoosacs shut out the world upon the east. Within this mountain- walled amphitheatre lies cradled the upland valley of the Housatonic, with all its fertile farms, its man- sion homes, and frequent villages. Somebody has called it the Piedmont of America. I do not know how just the appellation may be, but I do know that if Piedmont can rightly be called the Berkshire of Euroi)e, it must be a very delightful region. What we most admire in Berkshire scenery is its freshness, boldness, and variety. Our hills boast no astounding grandeur; there is nothing about them of an Alpine character; they possess few scenes which can properly rank with the sublime. The highest mountain tops, the most precipitous cliffs — sutHcient to claim our admiration, wild enough to be the mar- vel of tourists from the tame coast country — cannot, for a moment, compare with similar scenes among the White Mountains, or the Alleghanies — not to mention more unapproachable wonders of Nature. Our deepest ravines, often penetrated by smooth, flower-bordered roads, are very different things indeed, from the earthquake-rifted chasms of other lands. If the traveller seek some object for a day's or a week's wonder, some tremendous cataract or " Heaven piercing Cordillera," he must seek it elsewhere. But if he asks for a retreat among wild and picturesque Bcenery, adorned by much that is pleasant and re- EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 3 fined in his city life, but far removed from its heat and turmoil; where he can draw closer the silken cord of social intercourse, and yet throw loose some of its galling chains; where nature ennobles by her greatness but never chills with a frown, he may find it all amid the varied beauty of the Berkshire Hills. The inexhaustible variety of our vistas is wonder- ful. It is marvellous in what an endless series of combinations, mountain, valley, lake, stream, rock, field and wood, present themselves. Wherever you go, you meet a constant succession of changes which at once charm the eye and delight the heart. At every turn "You stand suddenly astonished, You are gladdened unaware." Through the long summer months you may daily seek, and not in vain, some new object of beauty or of romantic interest. But it may chance that you will not. It often happens that a few spots become so dear that one revisits them again and again, leav- ing others of equal or surpassing charms for tliose to whom they have become like a familiar friend. So profusely indeed ha^ nature scattered her wealth of beauty in this fair county that, to many, it seems a useless labor to search out her more choice and hidden gems; and they remain concealed from those who pass their lives within a rifle-shot of them. The traditions, too, which used to attach to most of these scenes are rapidly fading with the fading years of grey-haired men. " Yes, there was a story " 4 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. I have been often told, " Old Deacon Whitehead or old Captain Grey used to tell it; but they are dead and my memory of it is dim." ******* And now to you, whom I have presumed to call my friends, and for whom these brief pages were more particularly designed, I commend for your kindness what is done. Every word was written in sympathy with your admiration of these glorious hills; a sympathy which seemed to ripen into per- sonal friendship with yourselves. If I shall point any of you to scenes of Nature's gladness, to which you would otherwise have been strangers ; if I shall contribute one moment of happiness to your summer hours; if I shall hereafter recall more vividly to your mind tliese rural scenes, when they shall be a little faded, I shall be amply repaid; how much more, if I shall add one pleasant thought to mingle with your own, as you gaze upon the grand, the noble, or the beautiful, in our dear mountain valley. Old Feiends : — Many years ago, in words like the above I ad- dressed to you a little volume, which, somewhat changed in form, but • not one whit in sentiment, I now offer to you again. If the words I then wrote were warm with the glow of first love, they seem tame to express the affection which, in the inter- course of years, has been inspired by each fair scene, each now familiar mountain peak; so many of them now inseparably associated with pleasant or tender memories. Do vou remember — it was but yesterday — stand- EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 6 ing on the beetling cliff's of Monument Mountain; clambering through the rock-cumbered recesses of the Icy Glen; lingering in pleasant Mahaiwe, blest of nature and of art; watching the moon and the sun- rise on the shaggy shoulders of Greylock; wading and stumbling through the rushing brook up the marble ravine that leads to the Natural Bridge; dazed by the superb over-view from Perry's Peak; climbing the cliff wood recesses of South Mountain; letting the long summer days melt deliciously away, with discourse of books and nature, on the leafy sum- mits of Osceola and Yocun's Seat; in storm on Otaneaque, in sunshine on Constitution Hill; floating half sadly on Lake Onota or the Stockbridge Bowl; in merry masquerade on Pontoosuc or the Lily Bowl; Hstening to the lonely dash of Wahcoiiaii's Falls, or the mirth-mingled murmurs of Lulu Cascade ; watch- ing the summer-flash of life and fashion into the romantic solitude of Lebanon; puzzling over the potent charms of Lenox, loved of the literati; rapt in the noble memories of old Stockbridge on the Plain, and the no less noble memories of Poontoosuc, home of patriots; lingering in many a nameless nook or shaded woodroad, to be, perhaps, thenceforward dearer than all ? You cannot have- forgotten all this, for you know it was but a little, a very little while ago when it all happened. And of tale and tradition; how have they on every hand answered to our seeking, and clothed every scene anew, Avith old life. To be sure, I have not deemed it necessary to severely criticise every 6 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. tradition that has been preserved. Enough that it accorded with the spirit and the customs of the day of which it was related, and did not knock its brains out against some hard and ugly fact. Nay, I will even make a more startling confession. When in some dry old documentary history, or original docu- ment yellowed by age, I have found a glimpse of real life and real story, I have not been ashamed to call in the spirit of any old fellow, whom I supposed cognizant of the facts, to help me fill out the chroni- cle. Living for years half buried in accounts of these departed heroes and among the papers which they Wrote — all the while striving with all my might to do justice to their memories — I should have thought it hard indeed if they could not now and then tell me a little story at midnight, when other spirits, bestow their time so freely upon those who have no claim at all upon them. My old heroes were not so ungrateful. It does not seem best, however, to quote these spiritual authorities in foot notes, as e. g. interview with Capt. Konkapot and Wampenuin. '^ Spirits of Captains Aupaumut and Solomon. ^Tliiis Coochecomeek, but Mahtookamin seems to think otherwise ; however, M. did not seem perfectly en rapport. I am afraid this sort of thing would not do at all for the Methuselah Society for the Perversion of History. Nevertheless the testimony of eye-wit- nesses of, or actors in, scenes which took place, over two hundred years ago, is very satisfactory to right-minded people; and if they are willing to leave their happy hunting grounds or other places of com- EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 7 fortable spiritual abode and pleasure, to tell old tales of their old home, I for one am grateful. If you think otherwise, we will not quarrel about it: you shall have the stories all the same, just as the dusky shades of the heroes already quoted, and also Unka- met, Honasada, Wanaubaugus and the gentle Wah- conah, told them to me. But, from whatever sources I may di*aw the inci- dents and legends associated with the scenery of Berkshire, I shall endeavor that none are inconsis- tent with the most accurate history; that nothing shall be told, but which at least " might have been." And I trust that none of my readers will be so dull as not to be able to detect what is literally true and what partakes of the infirmities of tradi- tion. In the description of scenery my aim will be in all cases, without affecting any Pre-Raphaelite precision, to paint a faithful likeness. If I err it will not be in the intention. I said that I address these little sketches to those to whom they were first dedicated; but, with the words, comes the thought that, of those favoring eyes to which I should have looked for the kindliest judg- ment, many have closed forever on the scenes of earth; that there are some spots, once the most joyous, which if we visit them for the purposes of mirth, seem strangely changed: " Happy places have grown holy ; If we went where once we ^went, Only tears would fall down slowly, As at solemn sacrament." 8 EPISTLE DEDICATOET. And yet we know that those whom we miss would have grieved sorely had they believed that their departure would leave ^ shadow, their memory could not brighten, upon the scenes that we enjoyed together. For us who remain, it would have been their wish that that memory should shed upon each spot with which it is associated, a purer and holier, but not less gladsome, light. To the living who have lingered with me in loving admiration among the hills of our dear old Berkshire, and to the memo- ries of our dead, I then dedicate these pages. We are most of us, still far from having lived out the life which it is appointed for man to live; still farther perhaps from having thoroughly earned the grave which we would not willingly owe to the charity of a soil to which we have given less than we have received from it. And upon him whose duty it is to live and strive, rests equally the obligation to enjoy; for he who works sadly, works at ill advantage; nor without enjoyment can there be any genuine and heartfelt gratitude for the gifts of the Creator — of which none speak more directly of Him than these grand mountains, these noble hills, these fair and fruitful valleys; among which let us hope that our rambles are not yet ended. Godfrey Greylock, PiTTSFiELD, June 1st, 1879. TAGHCONIG. I. OUR TOWN. ** Mine, and mine I loved, and mine I prized. And mine iliat I was proud on : mine so much That I was to myself not mine." To be sure, the first claim which our town has to notice is that it is ours. The propria affords a paramount and never-to-be-disputed title to our affections. That, all clear-sighted persons admit* The very idea of property is genial to our hearts, even if it be only in the travelled streets of a town, with so much of Heaven's universal gifts as one can there possess, use and enjoy, in common with some thousands of copartners. Says Thoreau, with philoso- phic acumen — and Southey has the same idea, some- what enlarged, in " The Doctor " — "I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this bit of mold under your feet is not sweeter for you to eat than any other 11 this world — or any other world." " Mine '* and more intensely " mine own," are terms of super- lative endearment in the patois of the novel writers. 10 ^ TAGHCONIC. So inherent indeed in the human heart, is this cor- respondence between ownership and affection, that no sooner do we conceive a liking for our neighbor's house, horse, or, anything that is his, than an uneasy, feverish desire to transfer the possession betrays that our hearts are out of unison with the harmony of nature. Nowhere is this natural law of relationship more religiously honored than in the love which the good people of Pittsfield bear to their beautiful town. But, waiving this claim, which is in its terms not binding upon a stranger, our town has a title to affectionate admiration, Avhich not the most crabbed traveller ever yet desired to impeach. It is indeed a fair town; and, standing in the cen- ter of that magnificent panorama of hills which en- compasses the county of Berkshire, it is embosomed in beauty — in beauty, whose excess and overwhelm- ing profusion, in some of its broader and more compre- hensive presentations, often raise it to the level of the sublime. Branching from its central elm-shaded green, delightful avenues invite into the most pictur- esque regions. Through long vistas of elms, lindens and maples, you look longingly away to tree-flecked and grove-checkered hillsides, dappled also, it may be, with passing cloud-shadows; to wooded mountain tops, the nearer brightly green, the more distant some- times dimly, sometimes darkly, blue, as the fickle powers of the air may ordain. Over valleys lying in goldenest sunshine, you look away to glens deepen- ing into mysterious gloom, and — yet beyond — to OUR TOWN. 11 pastures, stretched at intervals along the topmost heights, upon whose bright verdure the sunlight lingers longest. Enchanted land, you will think those Hoosac pastures, when, after a summer shower, the rays of the setting sun suddenly burst upon them, while they are overhung by such a rainbow as is possible only among the mountains; its glorious arch, gemlike in the living depths of its color, resting upon pillars of -shadowy splendor which find their bases among the foundations of the everlasting hills. Regions these, one would say, in which much of man's and much of nature's story must lie hid. Very enticing regions they are in truth; the whole broad landscape one grand volume of song and legend, bound in the most gorgeous green and gold. But, before we permit it to lure us away, I have a story or two to tell, which must be told right here, under this little cluster of elms; and nowhere else. u. STORIES OF A TREE, AND OF ITS PRE- SERVERS. " Wise with the lore of centuries. What tales, if there were tongues in trees. That giant Elm could tell 1 " You must have heard of the old Ehn of Pitts- field Park. It has its place of fame among The Trees of America; and has had this many a year. It is not long since it rose here, among the young green growth, the scarred and seared veteran of centuries. Straight into the air it sprang, one hundred and twenty-six feet; a tall grey pillar, bearing for sole capital a few green branches, and a few withered, shattered and bare limbs. From Greylock to Monu- ment Mountain there was no inanimate thing so revered and venerable. Nor had it grown thus with- out a story, and one with which the stories of other, and human, lives were closely entwined. When it stood, a graceful sapling, in the forest, wherein as yet no white man had his habitation, the spot which is now our peaceful green, with a little neighboring territory, was an upland wood sur-- '•ounded, except for a narrow space upon the north, STORIES OF A TREE. 13 by impenetrable swamps: a most defensible camping ground; such as the red engineers knew well how to select. And here the St. Francois war parties, returning from their merciless raids into the valley of the Connecticut, were wont to bivouac, binding their way-worn and woe-worn captives to the lithe but firm-set young trees. Many a sorrowful sight must have been witnessed by that lone oasis among the hemlock thickets, but one tradition only speaks of individual suffering and adventure. Peril the First. Once — as this half forgotten old story goes — there came, among a group of captives, the daugh- ter of one of those God-fearing pastors who, rather than bow the knee to Baal and Archbishop Laud, forsook their quiet and comfortable livings in Old England to become the living springs of the New England churches. Fair with the light of " Sunny Devon by the sea," and graced by culture imbreathed with the odor of honeysuckles and roses in the old moss-covered rectory, Isabel Walton carried sun- shine, melody and joy into the bare log cabin pre- pared by the puritanic settlers for her widowed father, in their narrow forest clearing. But, one murderous night, torn from the dead body of that father, and spared by the caprice oi avarice of the savages, she was brought thus far on her way to Canada. Here, broken with grief and fatigue, she was doomed to death, as an encum- 14 TAGHOONIC. brance to their march, and to death by fire. She was ah-eady bound to the sapling Elm, and the faggots piled about her feet, when, happily, the party was joined by a small detachment of French sol- diers under the command of a young lieutenant. Touched by the maidenly modesty, as well as by the brave and almost saintly bearing, of the victim, this officer interposed so vehemently that, partly by threats and partly by pledges of ransom, she was rescued; and with her the young Elm escaped its first peril at the hand of man. Supported with ten- der care and reverent regard by her manly preserver, Isabel reached Montreal in safety. And the garru- lous old tradition, after the absurd manner of such ancient chronicles, thinks it necessary to add that weak, captive, and bereaved, as she was, she did not find the long march altogether without its consola- tions, or indeed at all tedious. I preserve this ad- dendum solely for the benefit of elderly philosophers in search of psychological data. I am quite sure, at least, it will not be needed by any of my fair readers who ever passed an October day in Berkshire woods, rustling through the crisp carpet of many colored leaves, tumbling over criss-crossed and tangled roots, lunching sociably in sunny glades, climbing paths so arduous that the liberal support of strong arms was not to be dispensed with; and withal perform- ing feats which would have made their teacher of calisthenics open her pretty eyes very wide. And now I must tell you of one thing which I fear some of you will not so well like. But, ah me ! STORIES OF A TREE. 15 in any veracious narrative unpleasant facts will out. Naturally there came a time in their wooing when Pierre and Isabel spoke together of their difference in religious faith. This was certainly after their betrothal, but I think the weight of evidence indi- cates that it was before their marriage; which the records of the cathedral church fix with great pre- cision at just one year after their arrival at Montreal. The anniversary is a holiday with their descendants even yet. But, whatever may have been the pre- cise time when the lovers ventured upon this deli- cate topic, it was not until Isabel had become so accustomed to yield to the persuasive tones of her preserver and guardian, that the protestant pastor's daughter forsook the faith for which her father suffered — for which she, as well, was ready to suffer — and adopted that in whose communion she could walk with her husband. Mightier than Laud's power of prelacy, or fiercest Torquemada persecu- tions, are the soft persuasions of love. I beseech you not to think too unf orgivingly of the young bride for this love-led back-sliding of hers. Rather than so, I coujd wish you to disbelieve the story outright; although that, besides being painful to my own feel- ings, would be deemed impolite by the whole long descended Lanaudiniere family of Montreal, whs would consider it little that their great-great-great grandfather — be the degree of his grandf athership more or less — had rescued their grandmother in like degree, from the flames of savage torture, had he not also saved her from more enduring torments, 16 TAGHCONIC. Should you visit them — these ancient Lanaudi- nieres — in their ancient Montreal home, they will show you, in a richly gilt frame, still more richly adorned with the precious tarnish of two hundred honorable years, the portrait of a young woman with very blue eyes very widely expanded; with very yellow hair, and plump cheeks, in which very red roses meet the very white, but very, very decidedly refuse to mingle. A silver crucifix, or it may be of ivory — envious time has here blurred the coloring a little — rests upon a very full and a very fully dis- played bosom; while the faint suspicion of a halo, half retiring into the obscure back-ground, as if doubtful of its right to be there, hovers above the yellow hair. You will ffuess this remarkable picture to be enlarged from a saintly feminine figure in the old family missal; the "specimen piece" perhaps, of some accomplished Lanaudiniere damsel of an elder generation ; or possibly, a study by some artistic cadet of the house, turned monk. Lacking the corrective contemplation of living models, the imagination of the cloistered artists, in their lonely cells, was wont to play strange freaks with saintly personages of the gentler sex; not excepting her lovely majesty, the Queen of Heaven, herself. But your guesses will be all wrong; as my friends, the Lanaudinieres, will tell you, as politely as the cir- cumstances will admit. And they will add, with half offended pride, that this is the portrait of grand- mother Isabel : a o-if t to orrandf ather Pierre from a STORIES OF A TREE. 17 renowned Jesuit missionary, who painted it with his own pious hand, that the world might not lose the memory of the miracle of a New England Puritan converted to the old faith. Many a year of patient and fruitless labor among hundreds of that stiff necked race, " captivated " and brought to Canada, had taught the good father what a miracle that was. He believed that it was, and would be, unique. But you must remember that he was a celibate. This preposterous painting is prized beyond mea- sure by the present generation of Lanaudinieres, although, in their hearts, they know as well as I do, that it is not in the least like gentle grandma Isabel; save perhaps in the modest halo, which may indeed have glimmered above her golden hair, if saintly heads are ever crowned with such manifestations of Divine favor. The neighbors of the owners of this portrait — the Protestant neighbors I mean — maliciously aver that the last genuine likeness of their ancestress departed from the Dominion of Canada, when, after a cere- mony that was not performed cathedral-wise, another Isabel Lanaudinere sailed away, the bride of a young lieutenant-commander in Her Britannic Majesty's Sloop of War, The Whirligig — The Whirligig of Time, the Protestant wits of Montreal called it. It will be considerate in you when visiting these really excellent, but rather over-sensitive, people, to avoid all allusion to Her Majesty's naval service. I trust to your discretion, also not to repeat, what I mention in the strictest confidence, that their much prized Jesuitical portrait is but a sad caricature of features 18 TAGHCONIC. even too delicate for perfect beauty; of eyes as guiltless of a stare as the violet's; of cheeks which, never round or rosy, paled more and more to her young dying day. Alas, not all the endearments of husband and children, not the fond affection of new friends, nor the charms of a new home, could altogether banish the memory of what had been in Old, and New, England. Meanwhile, troubled by no memories, the young Elm grew and flourished. Memory never troubles things of growth and living verdure. If it should seem to you that any of the woodland scenes to which I am leading you back, are " sicklied o'er" by any " melancholy cast" of that kind, be assured it is but a sickly fancy of your own. Take boldly with you those to whom you have loved to forecast their charms. They shall tell you, the hills of Taghconic are as green, the sheen of their lakes as sunny, the echoes of their valleys as joyous, as even you can have portrayed them. The woods remember little of last year's wild flowers — nothing at all of those which perished long ago. It is the stern old rock, wrinkled by the convulsions, hardened by the fires, and furrowed by the storms of infinite cycles, which forgets not the most gossamer-like veining of the slender fern which, in his far off youth, lay upon his bosom and faded there. But, unmindful even of the buried leaves which nourished its young life, the Elm, quivering with new joy in the new verdure of each new year, grew in beauty and in stature. STOKIES OF A TREE. 19 " How Straight it grows ! " said the Mohegan maiden. " Straight as an arrow ! " echoed the young war- rior, himself almost as arrow-like. Peril the Second. But not the young Elm only, grew and exulted in the strength of its youth. The young common- wealth — the Province of Massachusetts Bay — also grew apace. And, by and by, some century and a quarter ago, the white man got himself sufficiently established in the Indian's Poontoosuck, to think of clearing the highways, which, many tumultuous years before, had been laid out very broad and straight; as the Great and General Court at Boston prescribed. Here was indeed danger for our Elm. On this much tyrannized globe, there is not another despot so ob- durate to every appeal for justice or mercy, as that enemy of the vested rights of nature in her own loveliness — the old-fashioned New England high- way surveyor: of whom too many yet remain, to cumber the earth, and scrunch out her delicate graces with their hobnailed heels. Witness a thousand turf -robbed, shade-bereft waysides, whose dust this torrid summer shall rise up in judgment against these ruthless ravagers of their comeliness — these soulless deformers of the lawn-like knolls, which nature, with all her marvelous forces, had toiled for a myriad years to round into perfect grace. Remorseless rascals, they were, for the most part, 80 TAGHCONIC. those old tyrants whose resistless scepter was that hideous relic of barbarism, the ox-goad: and totheJf most legitimate rule, our dear young Elm was as clearly subject as ever hapless ward to heartless Suzerain. Something savoring of the miraculous was needed to save it alive; and something very like a miracle happened. He to whom that cruel, proding scepter was first confided in the young plantation of Poontoosuc — so they called then, what is Pittsfield now — was a stout farmer from Wethersfield in Connecticut, who had become lord of some thousands of acres scattered here and there among the green hills. Tradition has preserved a world of racy and romantic stories about him, which we must not now stay for. In the Indian wars then just ended, he had been a stout soldier; and, afterwards, when the time for that came, he was as stout a patriot; bold alike to resist the encroachments of kingly power and the crude license of a newly enfranchised people. Honor, always, to his memory for these things; but, here and now, chiefly that, one summer day — doubtless one of those perfect June days, which still come in Berkshire, bringing all that is best in a man to the surface — with that sweet summer day softening the harshness of his rude work, he saw reverently, what in those forest-hating years, it required a rare eye to see, even with the aid of the most heavenly light, that God had made this tree passing fair; a thing co be loved and honored of many generations, and not to be rooted up like a pestilent weed. STORIES OF A TREE. 21 Shall we praise such a man as this under a pseu- donjon ? Leave him a mere backwoods tiominis umbra — an unsubstantial ghost of a name; to wander, as dimly remembered, in the dim shades of forgotten forests ? I trow, not we ! Honor then to the name of Captain Charles Goodrich ! As was fitting, he had honor; had it for many a year after that genial June day when he saved the Elm alive; until, well nigh a century old, he died, and was borne under its shadow to his neighboring grave. But long before that, the tree had met its Peril the Third. From which, to use the pious phraseology of that day. Providence again raised up for it a worthy pre- server. In that grand year, 1775, the most soul-stirring in all Massachusetts story, a gallant and spirited youth was enrolled, among the students of Harvard college, as John Chandler Williams; a name indicating his kinship with two families of considerable standing in the scale of the Provincial gentry. Any quiet study was at that time sadly unattainable in the classic shades on the banks of the Charles; but the young gentlemen were not, on that account, neces- sarily idle. In fact, several of them were notably busy, one well remembered April day; having found occupation with some, thenceforward world-re- nowned, farmers. Young Williams was among them; and must in some way have distinguished himself; for, not many 22 TAGHCONIC. days after, he was summoned to the Provincial Congress, then in session at Cambridge; by whom he was as speedily dispatched, with a single com- panion, upon a secret and delicate mission; every friend of the liberties of the Province being officially enjoined to help him on. This mission was no less than to secure the correspondence of Governor Hutchinson with the enemies of those liberties on both, sides the Atlantic. These important documents, having been left with singular carelesness in Hutchinson's country-house at Milton Hill, it required only a rapid and secret movement to secure them; and they revealed all His Excellency's secrets, about which the congressmen had so lively a curiosity. The congressmen were delighted; thanked their messenger warmly; voted him the liberal and precise sum of £4. 4s. Qd.; and then probably thought no more of him. But he, poor fellow, had brought to light other, and more, revelations than he looked for ; as you shall see. Student- wise, John Chandler loved his cousin; a fair and stately cousin, who was daughter to a grand and stately old father. Now this father — Colonel Israel Williams of Hatfield, once a famous commander of the Indian-fighting militia on the Western Border, and afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for the old county of Hampshire — had, before the open rupture with the King's Go- vernor, and indeed afterwards, been one of the few friends of Parliament in the General Court. None STORIES OF A TEEE. 23 of the acts of government which had surrounded him with a population of enraged and rebellious Whigs, had served to shake his own loyalty to the British crown; so that, in the year previous to his kinsman's exploit at Milton Hill, Governor Gage ap- pointed him one of his thirty-six councillors. Man- damus councillors, they were called, being created by the Royal writ, and not elected by the Represent- atives of the people, as was the old charter privilege. Thus, nothing was more hateful to the patriots than a Mandamus councillor. Resolved that their vene- rable judge should not become this odious thing, they — as a mild form of persuasion — shut him up in a small school house, closed the windows, built a huge pitch-pine fire in the ftmple fire-place, and then blocked the chimney -top. The judge, although a brave, and withal an obstinate man, succumbed — as who would not ? — and signed a renunciation of his ofiice, with whatever other pledges his tormentors saw fit to dictate. There were a good many hesitating persons made excellent Whigs by processes like this. But Judge Williams was not a hesitating person; and, having settled it in his judicial mind that pledges made under duress were not binding, he, like a prudent judge, reserved his decision, and went on his way, but covertly, the same old servant of King George. Trumbull has commemorated his pertinacity in his queer old Hudibrastic, " McFingal," where he makes that hero taunt his persecutors with the futility of theu- methods: 24 TAGHCONIC. " Have you made Murray look less big. Or smoked old Williams to a Whig ? Did our mobb'd Oliver quit bis station, Or heed his vows of resignation ?" Hutchinson's unfortunate letter-book rendered Judge Williams's prudence of no avail, and made it apparent that he had furnished the royal governor with the most dangerous information, and, still worse, had urged the severest measures against the unruly provincials. The Whigs can hardly be blamed that, upon this discovery, they threw him — even him, one of the " River gods" of the Connecticut — into Northamp- ton jail. It is what follows, that shows us how even zealous patriots, and possibly, although that is not fully established, gallant soldiers, may come short of being in the least chivalric gentlemen, or even passable Christians. The jails of a century ago were miserable places at the best: not at all like the comfortable structures in which modern criminals recruit their exhausted energies, and take lessons of infinite value in their after-rascal-life. The most favored prisoner could not congratulate himself on a prolonged residence in the Northampton jail of 1775 ; and Judge Williams was not a favored prisoner. We might forgive that, too, remembering the fate which he had contemplated as .fitting for his jailors. In our distant, latter-day view, it would no doubt have been well had his venerable years and many services to his people softened resentment a little; nay, even turned aside a little the severity which the STORIES OF A TREE. 25 safety of the country seemed to require against those whose loyalty was not towards her. But we will not complain that the rigors which he would have visited upon others, recoiled upon his own head. The something which will not be forgiven while the story lives, lies beyond that also. His fair and stately daughter, for all her beauty and all her stateliness, was as loyal to her father as he to his king. Proud, brilliant, and with a wit which could be grandly used in wrath when the oc- casion demanded wrath, towards him she was gently and devotedly affectionate as only a strong warm- hearted woman can be. With her Roman name — have I said that she was called, Lucretia ? — she had some noble qualities of the Roman dames. Daily, after the incarceration of her father, this noble and beautiful girl visited him in prison and ministered to his wants. And daily, as she passed to and from his place of confinement, she was sub- jected to taunts, and insulting threats against him she loved so well, from the baser fellows who, either in official positions or as loiterers, hung about the jail. The favorite councillor of the renegade Gov- ernor Hutchinson, and the chief Tory of Western Massachusetts, could not have looked for extraordi- nary leniency from the exasperated partizans who held him in their power; but ^Northampton was the home of Hawley and other of the more high-bred and courtly leaders of the people, who could hardly have known and sanctioned the unmanly treatment to which those who had such claims upon their 8 2G TAGH CONIC. courtesy as the Tory chief aaid his daughter, were subjected. I believe that, after awhile, they did interfere. The judge was liberated; and, under the surveillance of some local Revolutionary committee, was permitted to live, with such comfort as in that way he could, until the close of the war; and after- wards, for some years, in peace and freedom. In the western counties it was too much the cus- tom to leave the "handling of the Tories," — as proceedings against the loyalists were quaintly called, to violent partisans, who, well knowing that the powers above would never finally consent to ex- treme punishments, were accustomed to provide for their prisoners a little purgatory, by placing them in the custody of coarse and vindictive jailers, who were glad to undertake the ungracious task in order to gratify some ancient pique — as often of a private as of a public origin. It was not alone in Revolu- tionary France that, under the cloak of patriotic zeal, vulgar envy sought, in its coarse way, to humi- liate those who had been its social superiors, and low crime to avenge itself of its high-born judges. What was the exact nature of the insults heaped upon the proud Judge Williams and his prouder daughter in Northampton jail, we can only con- jecture. Whatever was their character, the latter curbed her resentment for the time, for her father's safety, but it never ceased to rankle in her heart. To her the name of Whig was always hateful; the glorious Revolution was always the " Rebellion," and the theme of her bitterest wit; and, to her life's end, STORIES OF A TREE. 27 she proclaimed herself the loyal subject of whatever "Sacred Majesty " filled the throne of Great Britain. How, in this temper, she arranged matters with the lover kinsman who had so large a share in bringing about her family misfortunes, the parties interested discreetly kept to themselves : as I had oc- casion to remark, a few pages back, love has his own way out of all perplexities. But we hear of no more patriotic exploits recklessly performed by the young John Chandler, who went sedately back to college; graduated with high honors in 1778; studied law with the Honorable, and very conservative — John Worth- ington at Springfield; and, in 'due time — himself became a conservative counsellor, and Federal poli- tician at Pittsfield. — And yet the spirit which led him to Lexington and Milton Hill was not quenched; years afterwards, among his fellows of the bar, he was still " Mad Chandler, the Wild." The offended, but tender-hearted, Lucretia, of all the world, understood perfectly the nature of the change which had come over the young man; and she must have considered it as meeting her at least half way. At any rate, they commenced married life, about the year 1783, in the fine old gambrel roofed mansion — then fresh from the hands of the carpenters — which you still see among the Elms, across the park; still in all its pristine dignity. And there they lived, happy and prosperous; there died honored and lamented by all around them, notwith- standing the lady's political idiosyncj-asy. If you ask, " what has all this to do with the perils of The Old Elm ? " I answer, " Much every way." 28 TAGHCONIC. You will infer with me that such a woman as Lucretia Williams would love bravely where she loved warmly, even though the object of her affec- tions were but a rock or a tree. She was indeed a true lover o£ the beautiful in nature ; and its un- daunted defender, as well, against all the evil fashions of her day. To her we owe yonder cathedral-like colonnade of elms, with whose long succession of gothic arches she surrounded her home; first reso- lutely levelling the poplar grenadiers, whose stiff plumes, being of the latest importation, were a-la- mode for all courtly court-yards. Perhaps they re- minded her unpleasantly of militia sentinels pacing around Northampton jail. For seven long years, however, she consoled her- self, for looking through these objectionable bundles of lank twigs, by the luxuriant foliage and graceful form of the fair elm on the green beyond. She had learned to love it well; and the better after Captain Goodrich — a frequent and congenial visitor at the conservative Williams fireside — had told her some- thing of its story. Then, in the seventh year — or, to be precise, Anno Domini, lYQO — came the Elm's Third Peril. The town had hitherto worshiped in a little brown meeting house, rich in grand memories, but poor as it well could be in every other respect. Now they resolved to build anew, in splendor commensurate with their increased wealth and larger figure in the world's eye. A famous Boston architect — one Colonel Bulfinch — furnished a most ornate design STORIES OF A TEEE. - 29 evidently suggested by Faneuil Hall, but intended to eclipse that renowned edifice: and, after the man- ner of his craft, sent a superbly colored representa- tion of it, with a profusion of scrolls, brackets, pillars, arches and what not, which at the sugges- tion of Dame Prudence were largely omitted in' the completed structure. When this astonishing " design " was handed around among the congregation at the next Sabbath nooning, the admiration was so intense that there was danger lest, as in some modern instances, the new building would become a House of Worship in an equivocal sense. But the immediate, the " imminent deadly," peril was to the Elm. There was then around it neither park nor public square — nothing but a little grass plot, kept from the public travel in the broad street by immemorial custom. On the outer edge of this green, and well into the legal highway, by the grace of God inspiring Captain Goodrich, the Elm still kept its place, with the little old meeting-house almost, or quite, under the shade of its spreading branches. It was intended to place the new building upon the site of the old; but, with the excitement created by its architectural promise, came a desire for a more conspicuous location. A large share of the more resplendent glories of the proposed edifice were concentrated in the tower and belfry; and these, it was discovered, would de- light a majority of the citizens when on their way to church or market, if only they were thrust a few feet into the highway. True, this would mar the 80 TAGHCONIC. fair proportions prescribed for the street by the esthetic old legislators at Boston, and, what at this distance seems quite as bad, would involve the de- struction of the Elm. But, then, incontestibly, the street would still be wide enough for all the purposes of travel; and were there not innumerable elms in the near forest ? We have lately cut oif the superb vista of the same street by an ugly brick railway station house; and it will hardly do to call that vandalism in the fathers which must be taste and culture in the sons. At any rate, whatever we may call it, the people, in town meeting assembled, de- termined to make the sacrifice; although not without stout opposition from Captain Goodrich, " Squire" Williams, and others who held God's beautiful crea- tions to be esteemed beyond man's fairest handi- work. If the Elm's indwelling dryad had not before been, exorcised by the prayers or frightened away by what passed for music in the old church, she must have shuddered in the deepest recesses of its trunk, at the horrid speeches and resolutions of that town meeting. In the Williams mansion there was grief, con- sternation, lamentation, indignation; and then a determined purpose to resist the barbarous edict, so far at least as it concerned the Elm. Madam Williams did not melodiously request the woodmen to spare her favorite tree; partly, perhaps, because there was no ballad to that effect in her repertoire ; but chiefly, no doubt, that such was not the lady's manner of aiding her friends in their extreme dis- STOEIES OF A TREE. 31 tress. It is of tradition that once in her girlhood she threw herself, with triumphant daring, between her father and a raging mob of exasperated Whigs. The story is not verified beyond historical doubt, but it is likely enough to be true. By a resort to similar feminine tactics, she certainly saved the Elm; placing herself resolutely before it when the ax men came to perform their fell task. Here was a curiously sad dilemma for the puzzled executors of the town's wicked will. Had almost any other woman thus stood in the path of municipal wrong-doing, she would have been thrust aside with small ceremony; if not with a sharp threat of some of those ingenious and highly civilized punishments contrived by the keen-witted New England fathers, lest the impulsive sex should rush madly from their sphere. But with a lawyer's spouse it was quite another matter; that is, if man and wife were in perfect ac- cord, as the Williamses were to a proverb. In those superstitious days, a gentleman of the green bag was held a most uncanny person to deal with at odds. It was grewsome to think what dread processes he might evoke from the mystic depths of that weird receptacle .of the law's imperious dicta and scripta ; or from the still more occult and awful recesses, where he sat, among massive and inscrutable tomes, well known by their potent words to have charmed many a man out of a fair estate, and into a foul jail. Not that Squire Williams was known ever to have wrongfully used his abstruse learning. On the con 32 TAGHCONIC. trary he was counted a rather benevolent sort of dealer in the law's black art; given to the defense of the poor, the protection of the widow and the father- less, and to bringing the counsel of the wicked to naught: still there was no telling what latent fiend- ishness might be developed even in so benevolent a wizard; for was he not an attorney after all ? There were therefore none to lay violent hands upon Madam Williams, even with the town's most puissant warrant. Nay, even the Selectmen felt that a dreadful weight was lifted from their mighty breasts, when they found that the Squire would take only a generous advantage of their ludicrous pre- dicament. As I have said, there was, around the Elm, no green or public square, such as adorned a few of the more aspiring villages of the Commonwealth; but a vision of such a glory had danced before the eyes of some of the more ambitious citizens ; and especially dazzled the not inconsiderable number who held com- missions in the militia, and already in imagination saw themselves resplendent upon a parade ground worthy of their most gorgeous array. The un- sophisticated chieftains would have stared at the suggestion of coping and curbing it into an out-of- door parlor. Mr. Williams shrewdly seized the opportunity to offer for a village green, so much of his land south of the Elm, as the town would devote to the same purpose from their domain on the north, used for a meeting-house site and burial ground. Under tliese STOBIES OF A TREE. 33 conditions, it would be hard to guess how far the new church would have receded, had not a great part of the burial-ground been already well filled with graves. The old puritanic folk held it idle, or worse, to consecrate their cemeteries; nor did they cover them with conservatories, or convert them into driving parks. I fancy they would have eschewed the word, cemetery, as savoring of paganism. But they held sacred so much at least of the dust in their plain grave-yards as had once been animated by living spirits; and they shrunk from making money, or saving it, by secularizing the soil with which the ashes of their dead were inseparably mingled. So they were fain to content themselves, in this instance, with a village-green of moderate dimensions. It chiefly concerns us, however, that, by the bravery of Madam Williams and the timely gene- rosity of her husband, the Elm was again saved. And now the love of the people began to go out more and more towards it. Fond associations clustered faster and faster around it; growing more tender, and gaining a richer flavor with age — as may always be expected of such luxuries, as well as of others of a less sentimental caste. Children pur- sued their noisy sports under the tree's expanding shade, pausing often to form fabulous estimates of its size and centuries; which, for the most part, their later years never found time to revise. In the near academy, the village boys ,and girls played their pretty prelude to life's drama. Here were the athletic ofames whose best remembered feat — en- 84 TAGHCONIC. titling the youth who performed it to a place in the town's little Valhalla — was to hurl a ball over the Elm's loftiest branch. Here lovers lingered a pre- cious moment in their moonlight walks. Here were the Fourth of July celebrations, the cattle shows, and all the country gala-days which bring boyhood back to the most prosaic citizen who has a heart in him; even if it glow only at these long intervals — as some fanciful people aver that comets periodically revisit the sun to replenish their stock of " caloric," wasted by measureless wanderings in coldest space. And, while the noble tree was thus sending its roots deep down into the hearts of the town's-people, it was also growing up to fame; for travelers celebrated it in their books, and poets in their verse. And thus it came about that when any " to the manor born" went out into the great world beyond the mountains, the Old Elm was the center around which clustered all their memories of home; and when any stranger visited the village, it was the first object of his search — unless, as was most likely, it had been the first to greet his approach. Doom. But, escaping all peril, to trees as to men, comes at last that which is not danger, but doom. And, as with man, so with the tree to whose mortality the sacred writers so often liken our own, the life which aspires the most loftily best chances to meet a noble death. It so happened with our Elm. A thunder- bolt fell crashingly upon it, and darting straight STORIES OF A TREE. 35 down its tall trunk, ploughed a wound of ghastly- whiteness from stricken bough to seared root. The fiery fluid dried up the juices in its old veins, and the whole tree, although cared for with almost filial tenderness, began slowly to perish. But, even in its death it was fortunate. The long white streak pencilled by the scathing lightning in its smooth bark, caught the eye of Herman Melville, who, in his wonderful story of "The White Whale," thus interwove it in his strong-lined portrait of Captain Ahab: "Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing straight down one side his tawney scorched face and neck until it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender, rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peals and grooves out the bark, from top to bottom, ere, running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded." There you have a graphic picture of the old Elm in its decay. And thus in its death-stroke, it found a new life: as the ancients fabled that they who were slain by Jove's thunderbolts thereby became immortal. The brave old tree had clearly received his death wound, and remained " greenly alive" but for a space, and only as to a few scanty boughs. Still, grandly wearing this meager coronal, and erect as: 36 TAGHCONIC. when tke Indian maiden likened it to her warrior lover, it looked as if proudly conscious of the vene- ration which it inspired; as I have seen some white- haired citizen walking beneath it, in a vigorous old age, full of the memories of a gracious youth and a beneficent manhood. And, each spring when the young grove about it began to put forth its buds, the question, " Will the old Elm survive this year also ? " was anxiously asked by a whole people whose love for it in its grand decrepitude and decay exceeded even that of Lucretia Williams for its leafy prime. Twice again it " midway met the lightnings," and then, one summer morning, the whisper passed along the street that the Elm was bending to its fall. The axe — in kindness now — gently aided its slow descent, until in the afternoon it lay prostrate ; while men whom the world does not accuse of immoderate sentimentality, stood aloof, literally weeping; and the more mercurial crowd rushed eagerly to secure a chip, a leaf, a twig, a branch — any relic of their old friend. Soon wherever they who had held it in reverence were scattered abroad, bits of its wood set in gold, appeared among their richest jewels; or, in less costly guise, were treasured in the most sacred reliquaries of their thousand homes. And, lo, when the tree's inmost heart was laid open, there preserved, were found the tokens of its earliest perils and, pervading its whole tissue, the unbroken memories of all its summers, and all that they had done for it. Said I that the woods remem- ber nothing ? STORIES OF A TREE. 37 THE GREY OLD ELM OF PITTSFIELD PARK. Tell U8 a tale, thou grey old tree, A tale of thy leafy prime ; For thine was a home in the forest, free. Ere our bold forefathers' time. Thou sawest the wild-wood all alight With the bale-fire's direful glare. Where now the murkiest gloom of night. Our household fires make fair. Then tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, A tale of thy leafy prime, Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free. Or our fathers' deeds sublime 1 Say, when the gorgeous laurel tiowers And sweet-briar's bloom were gay If here, in the forest's fragrant hours, Some dusky loves would stray ! Sadly, we know, the captive's sigh With thy murmuring sound was blent : Oh tell of the love and the courage high That the captive's bondage rent. Ay, tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, A tale of thy leafy prime, Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free, Or our fathers' det-ds sublime ! Tell us the tale how the forest fell And the graceful spire arose ; And, charmed by the holy pealing bell, How the valley found repose. Our heritage here, with the blow and prayer. Was won by the good and brave. While over their toils, like a banner in air, They saw thy branches wave. 4 88 TAGHCONIC. Then tell us a tale, tliou grey old tree, A tale of thy leafy prime, Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free. Or our fathers' deeds sublime 1 Ah, dearly we love thy wasting form. Thou pride of our stern old sires, Though torn by the rage of the darting storm, And the lightning's scathing fires ; And dearly the sons of the mountain vale Wherever their exile be, Will thrill as they list to the song or tale If it speak of their home or thee ! Then tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, A tale of thy leafy prime. Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free. Or our fathers' deeds sublime I m. ANOTHER STORY. What came of, aitd to, Chandler Williams's Village Green. " For tlie soldier's trade, verilv and essentially, is not slay- ing, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own meaning, the world honors it for. A bravo's trade is slaying; but the world has never respected bravos more than merchants ; the reason it honors the soldier is because he holds his life at the service of the state. Reckless he may be — fond of pleasure or adventure. All kinds of bye-motives and mean motives may have determined his choice of a profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his conduct in it ; but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact — of which we are well assured — that, pat him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his duty before him, he will keep his face to the front ; and he knows that this choice may be put to him at auy moment, and l as before hand taken his part — virtually takes such part continually; does in reality die daily." — And, of the spot whereon the Old Elm once stood, what ? Other stories, and grander than the simple tales, I have ventured to tell, early ennobled it; but must nevertheless have the briefest narration here. Near yonder very prosaic brick corner, bounding 40 TAGHCONIC. one of the most park-like, and least prosaic of streets, stood, a hundred years ago, the quaint old gambrel- roofed tavern of Colonel James Easton; the com- mander of the Berkshire Militia, and Ethan Allen's lieutenant in the capture of Ticonderoga. And, to its hospitable door, late on the dark and rainy evening of May-day, 1775, came Captain Edward Mott and his little band of sixteen Connecticut men, stoutly resolved, by the Grace of God, and with the help assured them among the Green Mountains, to wrest " the Key of North America " from the grasp of Great Britain. At midnight in the most secret chamber of the old inn, although the bar-room had long been emptied of its tonguey revellers — while the great raindrops dashed and spattered against the pigmy window-panes, and a generous tankard of aromatic punch steamed before each wet and wearied guest — the Connecticut leaders held council with five or six bold and true men of the vicinage; among them their host, and his neighbor. Ensign — after- wards Colonel — John Brown; a member of the Pro- vincial Congress, who, being specially charged by that body with efforts for the acquisition of Canada, was the projector of this present expedition, as well as of many another daring adventure afterward. Before dawn, not to endanger the secresy of their plans by adding to their company here, Easton and Mott crossed the Taghconic ridge, and passing up the secluded and romantic valley of Hancock (it will well repay you to do the same, ev.en with a much less stirring errand) they were joined by twenty- THE VnXAGB GEEEN. 41 four stalwart minutemen, with Capt. Asa Douglas — a " Douglas, trusty and true " — at their head. In the meanwhile, Ensign Brown and the remainder of the party, starting also under cover of the darkness, drove up the Berkshire valley to Williamstown, where they were joined by fifteen other bold and trusty yeomen. Then all began their march to join Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. All the world knows how that march ended. The spot where the men of Massachusetts and Connecticut first met in council concerning it, in the home of one of the earliest, the bravest, and the truest of Revolutionary patriots, should be held as sacredly memorable as those resting places in old, renowned pilgrimages which royal piety marked with monumental crosses. And, on yonder other corner, where, among ances- tral trees, a massive mansion marks the site, stood the modest dwelling in which lived and died the Parson of Bennington Field. In the little brown meeting- house under the branches of the Elm, year in and year out, he preached that the Gospel of Liberty was part of the Gospel of Christ; and much fruit came of it : sweet and bitter, but for the most part wholesome. Potent to-day beyond much which struggles visibly — and all too audibly — for power, his spirit still lives and walks abroad among these hills: and not here only, but far away in ever-ex- tending paths. A hundred years ago the pulpit of the little meet- ing house was indeed the seat of power; so that wlien the patriot soldiers gathered on the narrow 42 TAGHCONIC. green before its door, it seemed as if their hearts had been verily touched with a live coal from its altar. And, from this holy rallying place, inspired anew by solemn prayer and fervent exhortation, they marched away to Canada, Bennington, Sara- toga, Stone- Arabia, or wherever else Berkshire blood flowed for freedom. Where they thus assembled, the national inde- pendence which they helped to achieve had been com- memorated, with rural, but not unmeaning, pomp, for well nigh a hundred years, when treason as- sailed the nation's life. Then, on the same spot where the fathers met to consecrate their lives to the service of their country, the sons assembled for the same holy purpose. Even while the tall Elm still waved its branches — a tattered banner — above them, the minute-men of 1861 responded to the first note of alarm as eagerly and promptly as the minute-men of 1'775 sprang to arms when the reveille, beaten by drums as far away as Lexington Common, announced the dawning of the Revolu- tion. The old tree fell: but, year after year, often and often, the peal of other than church-going bells, and other music than that of the organ and the choir, deepened the solemnity of the Sabbath, and sum- moned the people to high conference in the young grove which succeeded to its honors. How vivid is the memory; yet how distant seem those strangely awful Sabbaths, and those anxious nights when the lurid glare of torched fitfully lit up the over-hang- THE VILLAGE GEEEN. 43 ing foliage and the endangered flag, while eloquent voices from some rude rostrum, told the danger of the hour to those whose souls were already heavy with the consciousness of it. At hours like these, or when, at busy noon, the clangor of bells and trumpets hushed the more sordid sounds of trade and traffic, what new and conflict- ing emotions struggled in every breast, as those most full of life and life's longings were adjured to risk all in the defence of that which was dearer than all. Duty, religion, a pure patriotism, a noble ambition ; how fervently each was urged in its turn. What promises of life-long honor, and tender regard, to be shared by none — what prophecies of enduring fame, glowed upon the lips of the orators ! And, ever and anon, as the young and faithful-hearted — glori- fying the plain tables at which they sat into sacredest altars — enrolled themselves in the Grand Army of the Nation's Defenders, how the ringing plaudits, bursting from the full hearts of the people, seemed borne by the rolling echoes of drums far into the promised future. What other memories, in the lives of any of us who did not share in the actual conflict of arms, can compare in grandeur, with the recollection of those sublime moments; and of others, intermingled with them, when regiment after regiment with sad, but proudly unregretful, farewells — and not without solemn prayer and fervent exhortation, as of old, from reverend lips — marched hence to do or to suffer that for which they had set themselves apart ? 44 TAGHCONIC. Then, whatever gloom might overhang the hour, we knew that the old heroic spirit, which, in the foolishness of our hearts, we had thought passed away forever, had come again in all its fullness; and that the old triumph was assured. Here and there a taint of mean ambition, or meaner avarice, you may have detected in those who received these plaudits, although I hope that you- were better minded than to be seeking for it. An army of purely unselfish men, marching in any array, were conceivable only in an age which shall be free of all armies; in that, namely, when nations "shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into pruning hooks." For this present, be content that, as to all who enrolled themselves, and — with whatever ulterior reward in view — did become actual soldiers, we come, at least, if to nothing better, to Mr. Ruskin's " ultimate fact " of the soldier's soldierly fidelity to the state under whose flag he has enlisted. But, on the other hand, in how many did you dis- cover a purity of purpose and of soul, a stern sub- jection of self to duty, an unboastful heroism so unlooked for, an intellectual strength in quarters so unsuspected, that they seemed like a new and sudden inspiration from Heaven. So illy do we read that which lies behind the eyes into which we daily look. Nay, the revelation vouchsafed to our great need, seems in these less exalted days so incomprehensible that we are fast losing it in clouds and doubt. Yet surely such men were — and are — and they THE VILLAGE GREEN. 46 did in verity shed a luster upon our arms beyond that of conquest. They did exist; enough of them in almost every New England village, to ennoble its name — if their story could but be worthily told. Their ideal, but deeply truthful, type, wrought in enduring bronze, surmounts- yonder monument, the memorial of those who marched hence, to sacrifice their young lives in the defence of their country. I pray you mark that statue well: it is no common work; but the tribute of genius, to heroism, patriotic devotion, and much else. It represents simply a color-sergeant of the Union army, standing in line- of -battle, and looking eagerly and thoughtfully into the distance. The figure is erect, but slightly sup- ported by the staff of the colors, which it grasps with both hands — the right also gathering the flag into graceful folds. The work is correct in detail as well as truthful in its grand effect; but these are its minor and prosaic merits; there is more in it than these. Both face and figure are of a peculiar military type — as unique and readily recognized as that of the French Zouave or the Cossack trooper — which the war for the Union developed from material which it found rough-moulded in every Northern village. You will see, as you study his work, that the sculptor's ideal was a bold, frank, generous man; resolute rather than defiant, of valor without ferocity, of gentle heart, without weakness; self-reliant, but modest; capable of either commanding or obeying; looking into the future as well as the distance; a man with such stuff in him as poets and orators and statesmen, as well as conquering soldiers, are made of. 46 TAGHCONIC. They dedicated this memorial one genial Septem- ber day, with much memorable eloquence, and much military and other pomp, of which I will only here recall, that, among those who had large part in it by word or work, was he " As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage ; What worthier knight was found To grace in Arthur's golden age The fabled Table, round? A voice, the battle's trumpet note, To welcome and restore ; A hand that all unwilling smote. To heal and build once more. A soul of fire, a tender heart Too warm for hate, he knew The generous victor's graceful part, To sheath the sword, he drew. The more than Sidney of our day, Above the sin and wrong Of civil strife, he heard alway The angel's advent song." J3?m, I may single out, not invidiously, from those who on that September day joined in consecrating this monument to its hallowed purposes; for, even while mingling his monitions to his surviving com- rades, with laudations for the dead, his enfeebled frame prophecied but too truly that his life, too, would soon be added to the great price of the na- tion's unity. But you are restless, that I detain you so long upon this contracted spot; and we will leave it; taking with us, however, as I hope, this lesson; that THE TILLAGE GREEN. 47 he who, like Captain Goodrich and Chandler Wil- liams, graciously preserves a thing of mere grace and beauty, may well expect that, in due time, much of the grandly and nobly useful — nay, much of sublime human action — may cluster around it, and mingle their memories with his own. IV. REMINISCENT. The memory of great men is the noblest inheritance of their country. — Blackwood's Mag. You have been very patient with me — have you not ? — in my long-time weakness of lingering by this old park; and perhaps I ought to reward you with an excursion to the lake-side or mountain-top. But I pray you to be patient yet a little while, as we take a walk among the pretty village houses, with their luxuriant gardens, and court yards green with shrubbery — a delightful summer promenade. To the towns-people the older of these dwellings are all pregnant with associations of the past; each has its story. They tell you — these good citizens — as you pass along, now pleasant, gossiping histories; now low- hissed scandals, mouldy and soured, which ought long ago to have been in their graves; and occasionally, you hear a tale of open or proved guilt such as you would rather not believe could have its dwelling m such innocent-looking homes. You hear them speak names which call up no image in your mind, and which have long since ceased to receive an answer in these streets. They KEMIXI5CEXT. 49 call places by appellations unfamiliar to your ears. The iron horse has brought new wealth, prosperity and hope to the thriving town. There are groceries where there used to be gardens; mansions where there used to be meadows. The town is richer and handsomer than it was; but in many hearts, for whom the old quiet used to be full of joy and peace, the new wealth and crowd and noisy prosperity can- not but sometimes awaken painful longings. In the stillness of the evening — when the shrill cry of the steam- whistle pierces the ear and goes echoing into the breathless distance, like the shout of a drunken man on the solemn midnight — you listen to their touching reminiscences of the past, and are moved by laments for which the eager, throbbing heart of common life has no chord in unison. But, for the present, we will pass scandal and retrospect, except so far as the latter recalls the memory of two men whose wide-spread fame has become identified with that of their homes, and whom I have not mentioned with others who have brought honor to it — George Nixon Briggs and the Rev. Dr. John Todd. Whether there is romance in the lives of either of them or not, there is cer- tainly beauty in their memory, among the hills; and beauty that is seen afar off. I need not speak in detail of either. Their memoirs, written with rare ability, have been long published to the world; and I only desire here, by a few reminiscences of their lives, to give a pleasant tinting to our scenery. And, first, of the much-loved Governor Briggs, 50 TAGHCONIC. whose beautiful tomb in our beautiful cemetery is the spot there most sought by the visitor. You will observe that, conspicuous upon it, is a large white marble cross. He loved well that simple symbol of the Christian faith, so long proscribed in New Eng- land; and it was his influence which placed it on the spire of the village Baptist church in which he worshipped. But I shall only have room to give you a few reminiscences, illustrating one of the qualities which won for the good governor so universal popu- larity, and which were remarkable as mostly referring to incidents which occurred within the compass of a few days. In the spring of 1851, 1 chanced to occupy, one day, a seat with Governor Briggs in th^ cars of the Boston and Albany Railroad. The train was excessively crowded, many being compelled to stand; and when we reached Westfield there entered our car, at the door most distant from us, two women evidently much wearied; one of whom carried a child. None of the gentlemen in their vicinity seemed to notice their condition; but Governor Briggs went forward, invited them to our seat, and aided the one with a child to reach it. Instantly many seats which had not been vacated for the weak and tired women were placed at the service of the Governor of Massachu- setts; but he remained standing, talking kindly to the women and at times soothing the child which had been made restless by its unaccustomed position. There was nothing in this, you may say, more than any true-hearted gentleman ought to have done. REMINISCENT. 61 True; but, out of a whole car-full, Governor Briggs was the only one to think of doing it. We passed on, and as we approached the Brook- line Bridge, near Boston, found that a collision had taken place upon, it, blocking the passage with the wi'eck of two trains, which hung by a fearfully pre- carious hold over the water. It was necessary for the passengers to clamber over and through the wreck, to reach the relief train, while their baggage was sent to the city by the highway. But, among them, was an old Irish woman, one of those wrong- headed, as well as ignorant, people who can never be made to see the necessity of anything out of the ordinary course. She would not and could not be separated from her trunk — a rude, hair-covered chest. Most men would have been merely amused by, at least indifferent to, her troubles; but ludi- crous as was her grief, it was piteous and real, and such, however uncouth and groundless, never failed to touch the heart of the governor. So when, hav- ing passed from one to another, imploring aid, she came to him, perceiving at once the uselessness of attempting to reason with her, he quietly took hold of one end of her trunk, and helped her carry it over the tottering wreck. The profuse and quaintly ex- pressed thanks of the woman, and her still more profuse and quaint apologies — when, with all her old-world awe of dignitaries, she found whom it was she had made play the porter for her — were extremely amusing. But there were few who wit- nessed the scene who did not envy Governor Briggs 62 TAGHCONIC. his satisfaction in relieving the distress of even so rude and uncouth a creature, by so simple a piece of thoughtful kindness. Leaving the governor at Boston, I pursued my trip to Martha's Vineyard, where I employed a man to carry me from point to point in search of certain varieties of clay — a plain, but intelligent and quick- witted person, of much shrewdness and criticism, which he applied freely to public men, as we rode along. But, happening to learn incidentally that I was from Pittsfield, he checked his horses suddenly, and exclaimed. "Pittsfield; why Governor Briggs lives there ! " Somewhat surprised at his apparent emo- tion, I assented; and he continued: " I love that man; I always shall. You know I am a Democrat; but I always put in my vote for George N. Briggs. He's got a heart — he has ! " I asked him how he found that out; and he replied, that once, when the go- vernor was reviewing the militia at New Bedford, he was standing directly behind him, with his little daughter in his arms. The child begged hard to see the governor and the troops, while the crowd and his position made it difficult to show her either to her satisfaction; but the governor, happening to hear her entreaties, turned around, took her in his arms, and placing her before him on his horse, showed her the soldiers, and then, with a kiss, returned her to her father — a pleased child and a grateful father, you may well believe. " I have loved him for that," he said, " ever since;" and I always shall." At a later time, arriving at Pittsfield with a REMINISCENT. 53 travelling acquaintance from the west, he asked me, while the train was accidentally delayed for a few moments, to show him the residence of Governor Briggs, who had then been some months dead; and I took him to a point where he obtained a view of the trees which conceal it. As he seemed deeply inter- ested in the view, I remarked carelessly, " So you are a hero- worshipper." "No," he replied with evident emotion, " I loved the man — I had good reason to ! " I had no time to learn the cause of this feeling — ■ whether it arose from some of those minor acts of kindness, such as I have related, and such as the governor was constantly performing — or from some grander benefits, for which occasion more rarely presents itself: but the tone and manner of the speaker were more earnest than would probably have been caused by any trivial beneficence. How many friends would be made by a public man whose life was filled with acts of kindness like those I have mentioned, and governed always by the spirit manifested in them, I leave you to judge. You will pass the Governor Briggs homestead on your way to Lebanon or Lake Onota, a little way beyond the Railroad Station in Pittsfield ; a hand- some mansion with fine grounds, and rich in portraits, busts and relics of its former owner. The parsonage, once the home of Dr. Todd, is not very far from the Park ; but it is so changed from what it was that it hardly suggests a memory of him. When I first came to Pittsfield, the first thing I looked for was the author of " "The Student's 54 TAGHCONIC. Manual ; " and I had no difficulty in singling him out from a number of distingui figures in the village streets. He was the homeliest good-looking man, I ever laid eyes on ; and, withal was unmistakably marked with the impress of thought and feeling. Mindful of certain ridiculously ineffectual attempts to mould myself upon the systematic model prescribed by his famous book, I held him in almost grewsome awe ; and it was a great consolation to find after- wards that he was not nearly so formal a man as I dreaded, but one who did an immense amount of work, simply by attacking it lovingly, and with a loving purpose. You may recollect that he became an author, so that he might add to his means of support- ing an aged and infirm mother. He was the most contented man I ever knew. Livfng comfortably and handsomely, if not luxuri- ously ; loving and loved, not only by his own people, but by the whole community ; glorying in and en- joying the natural beauties and the pleasant fortunes of his home ; surrounded by a social circle perfectly adapted to his tastes ; honored at home, and famous abroad ; with admirers to welcome him, wherever he went ; with the means and the taste to fill up his vacations with healthful woodland sports : Thus favored of fortune, there was no good reason for dis- content, and Dr. Todd was not the man to seek evil ones. Of sorrow and pain, he, like other men, had more than enough ; but they were the incidents of his manhood, not of his position in life. They might be sources of grief and bodily agony ; but not rightly of discontent. REMINISCENT. 55 Seeing the man thus living and, as it seemed to me, living beneficently, and in the tenderest love for all the world, I came — although I had little sympathy for what I supposed to be his abstract theological opin- ions — to share in the kindly feeling which he in. spired in all about me. In this comfortably Christian mood, I was shocked to find the truculent Theodore Tilton, who had been taken somewhat sharply to task by the good doctor, going about insisting that the following lines, by Longfellow, were intended as his portrait : " The parson, too, appeared, a man austere. The ingtinct of whose nature was to kill ; The wrath of God he preached from year to year, And read, with fervor, " Edwards on the Will ;" His favorite pastime was to slay the deer In summer on some Adirondac hill. E'en now, while walking down the rural lane, He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane." "Good lack ! " I thought, "can this be the man who, to our uninspired eyes, seemed the very soul of gentleness ? who seemed to have a child-like love for the meanest flower that blooms ? who sorrowed for a loved tree, as for a friend ? Where had that austerity been hid for so many years; that it never scared the village children who hung upon his smile just as though it was benignant. Had all oi us really been, for near forty years, ascribing the kindest of humane souls to one whose instinct was to kill, and who did not even spai-e the lilies in the Berkshire lanes — if any grow tHere; which I very much doubt, unless somebody, like Dr. Todd, has 66 TAGHCONIC. planted them for the wicked pleasure of cutting them down. There really seemed to be a sad misconception on somebody's part — Mr. Tilton's, as I hoped, since it could not much harm him. But let us see, item by item, wherein the likeness of the picture to the Pittsfield pastor consists. Item first: The scene of the poem is laid in the village of Killingworth; and Dr. Todd was born in the village of Killingworth in Connecticut, but was never pastor there. Item second : The Killingworth parson was a " man austere ; " there the likeness fails alto- gether — Dr. Todd was anything but that. Item third : This austere parson " preached the wrath of God from year to year ; " and I suppose that, like thousands of other ministers of religion, the world over. Dr. Todd preached upon that theme as often as he thought it to be his duty ; which was certainly not " year in and year out " — for he delighted much more in preaching the Creator's tender mercies, that are over all his works. He rested firmly upon the orthodox Congregational creed — the faith of his fathers — and died steadfast in it ; but he loved best to repose upon its sunny side ; and, ever, as his religion ripened with his mellowing years, his charity grew broader, and his appreciation of God's loving kindness keener and deeper. Item fourth : The poet's objectionable preacher read with fervor " Ed- wards on the Will: " Dr. Todd was at one time pastor of a church in Northampton which was an off-shoot of that which in 1750, by a majority of one hundred and eighty, refused utterly to have the stern Calvin- BEMIinSCENT. 67 istic moralist any longer to be their servant — or, as he ■would have had it, their master — in the Lord. How- ever, the children had long ago repented of the sin of their fathers — the offending minister having risen to a great height in the esteem of his co-religionists. And so, when they sent out a colony to found a new church, they called it " The Edwards ; " and Dr. Todd, who became its first minister, gave the same name to his first-born son. Doubtless he held his celebrated predecessor in reverence ; but I had it from his own li^js that he deemed, not only the much ob- jurgated and much-admired Treatise on the Freedom of the Will, but all metaphysical theology whatever, unprofitable reading, while we have the Bible, and the great book of Man and Nature is spread wide- open at its less abstruse pages. I do not believe that he read a page of "Edwards on the Will," with fervor or otherwise, after he left the Theological Seminary. Item fifth : The favorite pastime of the Killing- worth Cruelty was to slay the deer in summer, out in the Adirondack country. And so did Dr. Todd love to hunt the deer there, and elsewhere ; as hundreds of very worthy people still do. The pleasures of the chase would bring little but pain to myself ; and the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which Kingsley in his " Idylls " gloats over the skillful " killing " of trout ruins half my pleasure in that otherwise charming book. But that, I take to be a constitutional pecu- liarity ; and it would be absurd in the extreme for me, on the strength of it, to assume a^ virtue above that of Canon Kingsley, Isaack Walton, Shakespeare, Adi- 58 TAGHCONIC. rondack Murray, and a host of other renowned trout- killers and deer-slayers, lay and clerical. But, to be fair, I suppose that the gist of Mr. Long- fellow's accusation, if it be an accusation, lies in the innuendo — " in summer " — intending thereby that the reverend defendant slew the deer, out of season, wantonly, and contrary to the recognized although unwritten laws of venery. And Dr. Todd did pursue the chase on the Adirondack hills in summer. He could not well have done so at any other season ; but he obeyed the law in its spirit, if he broke it to the letter : for he scrupulously refrained, however much in need of venison, from firing upon a fawn or a nurs- ing doe, and never at any season killed for the pleasure of killing, but rather with pity for the pain inflicted. There seem to be some wide divergences between Mr. Longfellow's portrait, and its assumed original ; but there is sufficient vraisemblance to justify the as- sertion that Dr. Todd was the clergyman whom the poet had in his mind, when he wrote " The Birds of Killingworth ;" and it seems equally certain that he was misled by the reports of certain jealous and rascally Adirondack guides — as is very well shown by Dr. Todd's biographer. And it is to be mourned that the most amiable and gentle of our great poets — one to whom the love of all English-speaking people gives such power of reproof and condemnation — should have allowed himself to be led into injustice by such base and vulgar slanderers. I will not believe that he was the more readily induced to give them REMINISCENT. 59 credence by the memory of Dr. Todd's old polemical pastorate — a half a century ago — in Groton. The odiuni theologicum could hardly rankle so long as that in the celestial mind of the author of so much noble and manly verse. But well says old Selden, speaking of judges who hold the power of life and death : " Let him who hath a dead hand take heed how he strikes." Here have I been spending this time which w^e might have given to pleasant reminiscences of Pitts- field's great pastor in a probably needless defence of him against a random and unworthy charge : but perhaps I have been able in this way, as well as another, to show how he appeared to one out of his own theological pale. How he looked to one of his own household, both in the faith and according to the flesh, is graphically painted in the full and frank biography published by his son. V. PONTOOSXJC LAKE. The memory of one particular lioui Dotli here rise up against me. — Wordsworth. Oh, thou most rare day in June, whose rain of golden moments fell so preciously by the green borders of Pontoosuc; there shall be few like thee in the gladdest summer month ! With L. and two other friends from the dear tri-mountain city, and with one laughing daughter of the Berkshire soil, I went that faultless morning, to pass the " lee long summer day "by the clear waters of our favorite lake : the popular favorite, although, fair as it is, I confess that it has a rival in my own esteem. But this is lovely enough to satisfy any reasonable craving. And so is the approach which brings us to it. Passing the neat and tasteful fac- tory village, whose busy wheels have been turned by the waters of the lake for more than half a century, you enter a piece of winding, willow-shaded road^ on the left of which the ground descends abruptly to the rocky bed of the Housatonic river, which issues from the lake a few rods above. Just below, it falls in a cataract, whose worst fault is that it is artificial. PONTOOSUC LAKE. 61 Alas, on this whole romantic stream, from the mountains of New Ashf ord to The Sound, there is not one waterfall which has not been disturbed by art. But water, and especially dashing, sparkling, foaming water, is always beautiful, and this broad, smooth sheet of crystal, rolling over its table of massive marble, to be broken into infinite sparkling drops thirty feet below, is worth at least a passing glance. If you so honor it, you will observe that the smooth water, at frequent intervals in its fall is bent, across its whole width, into rippling curves parallel to its upper surface. The cause is simple enough, but it took us, bright ones, a long while to hit upon it that June morning. No, I shall not tell it here; for it is the prescriptive privilege of the Berkshire friend who first drives you that way, to propound the prob- lem for your bewilderment. Before you have solved it, a slight rise in the road will bring in view the blue surface of the lake, in glassy stillness or sparkling in broken light, dotted only with two emerald islets. Mere dots, now : in that elder day, before the dam-builders — observe that, as I spell it, dam is a noun substantive — before the dam-builders had raised the surface of the lake and sj)oiled some of its prettiest outlines, these islets were quite conspicuous islands; the commodious re- sort of frequent jolly chowder-parties. At a still earlier day, as you will see by and by, they had a story. You catch your first glimpse of the water between gentle declivities covered by a fine growth of pine, with, here and there in the intermediate opening, an 6 ^2 TAGHCONIC. elm, a hemlock or a beech. As you pass through these woody portals — or better, if you stand in the grove on the southern bank — the view expands. The farther shores rise gradually to hills; to moun- tains. Not far off, in the west, they terminate in the ever-graceful Taghconic domes; every summit of which, in a calm clear day, is mirrored by the un- ruffled lake. You should see them on such a day in their brave June verdure, or in their October splendors, every height, every hue, glowing double, hill and shadow, as perfectly as ever Wordsworth's swan. On the north, the long valley, a little broken by the bold, fair hills of Lanesboro', stretches away until it finds its barrier in that superb culmination of so many Berkshire landscapes, grand and graceful Greylock. You would pause, as we did, to admire the almost artistic arrangement of the stately grove of pines, the single elms, and beeches, and the twin hemlocks scattered along the lawn-like slope between the road and the lakeside ; but I know not how much of all these the encroaching waters will leave for the de- lectation of future visitors. There was a very joyous and soothing beauty in the scene as, driving slowly along, with the gently rippling waters upon our left and the cool evergreen grove on our right, we stopped here and there; now to gather splendid bouquets of the rich red columbine, which then grew here in profusion, and now to try, for the most part in vail), to catch a glimpse of the birds, who from PONTOOSUC LAKE. 63 their hiding places, joined with most melodious energy in the carolings of M. and F. Dismissing our carriage at the northern end of the lake, we sauntered back, lingering by the pebbly- shore, where the dashing of the wavelets reminded us all of the great billows that beat upon the Atlantic beach one other summer day. It was strange this mimicry of the great sea by the little mountain loch. F. said she had once been startled in the same way by recognizing the tones of a great orator in the lispings of his infant grand-child. Such are the trifles of which talk is made on summer excursions. Then we sat awhile under the great pines, and let that mischief of a Grace — she of the Berkshire Hills — inveigle every one of us into a promise to read there, on our return, verses in their honor, com- posed during the day. I confess that I was, for a reason which will appear by and by, the first to assent to this nonsense. But, having assented to it, our wisdom recovered itself, and espying across the lake, an inviting grove familiar to all our lovers of picnic, we determined to make it our camping ground for the day. I have since seen a fanciful array of gaily bannered barges moving thither in long pro- cession bearing the semblance, at least, of kings and queens, cavaliers and court ladies, priests and bandits, harlequins and columbines, monks and outlaws, clowns, savages, fairies and all the masquerading fraternity, while pealing music echoed among the astonished hills, and the dwellers omthe farther shore wondered what on earth was coming now. 64 TAGHCONIC. In our time the lake fleet was somewhat more scanty ; but, by the courtesy of the gentlemen of the neighboring factory, we were enabled to reach the haven where we would be in a luxurious boat, once the property of Audubon who had used it in his studies of the rich ornithology of the Berkshire lakes. We were soon quite at home in a nice nook of the grove, where, by the aid of L's flute, F's guitar, the fun of the madcap Grace, a book or two of poetry, and a plenti- ful supply of cold chicken and other " creature com- forts," we passed hours which are not lightly to be forgotten in lives which have few such. Then, too, there were rough rambles, to the grievous detrijuent of Grace's flimsy drapery ; although, on my soul, I believe the gypsy tore that gown with malice prepense, for the sole purpose of bringing an unhappy victim within range of her wit. At any rate he came, and, as she was repairing damages with an infinitude of pains and pins, impertinently asked what she was about ? " Collecting my rents, stupid ! " And as Grace was the owner of houses and lands in quantities, we all laughed. It is so easy to be witty at picnics. " And to laugh at the wit of an heiress any where," do I hear you add ? Well, perhaps, Monsieur Le Sauer; but that has nothing to do with our lake-side merri- ment. You haven't an idea what a balm there is in woodland odors. I half believe a day or two in these Berkshire woods would take some of the grimness out of even your visage. The experiment is worth trying, for the curiosity of the thing, if for nothing more. I wonder how you would look with a gleam of real PONTOOSUC LAKE. 65 genuine happiness in your eye. So come right along, old fellow, and we'll take you all about : make a new man of you as like as not. There are fanciful legends about this Pontoosuc lake; among them an old tale that a shadowy bark with a shadowy boatman is often seen to flit over its midnight waters, as if in quest of that which it is doomed never to find. What it is this restless phantom seeks, whether lost love or hidden foe, I do not know that legends tell. I have often passed that way at the accredited witch- mg hour : sometimes when the pale moon shed a very ghostly light upon the waters, while the shrieks, screams and bowlings that hurtled discordant upon the air, defied all my 'ologies to assign them to any known beast, bird or reptile ; sometimes when only the lurid lightnings fitfully lit up the night, and shim- mered a thin and sulphurous blue from shore to shore ; sometimes when fisher's skiffs, a red torch glowing at every prow, looked sufiiciently infernal ; but neither in ghostly moonlight, by lurid flash, or by glare of torch, can I rightly say that I ever caught sight of his flitting ghostship. " You never did ! well that shows how much of a seer you are. Now, that ghost's as real as — as real as anything. Why there are two of them." It was that saucy Grace who said this, when she read my humiliating confession. The simple fact is that Grace belongs to one of the old story-telling Berkshire families. One of her ancestors was prime chum to Hendrick Aupaumut, tr edition-keep er-in- chief to the Mohegan nation, almost two hundred 66 TAGHCONIC. years ago ; and that veracious chronicler indoctrinated him in all the legendary lore of which he was master. Of course his pretty descendant has a tale to fit every romantic scene among her well-loved hills. I do not know that any of her story-telling ancestry were ever guilty of fathering the wild children of their imagination upon old Aupaumut. If they did, nobody suspected them of it; for they were all " honorable men," or at least were always so desig- nated in the political columns of the county news- papers. I have, however, sometimes suspected that their quick-witted daughter, rather than let any favorite spot go unstoried, would on the instant in- vent a tale to meet its exigences; and if a ghost were needed would e'en haunt it herself. I have gleaned from her a good deal of the material for the Indian legends of this volume; but in order to secure the accurate truthfulness, which, as you perceive, charac- terizes them, I have been obliged to correct her vivacious narration by the aid of graver authorities; frequently summoning Hendrick Aupaumut from the Happy Hunting Grounds for that purpose, and sometimes consulting the historical collections of Dry-as-Dust LL.D. In most cases I have thus scrutinized her stories so closely as to leave little doubt of their perfect truth; but in this Pontoosuc affair, I shall devolve that task upon the reader, and tell the tale just as it was told to me. PONTOOSTJC LAKE. 67 Shoon-keek-Moon-keek. " She loved her cousin ; such a love was deemed Bj the morality of these stern tribes Incestuous." — Bryant. In the first place you must know that Pontoosuo was not the aboriginal name of the lake now so called. That is a corruption of the Mohegan word Poontoosuck — "a field for the winter deer," by which the tribe called all the Pittsfield valley^ indi- cating that it was their abundant hunting ground. When the factory of which I have spoken was built, it received the name, simplified for the sake of convenience, and it was gradually extended to the lake itself. The Mohegans, who loved the lake well, called it Shoon-keek-Moon-keek. Why they did so, you will find out if you listen with a little better attention than you gave those phantom voices across the water: loons, herons, owls and foxes, I haven't a doubt. Although at certain well-defined seasons of the year, this valley, in the old Mohegan times, used to be all alive with hunters and trappers, its permanent population was exceeding scant. The Indians did not greatly affect solitary wigwams, but the little clusters which passed with them for villages were small indeed; and it was one of the smallest which stood in the sunny recess among the hills, seventy or eighty rods below the lake and on the west side of the outlet. You can hardly mistake the spot. They found some ghastly relics of the aboriginal 68 TAGHCONIC. owners not far from the site of their village, not many years ago. The great men of this little community were two brothers, probably not very conspicuous in Mohegan annals, for their very names are forgotten now; and all else concerning them except this faint legend. It happened one bright day in June, three hundred years ago, that to one of these brothers was born a son, and to the other a daughter; the prettiest little papooses that ever came to light in all that region. Their names, Shoon-keek for the boy. Moon-keek for the girl, seem to have signified their parent's ap- preciation of that pleasant fact, although I cannot give you a literal translation of the words. One shudders to think of the barbarous physical and moral training those young things underwent. No boarding school miss ever had her back straight- ened by such heroic processes as gave uprightness to the children of the woods, and I dare say the mental and moral processes were equally rude and effective. The motto was "kill or cure; " the weaklings always gave in, before they made much trouble in the world. As the cousins did not die, the presumption is that they graduated, perfect specimens of the Indian youth and maiden: indeed the tradition hints as much. The other result might have been better for them; but no such gloomy premonition overshadowed their joyous childhood. " The morning of our days Is like the lark that soars to heaven, all happiness and praise ; The earth is full of beauty, rose bloom is on the sky, And hope can never fail us, and love can never die." SHOON-KEEK-MOOX-KEEK. 69 And so Shoon-keek and Moon-keek revelled to- gether in all the joys of childhood; gathered for each other the arbutus in spring, the laurel in summer, and all pretty wild flowers in all flowery months ; together filled their birchen baskets with the luscious berries of the- woods, together chased birds or but- terflies; and as they grew older fished on the lake in the same birch canoe. It was very pleasant for the fathers to see the children thus absorbed in each other — just brother and sister, as it were : which, considering the stern moral law, I have quoted above from Bryant's famous poem, seems to me much like playing with edge tools ; cousins are so liable to discover that they are only cousins. Not that any consciousness of wrong disturbed the pure happiness of Shoon-keek and Moon-keek: even when they were both thrown into consternation by the matrimonial advances made by divers young men of the tribe to the maiden, they did not suspect the nature of their common grief. Little the simple ones deemed that the affection which, in those pleasant places, had grown up as sweetly and naturally as the may-flower and the violet mingle their perfumes, was unholy. So natural and so innocent was their intercourse that, not until the keen eye of jealousy discovered and its subtle tongue pointed it out, did the fathers of these poor children suspect the love, which theji called guilty; nay, not till the voice of j^arental authority had forbidden their precious meetings did 70 TAGHCONIC. the lovers learn the nature and ardor of their own passion. Parental authority had some rather effective means of asserting itself among our predecessors in this valley. But not for that did the cousins consent to forego each other. The means of evading parental oversight were also abundant in those thick-wooded days. There were hidden recesses in the islands of the lake, in its sedgy shores, in its inlets and out- lets, all very tempting to opposed lovers who could both speed the light' canoe. Then, as now, at night as well as by day, the surface of the lake was con- stantly dotted by the little skiffs of the fishermen — and iisherwomen. And then as nov/, the busy plyers of the hook and line little noted at night if one or another skiff, dipping its torch quietly in the wave, suddenly darted into some narrow hiding place. But then it unfortunately happens that all who go down upon the lake in little boats are not busy plyers of the hook and line, but sometimes, rather, busy-bodies in other men's matters : a sort of people, who, though specifically classed by Holy Writ among the wicked, persist in existing in all ages. And they always make mischief wherever you find them. Nockawando was the mischief-maker on Pontoosuc Lake three hundred years ago; and as he was, not only a prying busybody, but also a jealous lover of the pretty Moon-keek, you may be sure he was not long in making known to her father the secret of her clan- destine nocturnal meetings with her forbidden cousin: and a pretty lecture the old fellow read her ; with a SHOON-KEEK-MOOX-KEEK. 71 promise of such further measures as on examination he might find the case to demand. My dear young lady reader: that threat suggested something much more serious than being locked up in your own room, even on a meagre diet of bread and water. But, if love laughs at locksmiths, what could be expected of a flimsy wigwam, without so much as a latch to rattle or a hinge to creak, in the way of restraining a brave girl's wayward fancies ? The lovers had planned a meeting that very night upon the island in the lake; and they had it. They had before determined to fly from Mohegan-land and ask adoption into some eastern tribe whose marriage code was less absurd than their own ; pre- cisely as an Englishman, resolved to marry his deceased wife's sister anyhow, just takes her across the Atlantic. The idea was a* capital one; and, under the pressure of Xockawando's terrible dis- covery, they determined to carry it out the very next night. They should have started right off on the instant. I wish they had, even if the lake had waited to this day for a story and a name. But, even with the primitive wardrobe and diet which prevailed three centuries ago in Mohegan-land, some little pre- paration seems to have been needful. And, then, Moon-keek's stern parent had intimated that he would wait the return of his brother from Esqua- tuck, before proceeding to extreme measures. But delays are dangerous, as even our sanguine lovers seem to have been aware; for they made sad provision for the possibility of failure. They had 12 TAGHCONIC. not faith enough in the moral code of their nation, to make themselves mangled martyrs to it, like Bryant's monumental maiden, by jumping down a five hundred feet precipice into a hugh pile of jagged and splintered flint rocks. They declined martyrdom singly, even in the milder form suggested by the deep waters of the lake. But, however re- bellious against the more austere deities of their nation, they were sworn subjects of whatever imp in their mythology played the role of Cupid. Before leaving the island, they, therefore, solemnly pledged themselves, that, if any fate should interpose to prevent their flight, and threaten to separate them forever, they would meet beneath the cool waters, and part no more. It was a fearful vow; and yet lovers, educated in a more enlightened faith, have been known to make, and faithfully perform, essentially the same. There was nothing in it, save the cousinly relation of the parties, that was re- pugnant to the superstitions of the forest. Yet hear what befell those who preferred the worship) of the little god, Cupid, whatever may have been his Mo- hegan name, to the behest of the Great Manitou. You will have anticipated that fatal disaster befell the cousins in their proposed flight: fatal indeed it was, and fearful; but it may be briefly told. Shoon-keek, gliding stealthily across the waters to his island rendezvous, died by a treacherous arrow from the bow of Nockawando ; and his body, pitching from the canoe, sank with strange swiftness. No breath of life, no spark of soul, lingered to buoy it SHOOX-KEEK-MOOX-KEEK. 73 for an instant; but the shadowy semblance of him who had sat there, kept his seat, and the skiff sped on, faster than when driven by mortal arms — towards the island, past the island, into the dim night. The expectant maiden discerned it as it passed, and the piteous tone in which she shrieked the name of her lover pierced the heart even of I^ockawando who was approaching the point upon which she stood. The response came back as piteously, from afar, " Moon-keek ! " The lover — now a phantom, could then hear and answer the loved voice; but, though his arm seemed to drive on the skiff, another power inexorably guided its course. It needed but this, and the sight of the murderer, to tell the frantic girl all that had happened. Nothing remained but to fulfil her vow. Springing into her canoe, she darted it madly from the shore, singing a wild and plaintive death-song. Nockawando hastened to pursue ; but, as he drew near, the song ceased and such a supernatural silence prevailed that, in the terror of a guilty soul, he would have fled; but flight was no longer possible. He came nearer still: the maiden, like her lover, was a shade. What more he saw or heard, was never known, except that, as he looked the canoe of Moon-keek, without apparent motion, was afar off. He returned to the village, a gibbering idiot. Neither hunting-ground or war-path ever knew him more. The dusky maidens gazed upon him, shuddering — but pitiful ; and he fled from them as from some remembered horror. The tribes-men dealt 1 74 TAGHCONIC. cKaritably with him as with one stricken of hoaven; but he went ever feebly moaning strange syllables: the wise men said, they were the parting words of the phantom maiden. Death at last- came to his relief. But not so ended the punishment of those who loved not wisely ; that is, not according to the traditions of their people. K legends do not lie, it was decreed of Manitou, that so long as the lake shall dash its waves, so long shall their restless shades flit over them with responsive but bewildering and illusive call and response, while, led by the hope that maketh the heart sick, they nightly seek that meeting, no more to part, to which they impiously pledged themselves in the madness of unlawful love. With rightly attuned ears, you may, on almost any night when the lake is not frozen, hear those piteously plaintive voices, calling to each other from ever-changing points, and if you are a right ghost- seer — a sort of gifted folk much more rare than they used to be — you may sometimes faintly discern a shadowy canoe flitting, spectre-like, over the waters; vanishing here, appearing there, in an altogether supernatural way: like an aboriginal Flying Dutch- man in miniature. Such are the phantoms of the Mohegan's Shoon-keek-Moon-keek, and our Pon- toosuc. " If I were rich enough, I would have that cruel lake drained," cried F., her blue eyes filled with tears. " Don't," said the laughing story-teller, " It would ruin some of the finest water-pt)wer in the county." SHOON-KEEK-MOON-KEEK. 15 And yet one could see with half an eye, that she was proud to have had one sympathetic auditor. "And now," she continued, "now for the pine grove and our improvisings ! " Oddly enough no one owned to giving a thought to that rash promise of the morning, except Grace and my unhappy self — why unhappy, you shall see by and by. The pine is rather a rare tree in this region; but there are a few fine groves; this by the lake-side being the finest, although but a relic of that which the records proudly boasted, a hundred and fifty years ago. It looked very grandly as we paused on our way home, to pay it our tribute of verse. Grace, as the proposer, was first called upon for her offering; and gracefully accepting the situation, read: Pmos loquentes semper habemus. •* Lowland trees may lean to this side or to that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope. But, let storm or avalanche do their worst ; and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem ; it shall point to the center of the earth, as loug as the tree stands." * * * * Other trees tufting crag and hill yield to the form and sway of the ground ; clothing it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self contained. — Ruskin. All hail to the pine, to the evergreen pine, The pride of our forest, the boast of our story: A health to his tassels ; still green let them shine. 76 TAGHCONIC. To remind the new times of the old fields of glory ! 'Twas he to our fathers, on Plymouth's bleak shore, The first shelter gave and the first welcome bore : Then a health to thy tassels our own native pine ; A halo of glory, above us they shine. All hail to the pine, o'er our heroes that waved, Ere plumed was our Eagle or starry flags floated 1 On field and on fortress where tyrants were braved, The pine on our banner the victor denoted. It marched iu the van where our minute-men met. Its folds with the blood of our Warren were wet ; Proud voices of story are evermore thine, And we thrill to thy murmur, 0, eloquent pine. All hail to our-pine, fadeless type of the true 1 The changeless in beauty, unbending, undaunted ; The banner of green, to the May breeze he threw. In the gales of December as bravely are flaunted. He meeteth the blast when the tempest is high, Nor faints in the heat of the scorched summer sky. Grand poet, pure teacher, high priest of truth's shrine, Thou art evermore with us thrice eloquent pine 1 "When Grace rolled out that Latin quotation-title in her fullest and richest tones I opened my eyes wide and stared at her in a half dazed way — glared at her, as she tells it; and got a provokingly saucy smile for my pains. But, as she read on with melo- dious calmness, my blood fairly tingled; partly with amazement, partly with vexation and perplexity. " There was nothing in the verses so startling as that comes to," you remark. Xo indeed ! but the fact is, I had spent some weary hours, the day before, preparing to extem- porize those very lines, which the minx was coolly SHOON-KEEK-MOON-KEEK. 77 reciting as dashed off by herself in our pic-nio hubbub. But scolding would have been absurd, especially as, to tell the truth, she read my poor pur- loined verses, so charmingly that they sounded almost like real poetry. To make a formal claim to the authorship was at least dangerous, in view of the probability that this was the very ambuscade into which my fair foe was trying to lead me, and once there I should be at the mercy of her merciless wit. There was only one road out of the scrape; and luckily I took it — I overwhelmed her with the most outrageous praises of her poem, and wondered that it could have been written in the brief and broken intervals of such a day. I had never suspected her of such genius. Then I tore my own manuscript to shreds, declaring that it should never be brought into comparison with such a transcendent work. The rest of the party, astounded at my extrava- gance, fancied that I was crazed by love, or some- thing else equally far from my heart; and even the marvellous equipoise of Grace was a little disturbed. But she quickly regained her composure, and we both kept our counsel for that day. Of course the truth came out in the end, and I received the credit which that eloquent reading gained for my verse. Now I am rash enough to throw it away by printing the thing. I wont spoil a story for relation's sake, even though the relation- ship be so close as mine to myself. And, from the first, I determined to describe this particular pic-nio with reasonable fulness, just to show the uninitiated 78 . TAGHCONIC. what a Berkshire pic-nic really is. I shall not need to depict another so minutely, unless it be of a different class. ^ But this is not yet ended. Some sunny hours of the June day yet remained, and, as our party was to be broken on the morrow, we were tempted to crowd as much as possible of pleasant adventure into the present excursion. We therefore resolved to extend our ride to a wonderful rock of v/hich we had heard much, and which could be reached by an additional drive of perhaps two miles, around the north end of the lake. There is a nearer road to it from Pittsfield village; but this, by and around Pontoosuc, is far the most picturesque. The Balanced Rock. Dropped in nature's careless haste. — Burns. Passing again the lakeside, we turned, by a cross- road towards the west, and rolled through a quiet rural country, whose inhabitants, whose fields and cattle, even; nay, whose very houses and barns; seemed as much in exuberant enjoyment of the day as ourselves. " Every clod feels a stir of might — An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; The flash of life may well be seen Thrilling back, over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green ; The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf or a bud too mean To be some happy creature's palace." — Jjowell THE BALANCED ROCK. 19 A hill on this road affords fine prospects in various directions; especially looking backwards upon the lake, which has a wilder picturesqueness than when viewed from any other point. The Taghconics, too, loom up grandly in front. When the sun wanted an hour of his setting, we passed a few scattered chestnut trees in a field, and entered the grove which concealed our sphynx. The Balanced Rock is a huge mass of white marble — grey upon its weather-stained surface — weighing many tons; rudely triangular, or still more rudely oval, in its shape; and so nicely balanced on a pivot of a few inches, that, although, by the aid of a lever, it may be made to slightly oscillate, no force yet applied — and it has been tried with more than rea- sonable effort — has been able to overturn it. Of course it is not impossible to accomplish this van- dalism; but fortunately the means are not within easy reach of ordinary wantonness. The great danger is from greed; if this curious work of nature should come into the possession of men of different charac- ter from those who have hitherto owned its site. It should be public property; and one of its recent owners offered to make it so, with sufiicient surround- ing land, on condition that the public would take measures for its preservation. The belief used to be that the mass was immovable, which was an excellent reason for calling it the Roll- ing Rock, by which name it was first introduced to me. But I can bear witness that, on the occasion of a certain notable visit to the spot by the combined 80 TAGHCONIC. scientific associations of Troy, Albany and Pittsfield, certain venerable savans, by the aid of a friendly fence-rail, did obtain distinct vibrations. The same learned gentlemen determined, rather more doubtfully, that the great rock was not perched up there — where it looks like the roc described by Sinbad the sailor — as certain other huge boulders were strewn about the county, by being thrown over- board from ice-bergs or ice-floes, several million ages ago. It seemed to them, on the contrary, that the Balanced Rock grew where it stands, and that the mass which originally enclosed it had been worn away by innumerable floods. On the other hand, a more recent geologist, after a more complete survey than the pleasure excursions of science can afford, discards all theories of floating ice, and holds that all these boulders, the Balanced Rock included, were de- posited by fields of ice, several thousand feet thick, slowly grinding over the ancient surface of the valley. They appear to have done some thorough work — those old ice giants — crushing, as in an emery milb quartz, slate, mica, corundum, jasper, marble, horn- blende, green-stone, iron, and every rock that could be gathered from the neighboring mountains, into all required sizes from that of the Balanced Rock and the Alderman, to the dust that grits in your teeth and sends a cold shudder through you when the ther- mometer is raging among the nineties. You may see fine specimens of ice-age-work carefully assorted in the curious strata of any of our Berkshire gravel- ATOTARHO'S DUFF. 81 beds; and it will be well worth your while to make a study of them. But, as these explanations of the phenomenon of the Balanced Rock refer to obscure dates far back in the infinite eons; and the record, whatever the geologists aver, may not seem to you indisputable, perhaps you may prefer something within the range of authentic history, as related, for instance, by those grave chroniclers, Hendrick Aupaumut and Grace Scheherazade. And it is but reasonable that you should have it. I assume that you know something of the Ato- tarhos of the Iroquois, or Six Nations; a line of kings or emperors, of whom each, when he succeeded to the office, took also the name of the founder of the dynasty, just as the Roman emperors were all Cffisars. Individuals of the line were gifted with diverse divine, or at least supernatural, attributes and powers; all being esteemed demi-gods of one estate or an other. The first, a truculent old fellow, had a complete table service made of the bones of his enemies; and he had an imposing way of receiving even friendly deputations, clad in an entire panoply of living and venomous serpents. I have seen a portrait of his majesty in that royal costume. Most of his descendants, although invariably wise in counsel and mighty in war, were of a more gentle kind. The particular Atotarho, with whom we have here to do, was ordinarily of even feminine beauty and delicacy; and devoted himself to the cultivation of the milder virtues among his people. A white 82 TAGHCONIC. poet has even ventured to fable that this gentle ruler was the daughter of Count Frontenac, stolen in her infancy, and palmed oif on the confiding tribes by a childless predecessor. But the Iroquois were not the sort of people to see any divinity in a woman, and they aver that, if occasion required, he could assume gigantic proportions and unlimited strength. And this assertion is fully borne out by the story of the Balanced Rock. I need not tell you that the Indian youth were severely trained to athletic sports, — quoits, clubs and the like, — and you may or may not, have heard that a favorite game, was one which, under the name of " duff," was a favorite also among my own school- fellows, who played it with paving stones. It con- sists in placing one stone upon another, and then attempting to dislodge it, by pitching a third from such distance as the player can; a feat which requires more strength and nearly as much skill as the kin- dred game of quoits. It was a long, long while ago that a party of Mohegan youth were excited over this sport in the neighborhood of the Balanced Rock. Words ran high and indeed blow^s seemed exceedingly imminent when their attention was diverted to a slender youth who stood leaning against a neighboring tree in admiration of a sport in which he seemed ill adapted to take part. Had the elders of the tribe been present, doubtless the courtesy to a stranger required by Indian etiquette would have mitigated the rudeness of the youngsters' wit ; but, left to them- 83 selves, and taught to despise effeminacy, the strange youth appeared to them a fair mark for their raillery, and they did not spare him, notwithstanding his modest and manly responses. But the loudest laugh was when, as if provoked beyond endurance, he accepted a taunting challenge to a trial of strength and skill. The laugh was brief, and changed to cries of terror, when they saw the slender but lithe figure grow to giant size. Then they knew the Atotarho of their masters, the Iro- quois; and when he hurled the huge rocks about, as you still see them, they would have fled had not his glance held them fast. At last, seizing the largest boulder to be found, as one would a pebble, he fixed it where you now marvel, and^ the geologists blunder, over it — the Balanced Rock. Then, resuming the slender figure, to which the frightened youth were now quite reconciled, he gave them a lesson in manners and morals, which was handed down through all after-generations of the Mohjegans, whose tradition-keeper-in-chief yearly re- peated it from the top of The Atotaeho's Duff. Now, does not that sound a vast deal more sensible and truthful than all that stuff about icebergs float- ing round Perry's Peak, or glaciers five thousand feet thick in the Housatonic valley? Methinks 1 hear you say ; " Now, actilly, donH it 9 " Well, one thing is certain; whether this old rock got its marvellous poise at the hand of enchantment or by the still more wondrous w-orkings of nature, we came to visit it, that June afternoon, with min- 84 TAGHCONIC. gled merriment and astonishment. M. rushed to it with a ringing laugh, declaring she would push the monster from the seat he had kept longer than was right. Her gay, fairy-like figure pressed against the rude, grey mass with such mimic might, reminded me of a task assigned, in some elfin tale, to a rebellious hand-maiden of Queen Mab. We had a little intellectual amusement in deci- ohering the names of innumerable Julias and Caro- Anes, Rosalinds, Janes, and " Roxany Augustys," inscribed by affectionate jack-knives, upon the bark of the surrounding trees. Some classic gentlemen, dolefully destitute of a doxy, had enrolled among them the words, "Memnon," and "Peucinia." I have since heard the story of the merry hour when " Memnon " was inscribed by a hand which has written many a witty and clever volume. Indeed, indeed there must have been a deal of witchery in the cunning priestess who made that stern old rock breathe such mysterious and enchanting music. " Can any mortal creature of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment ? " I should think not. Was it a wood-nymph then with her music box ! Was there ever anything in that broken champagne bottle at the foot of the sphynx ? And do wood-nymphs drink champagne ? This grove is very questionable and full of marvels. When we had clambered with a world of pains on to the top of the rock, we, too, had music — merry and sad — " music at the twilight hour." Then, as the evening shades deepened in the wood came low- THE BALANCED EOCK. 85 spoken words of memory and of longing for those far away. Alas ! if all whom Ave invoked had come, the grave and the sea must have given up their dead. With voices softened and mellowed by deeper feeling, my companions sang an " Ave Maria," and we bade farewell, not gaily, to a scene mysteriously consecrated by memories not its own. So, often, in scenes and hours when we invoke the ministers of joy, other spirits arise in their places, and we do not bid them down. VI. LEBANON SPRINGS — A DASH AT LIFE THERE. So when, on Lebanon's sequestered liight, . The fair Adonis left the realms of light, Bowed his bright locks, and fated from his birth To change eternal. — Darwin's Botanic Garden. Down in the hilly valley, beyond the Taghconics, is Lebanon — New Lebanon: the capital of the Shaker world, the seat of the mineral springs, the most de- lightful of watering places, the birth-place of Samuel J. Til den, and our Gretna Green. All the world knows Lebanon, but much of it about as accurately as the knowledge-seeking traveller who, on the morn- ing after his arrival, desired to be shown the cedars for which he was told the place was famous. Lest any of you should waste your time in antiquarian research for the point where " the fair Adonis left the realms of light," I may as well tell you at once that it was the door which opens from the gay parlors of Columbia Hall out upon the long balconies on a moonless night. Lebanon Adonises " bow their bright locks '' t<) the brighter eyes of the belle of the season; and, as there is likely to be a new one every two or three months, they are fated to eternal change. That explains the fable. LEBANON SPRINGS. 87 The Springs are a very Mecca for summer pilgrims. The first June heats bring the habitues with their quiet quite-at-home air. A little later, others, catch- ing a feverish impulse from the city miasma, rush away like mad to flirt awhile with Nature and Hy- geia among the mountains. Still others take a season here after their Saratoga; like hock and soda-water after champagne. At all seasons — midwinter even — the people of all the region-round-about love their little trips to The Pool. "The Pool: " that was the neighborhood name in the simple days of old. Catharine Sedgwick, who then, and always, well loved this resort, delighted to speak of it as The Pool, and that is what Miss Warner also calls it in her charming novel, Queechy. Queechy Lake, by the way, is one of the prettiest features in Lebanon scenery, and the ride to it is a favorite drive. This valley was the Wyomanock of the Mohegans, and the name still clings to the stream whicii flows through it. Very lovely are both vale and stream. If natural beauty were the sole test of excellence few watering places would riral Lebanon Springs, But they have other merit than this. It is claimed that they are the oldest watering place in America; and village tradition will tell you that, a hundred ai:d seventy years ago, or about the close of the last French and Indian war, a certain Captain Hitchcock, then stationed at Hartford, finding himself afiiicted with a grievous malady, was induced 'to try these waters. " He came," says an interesting lo^cal writer, " with ono servant and a company of Indian guides, and 88 TAGHCONIC. was carried from Stockbridge to the Springs on a litter, and by an Indian trail, there being no roads. He found a large basin filled with water, and, from appearances around it, judged it to be a bathing place for the natives." Captain Hitchcock camped for several days near the springs, and received great benefit from their use. After the peace he returned to New Lebanon as a permanent resident, and his de- scendants still live there. Before the Revolutionary war, the Springs had become noted. In the early part of the present century they continued to grow in repute, and towards its middle, society there was subjected to the praises of Nat. Willis, the sarcasms of Mrs. Trollope and the judicious criticism of Miss Sedgwick, But why bother with the old life at the Pool while the living world of the Sj)rings so provokingly challenges us to read it — if we can. It were an infinitely curious study to enquire what brings each individual into the respectably-motley throng; but, unfortunately for psychological science, the so- journers at fashionable hotels are the most incommu- nicative of beings; reticence being the primal law of society — technically so called. Lamentable as that fact is, we need not, however, despair; having a ready resource in that supreme faculty of guessing, which makes us, Yankees, from Emerson to Andrew Jackson Davis, the incomparable philosophers, we all are. It is a pleasant and profitable recreation to ex- ercise this precious and peculiar faculty, of a lazy LEBANON SPRINGS. 89 summer a;fternoon, on the long verandahs of Columbia Hall. Laziness is the mother of at least one school of philosophy, and guessing at the foibles of one's friends is always delightful: their virtues, I take it, guessing j)hilosophy generally leaves to be proved. There are some hundreds of human beings about the huge hotel, most of whom may be supposed to have some motive, not of a purely sanitary character, in coming here; and to have also some notion, more or less definite, of the nature of the place and the part they are to play in it. In the old times of the Pool, we might have gone straight to the point, and asked people what they thought of things in general, and themselves in particular; but, since Mrs. Trollope, Capt. Hall and the Dickens have snubbed inquisi- tiveness out of American manners, that won't do at all. It might reap the reward of impertinence. No matter; a tolerably shrewd guess may do as well. Let us guess then. It would not require a Connecticut Solomon to discover that the student-looking young man, with an orange-colored face and sea-green spectacles, thinks himself in an enormous hospital, or perhaps only a mammoth apothecary's shop. I dare say he spends his most contented hours in the famous medicine factory of the Tildens, two miles down the street. He deems those gorgeous, flaunting dames, of whose bright j)resence he is rather vaguely con- scious, of no more real value — since they will not nurse his invalidship — than the colored waters in the apothecary's window opposite. 90 TAGHCONIC. Those gay ladies themselves, of course, view the matter in a very reverse light. Take one of them, for example — that flirting, chatting, jewelled thmg, Madame, the wife of the Wall Street millionaire. With both those clear-orbed eyes wide open, she can see little in this magnificent panorama of hill and valley, and this, its life-throbbing heart, more than a splendid ball room or gorgeous saloon; as indeed, for that matter, she would like the wide, wide world to be — and is vastly annoyed that misery, with her discordant shrieks and disgusting deformities, should presume to spoil the music and mar the deco- rations. That blinking exquisite in those outrageously stunning habiliments — him with the eye-glass pain- fully squinnied in between bloated cheek and villan- ously low forehead; him with his nose turned up, as if in scorn of the poor moustache struggling for life in the exhausted soil below it : he has gradu- ated from Paris; and the dazzling, dancing dames hold l;iim a prodigy of intellect. But you note that he has all the external symptoms of being a thorough- bred donkey; and I think a practiced guesser would have little difficulty in making him out a weak cadet of one of those families to whom the Jenkinses of the New York press have given brevet rank as " aristocrats." Look again. You would call yonder a frank, free- hearted, undesigning girl. Hear with what joyous, summerly f orgetf ulness she throws off those snatches of unstudied song; and see how ingenuously the LEBAXOX SPEIXGS. 91 blusli rises in her cheek, now she remembers that she is not alone. You would not dream now — would you ? — that she looks upon this fair spot only as a mart in which she is to dispose of that dear little commodity — herself — to the best possible advan- tage ? Yet I'll wager you a small farm I have in the clouds, that every note of that outgushing melody was aimed, point blank, at the handsome gentleman who has been conversing, these two hours past, with the pale girl in black. I only hope the minstrel will not be malicious enough to say, the pale girl is " setting her cap" for the handsome gentleman. Why don't she turn her thought to drive away the cloud which has settled in the eye of the gloomy- browed man who is pacing the verandah so heavily ? Bless us ! the summer sunshine glances off from him, and leaves not a trace of light; he has never sold his shadow to Satan. Yet I misdoubt; and so we go on, doubting and misdoubting, guessing and mis- guessing: sure enough — if we would consider it — of two things; that we shall always hit wide enough of the mark, and never too near the charitable side of it. " Wise judges are we, of each other's actions ! " This Lebanon is not without its vein of romance. How could it be, when youth and age, folly and wis. dom, joy and sorrow, love and hatred, life and death, make it their yearly rendezvous ? How strange a rendezvous, oft-times ! Of those who seek here new thought, new hope, new feelings, how many find only what they bring — a jaded mind and a palsied heart ?- Mind cramped to the puny pursuit of puny 92 TAGHCONIC. things will not always, upon the mountains, expand and glow with the widening horizon and the purer sunlight. Passion, born luxuriously in the crowded city, grows and strengthens, and will not die, in the bracing upland air. Yet is there forgetfulness of lighter woes and less corroding cares, in the gay saloons and woodland drives, as well as marvellous virtue for the diseased body in the bubbling waters and fresh breezes. Care-worn men and women worn with ennui, do get new elasticity of thought and frame; but in what do they seek a balm for the wounded spirit, who bring hither the broken hearted also — like thee, fair and gentle L. — or was it that thy pure sj)irit might wing its way to Heaven through purer skies than overhang thy native city ? I said Lebanon had its vein of romance. A bachelor friend of mine, who has been a lounger at Columbia Hall every summer these ten years past, has a rich fund of stories — humorous, melo-drama- tic, and tragical — about those who have fluttered, flattered, flirted, and flitted here in that time. With him, half the demoiselles who have " made their market " under his eye, are heroines of a quality which would surprise themselves not a little to know, and their husbands a good deal more. It is often a matter of discussion with us, whether, among other connubial revelations, the arts and devices whereby he was entrapped are usually disclosed to the husband. In the absence of data from which to conclude, we always end in the same mists in which we set out. One of my bachelor friend's stories I will venture to 93 repeat, although I perceive it loses half its flavor, for lack of the gusto with which he would dwell upon it. She Would be a Gentleman's Wife, " More beauty than ever at Lebanon this year," I remarked to my friend, as we sat together one even- ing, about a year since; it was a common observation, and I thought myself particularly safe in repeat- ing it. " Hey ! what's that you say ? " he ejaculated, after a pause, in which it seemed my words had been following him far down into the depths of reverie. " More beauty than ever ! Let me tell you, my dear fellow, that you know nothing at all of the matter. It's one of the stupid common-places of stupid common people." I bowed to the compliment, and the bachelor went on with a half sigh, " Ah ! you should have known us in the reign of the bitter and beautiful Lizzie B., or in that of the wonder-working Mrs. M." Here the bachelor again relapsed into reverie, and I had time to remark to myself that this hankering after faded flowers, when the world was full of fresh, was an ugly symptom that my friend's own hey-day of beaudom must be on the wane. When people begin to complain that they can find no beauty, now- a-days, like that which they used to meet, look if they don't wear wigs, and other falsities of decora- tion. "But the most charming season," resumed the 94 TAGHCONIC. bachelor, emerging again into the present, " was that of 185-, when Kate L. was in the ascendant. She was far enough from beautiful, was Mrs. L., but such a winsome way she had with her that we all, to a man, acknowledged her sceptre — and the most dazzling belle in her realm was ready to die with envy: envy, by the bye, was a vice Mrs. L. was es- pecially free from. Never was woman more ready to recognize and exhibit the charms of her rivals. She surrounded her throne with a constellation of lovely women from far and near, and would let none be eclipsed. A kind-hearted creature was she, and a sensible to boot; a tithe part the jealousy we en- dured from the splendid Lizzie B. would have made Kate look as ugly as a Bornese ape. " But it was of her throne-maidens that I was going to boast. I wish you could have looked in upon one of our gala nights; we have none such now — (that, entre nous, was a fib of the bachelor's). There was a floral ball we had one night in July — I have some reason to remember it, but no matter. Mrs. L. had made more than usual exertions in getting up this festival, which was the opening one of the season. The arrangements were perfect; — the floral decora- tions unique and profuse; the music superb; and the supper just what it should be. But our Lady Patroness was too true a genius to give to these con- comitants the monopoly of her attention. With a magic little crow-quill by way of wand, she sum- moned from all manner of retreats, the most brilliant assemblage of fair women and distinguished men OUE feiend's stoey. 95 that I have ever beheld among these hills ; and when Mrs. L. summoned youth and beauty, you might be sure there was something to be done. I am going to leave them to do it, while I tell you of my cousin Ellen, the fairest of them all. " You remember Nell — my uncle Fred's Nell — the merriest girl that ever hid deep design under careless laugh. Uncle Fred.,> you must know, left her an orphan at twenty — with exquisite accomplish- ments, unrivalled tact, and four thousand dollars, with which to make her way in the world, as she best might. Her guardian — a staid, business-like old gentleman, guardian to half the heiresses in the county, as well — when her year of mourning was over, advised her to buy a share in a boarding-school, and earn her living by teaching. ' With your accom- plishments and talents, my dear,' — the good, fatherly old man was goiiig on, when he was astonished to find his pretty ward cutting short his speech with — " ' With my accomplishments and talents, my diear guardian, I don't intend to squeeze my brain like a lemon, to give flavor to some insipid school-girl, while I might as well be rivalling her mamma. No ! I'll invest in — a husband ! ' — and here her little foot came down with a will. " The guardian stared; but he was too sensible a man to oppose a woman whose will was up; and so, under the nominal chaperonship of his wife, Ellen opened her first campaign at Lebanon. "That night of the floral fete^ she stood, the centre of an admiring group — a slight, aerial figure, 96 TAGHCONIC. but full of elastic life and vigor; her face transparent with changing light, and her eye overflowing with a flood of love and laughter. She was di-essed with wonderful artistic skill; for the life of me I could not imagine how she contrived to arrange her mist- like drapery so that she seemed always on the point of rising into air. I have since heard that it is no mystery among mantua-makers. Among the crowd of women, laden and over-laden with all kinds of flowers, native and exotic, Nell had only twisted in her hair a few snowy, star-shaped blossoms — the spoil of a mountain excursion. Not a fold of her robes, not a tress on her head, but seemed too spiritual for mortal touch. I have since learned that the artistes call this style of dress, la Gahrielle. It is a triumph of genius; but I would not advise any lady weighing over two hundred to attempt it. "Frank Leigh was conversing with my etherial eousin in a composed tone, and with a gaze of mere earthly admiration which I could not then have as- sumed for the world, although Nell and I had been playmates from infancy. I almost shuddered — so strangely had the fancy possessed me — when Frank took her hand, to lead her to the piano, lest she should indeed prove a spirit, and dissolve into thin air. " ' Ellen should be a gentleman's wife,' said a pretty and brilliant widow by my side. " Wife ! so she was human. ^ A gentleman's wife,' I repeated aloud, * and pray what is a gentleman ? — and why should Ellen, more than another, be a gentle- man's wife ? ' 97 " * Why,'* replied the widow laughing, * a gentle- man, in Ellen's vocabulary, is a man of elegant manners, with at least one hundred thousand dollars, and a disposition to spend his income in graceful and fashionable follies. Ellen's expensive tastes demand such a husband — and I hope she may get him.' " * Oh, now I am enlightened,' I said. " ' I am glad to hear it,' rejoined the widow, merrily. ' But come with me out into the balcony, and I'll let you into a secret or two.' " Of course, such an offer was not to be resisted; and before we returned, I was put in possession of much recherche gossip, known only to the initiated. " There had come that year to the Springs, a fine looking young man — generous, spirited, of captivat- ing address, and great reputed wealth — Frank Leigh by name; the same who was in attendance upon my cousin Ellen at the floral fete. Of course such a god-send was not to be neglected by anxious mothers, and daughters no less anxious. Mrs. L., finding him clever, fond of sport, and prompt to forward all her gay schemes, had taken him up at once, and installed him her prime minister. Ellen, I need not say, was quite as ready to acknowledge his merits. " Frank was universally declared to be a * sweet man,' in the ball-room and drawing-room; but he was not a bit of a dandy; there was nothing of the exclusively ladies' man about him, nothing effeminate in his habits. On the contrary, his tastes were emi- nently manly. He had yachted "on the Atlantic coast, hunted moose in a Maine Winter, and even 9 98 TAGHCONIC. taken a run after buffaloes into the Sioux country. Here, among the quiet hills, his exuberant spirits found vent in a passion for wild horsemanship. Jehu was a child to him, with the whip ; he was sure always to choose some unmanageable foal of gun- powder, that nobody else would come within a rod of; men, even of strong nerves, were of opinion that safer pleasures existed than a seat beside Frank Leigh, on one of his break-neck drives; and as for the women, not a soul of the dear creatures, who would have given their eyes to secure him for a partner at the last night's ball, could be persuaded to trust their ivory necks with him and his ' Light- ning ' next morning. " To all this was one most remarkable exception — my brave cousin Nell, who had come out all at once a perfect Dl. Vernon. Ah ! but it was an inspiriting sight, to see her mounted on her brown steed, lead- ing her panting admirers an aimless race over fields, brakes, briers, and fences, till half the chase foreswore all pursuit of her thereafter. "But Nelly's favorite seat was in Frank's light buggy, of which she enjoyed undisputed possession — her rivals thinking it a particularly ' bad eminence.' Of course she was the consta77t companion of our Jehu, and a fit one, as it looked. Travellers marvelled enviously, as Frank's chariot dashed by them, to hear Nelly's clear, ringing laugh, or rattling song; or even at times to see her slight figure braced back, her loose curls flying, and her little hands holding OUR friend's story. . d9 fast the ' lines,' while she urged the foaming horses to yet more impossible speed; — ' Like a dream doth it seem. When I think of the past ; Up the road gallantly dashing along, Driving two noble steeds, square built and strong ; Firmly her little hands grasping the reins, Held them as firmly as lovers in cbains.' " I think the echoes of her merry voice must linger yet among the old woods which skirt the Hancock road. Sure I am that the dwellers in the road-side farm-houses yet remember Frank Leigh's dashing equipage, and the gay couple with whom it used to fly by their doors, at such flashing speed. " Beside his equestrian fancies, Frank was exceed- ingly prone to romantic excursions, and by the aid of the good-natured Mrs. L., who was nothing loath, led us upon a hundred wild adventures among the hills, to the great detriment of patent leather and super- fine broadcloth. Here, too, Nell was the co-leader with the rattle-brain heir ; never a ramble ended until she had joined him in one mad-cap feat or another. " All this you may be sure gave ample room and verge enough for bitter tongues; but the sage con- clusion of one shrewd lady, that * some folks could do what other folks couldn't,' soon came to be in sub- stance the universal sentiment. Indeed, with all Nelly's faults and follies, it was impossible, when you knew her, to think her capable of anything very wrong. 100 TAGHCONIC. " One opinion, at least, every body held, and that was, that she was just the girl to charm Frank Leigh — and that she had charmed him to some purpose. Every body but my friend the widow, who, while she admitted the boldness and vigor of Ellen's attack, had a doubt or two as to its success. ' Ellen,' said* the widow, * has a splendid genius f Ox' business, but very little experience. Do you not notice that Frank of late has another companion sometimes on his rides ? ' " * What ! the timid and femininely delicate Miss P.?' " * The same — and with what tender care he curbs his speed when she is his companion ? ' " * It is very kind and considerate of him; the jolts and racing in which Ellen delights, would be the death of Miss P. I am sure it is good in him.' " ' Oh, very ! And yet is it not possible that she who tames the steed may tame the master ? ' " I admitted the noteworthiness of the fact, but trusted to the genius and address of my fair kins- woman for a successful issue of her sumnler cam- paign. Indeed, as the season waned, her star seemed to rise yet higher into the ascendant, while she re- laxed no whit of her zeal, but cut madder freaks, rode more daringly, was more than ever the constant companion of Frank, who, although he daily took a quiet drive with Miss P., seemed more than ever de- voted to her dashing rival. Everybody said Frank had proposed, was about to propose, or at least was in honor bound to propose, to my cousin. He was OUR friend's story. 101 set down as certain of the fair hands which so grace- fully reined in his fiery coursers. Only the widow shook her curls and Miss P. said nothing. "One bright morning in September, just before the close of the season, Ellen was sitting in the draw- ing room, surrounded as usual by a group of loung- ers — among whom were Mr. Yinton, a gentleman of singularly reserved and quiet manners, and said to be very timid — and a Miss Phoebe N., a young lady who, in spite of nose and eyes equally awry with her temper, was supposed to be about to seize the quiet gentleman, vi et armis. " * So Frank Leigh has taken us all by surprise, and married,' said some one, joining the group. " ' Married ! ' * No ? ' * You don't mean it. ' How ! ' * When ? ' * To whom ? ' exclaimed a dozen voices at once — the speakers, of course, fixing their eyes considerately upon Nell: except Miss N., who was enabled to turn only one of hers that way, but an- swered: " ' Oh, to that stupid Miss P. I saw them depart this morning.' " * I am sure you would not so speak, if you knew her,' said Ellen, indignantly. * On the contrary, she is a sweet, sensible, and witty girl.' " ' Rather too quiet for me,' mildly remarked the very quiet Mr. Vinton. " *I don't see why you should defend her,' snarled the amiable Phoebe to Ellen. ' She has carried off the prize we all assigned to you.' " ' To me ! ' exclaimed Ellen with real laughter 102 TAGHCOlSnC. and well affected surprise; *I am sure I am much obliged to you all. Frank is a noble fellow; but do you know, I should have an unconquerable aversion to being rivalled by dogs and horses ? — and of course ' Lightning' and ' Ney ' will hold equal place in Frank's heart with his wife.' " * But we,' began Miss N., with a malicious look — " * But me no biits ! ' exclaimed Ellen, interrupt- ing her; * I would sooner marry a cobbler than a horse-jockey, be he never so rich ! ' "Mr. Vinton looked radiantly happy; Miss Phoebe darkeningly the reverse, for it was her ' one woe of of life ' that her father had begun his ascent to wealth in the respectable calling of a cobbler. ^ Ellen saw where her shot hit, and then cast a penetrating glance at Vinton, in whose face she read more than she had suspected." Here the bachelor paused for breath. " And so," said I, " Miss Ellen lost her summer's work." "Not at all," he replied resuming; "you shall hear. Frank Leigh did not choose to fall in love with a woman who rivalled him in the accomplish- ments of which he was most proud. Even so sensi- ble a fellow as he had a spice of human vanity — quite enough to cause him to prefer Miss P., who admired his daring feats, to Nelly, who demanded that he should admire hers, and showed, moreover, to all the world that they were not beyond the attain- ment of a very slight-framed woman. Besides, he could too readily understand all that Nell felt, said, and did; it is not the near view which charms. 103 " Poor Vinton, however, looking on from a dis- tance, became every day more enamored; — the qualities which Ellen displayed proved so much the more fascinating from their very strangeness to his own nature. But it is in vain to philosophize about these matters; Vinton, like many a sensible fellow before and since, contrived to get hopelessly into the meshes before he thought of asking how; and the moment he saw the field clear, resolved to occupy the vacant lovership. Our light-hearted Ariadne I suspect was secretly piqued at her desertion; at all events, she gave the new lover a world of encouragement. Indeed, so rapidly did affairs advance, that the same afternoon Mr. Vinton, in a tremor of fear, made a formal pro- posal — and was at once accepted. Still more to his joy, Ellen consented — if Miss Phoebe is to be be- lieved, proposed, that the union should take place that same evening. So soon after the demolition of her hopes, Ellen reached their consummation, and was a * gentleman's wife.' " " A queer wooing," I said, when the bachelor had concluded. " Was the result happy ? " " Why, the chances were rather against it," he re- plied; " but fate often treats us better than we de- serve. The result, I believe, was happy for both." " And how about the widow and yourself ? " " Is not that the moon rising yonder ? " said the bachelor. VII. ON PERRY'S PEAK. Profit and pleasure, then, to mix with art, T'inform the judgment, nor offend the heart, Shall gain all votes. — Anatomie of Melmicholy. Of all pic-nics in which many people join, com- mend me to a scientific field-meeting. I do not compare that, or anything else, with hours like those we passed by the lakeside. The things are too diverse for comparison. Nor do I mean to say that, for once in a while, a merry masquerade in the glamour of the woods, or among the weird rocks of Icy Glen, has not unique charms. But a little science gives a zest always fresh, and a flavor always piquant, never cloying, to the enjoyment of large bodies of fairly well-educated excursionists. To go out with a multitude in the vague expecta- tion of a day's pleasure, even in the most romantic regions, often results in pure weariness of spirit. We are all true heirs of the old hunter races. Our joy is in pursuit; and the more definite the object of the chase, the keener the pleasure. That is what makes him who has an aim in life the happy man. That is what inspires alike the gold-hunter in the 106 sands of California and the planet-seeker among the stars of heaven. It is the old instinct inherited from Nimrod and his fellow huntsmen. Or shall we trace it, far back of these, to progenitors in the Dar- winian eons ? Surely my highly civilized cat shows indications of sharing it, when she leaves the rodent trophies of her chase untasted, to partake of my own meal. Clearly her enjoyment is more purely in the pursuit, than is his who kills the deer, and eats the venison. But the point from which I have wandered, is this; an excursion-pic-nic should, if we would gain the most and the highest enjoyment from it, have a more dis- tinct purpose than the mere passing of a few hours among pleasant or romantic scenery. I have already attempted to paint the delights of the genial, unrestrained social intercourse of a few friends in the freedom of the woods; but in a multi- tudinous picnic there is no place for that — every hindrance to it. The snobs who aifect it are mere kill- joys and mar-plots. The pic-nio excursion should have an aim common to all its members; and all should join in it. I will take it for granted that you would not desire that aim to be attendance upon a cock-fight, a pugilistic mill, a horse-race, or a Fourth of July celebration. A camp-meeting might do; but even if one were at hand, the spirit is not always willing, however it may be with the flesh: just re- versing the scriptural dilemma. The field-meeting, as conducted by the scientific associations of several New T ork and New England towns and cities, seems 106 TAGHCONIC. to meet the want precisely, furnishing interesting objects of pursuit to all intelligent persons, and, for the most part, eliminating all others from the pic-nic. This is a peculiarly American device, essentially differing from the lawn-meeting of an English village institute, as described by Tennyson in his introduc- tion to The Princess: And the difference well illus- trates that in the genius of the two nations. The associations under whose auspices our field-meetings are held do not seek a patron in any neighboring great or rich man; nor are their pic-nics designed to teach the rudiments, or exhibit the common wonders, of science to rustic villagers. The leaders are often leaders, as well, of scientific opinion, investigation and progress, while their associates are generally- qualified to aid intelligently in their labors. These field-meetings — designed partly as a relaxa- tion in the intervals of more severe study, and partly to keep alive a popular interest in science — are held in neighborhoods where there is a chance that new facts may be elicited, or which present features, in- timate acquaintance with which is in itself culture: which contain spots either picturesque, possessed of interesting historical associations, or inviting as a field for scientific research. Generally they combine all these attractions. The addresses which close and crown the day, are no dry rehearsals of book-lore, but vivacious descrip- tion and discussion of what the day has brought to light. There is of course no time for minute investi- gation or profound study, but clews are struck, to perry's peak. 107 be followed up afterwards, valuable collections are made; and, above all, "thought is quickened and awakes." Doubtless there is also a great deal of fun and flirtation not strictly scientific; nor yet, perhaps, wholly otherwise: ending sometimes, I am sure, in the illustration of an entirely natural science, to which so renowned a philosopher as Plato long ago gave his best thought, and a name which is too often taken in vain. But when were hundreds of people, mostly young men and women, ever thrown together in pic-nic, even of the Sunday-school variety, without something of that kind happening ? It was said of old: ** Who marks in church time others symmetry, Makes all their beauty, his deformity." And yet I have heard of rash young men, even in New England, " making eyes " across the most Puri- tanic of meeting-houses at blushing girls who, blush- ing*, made eyes back again: both utterly reckless of any resultant ugliness. But, so far from there being any precept against love-making at a scientific pic-nic, there is absolutely a formula provided, suited to the occasion: " I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me, Our mutual love is like the aflBnity That doth exist between two simple bodies: I am potassium to thy oxygen. — 'Tis little that the holy marriage vow Shall shortly make us one. Tliat unite Is, after all, but metaphysical. Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid, 108 TAGHCONIC. A living acid ; thou an alkali. Endowed with human sense, that brought together We might coalesce into one salt, One homogeneous crescile.* * ^t * * * An4 thus, our several natures sweetly blent We'd live and love together until death Should decompose this fleshly tertium quid, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Brown, And mine is Johnson, wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Brown ?" The scientific field-meeting being a pot-pourri of solid meats, rich juices and spicy relishes, you will readily believe is among the choicest of our Berk- shire pleasures; especially when it is enjoyed in such good fellowship as the famous Essex and Albany Insti- tute and the Troy Scientific Association can furnish. The meeting to which I am going to invite you, however, shall consist of only our own home asso- ciation, with a few pleasant friends from Stockb ridge, Le.iox, and Richmond: a sort of family dinner as it were. Perry's Peak is the highest summit of one of the largest mountain masses in the Taconic range, which, like many of the others, has several minor promi- nences. It rises one thousand and thirty feet from its base, which itself has an altitude of one thousand and fifty feet above the sea level. A large part of the upper surface of the mountain, including the peak, is bare of trees, and often of soil also; and as the neighboring hills do not press very close upon it, it affords some of the broadest, grandest, and most 109 picturesque views to be witnessed from any point in Berkshire, extending to Greylock on the north, Mt, Washington on the south, the Catskills on the west and the Hoosacks on the east. In the south the Taghconics proudly raise their noble dome against the sky, while nearer, for an in- terval, they present the appearance of pyramidal summits, the conventional form in which the ab- stract mountain range is represented, but which this rarely assumes to the eye, and never in reality. The far-off Catskills can sometimes hardly be told from the massive clouds which overhang and mingle with them. You will be told that, from the Peak, steamers can be seen passing on the Hudson : but, for that pur- pose, you may as well be provided with a good field- glass; and, unless the day be very favorable, with the eye of faith also. No doubt it is well to keep the latter aid to vision in constant practice : you will find it as needful at a field, as at a camp, meeting. But I see little good in straining the natural eye in an attempt to discern, doubtfully at best, objects of merely curious interest, when such a grand and beau- tiful world lies within its easy range. For example, here at the western foot of the moun- tain gleams Whiting's Pond, better known to " the wide- wide world" as Queechy Lake, one of' the prettiest lakelets among the hills. Upon the other side we look down upon Richmond Lake, another pretty sheet of water, and moreover a favorite of sportsmen. Eight miles away we see the spires of Pittsfield. Scattered all about are points of indi- 10 110 TAGHCOiflC. vidual interest; but it is the grand coup d"^ oeil^ which it affords' in several directions, that gives Perry's Peak its celebrity. Until recently one could easily and safely drive to the very topmost summit ; but a few years ago a sum- mer tempest sent raging torrents down the mountain- side,cutting huge ravines out of the road, and burying acres of meadow under barren gravel-heaps: an in- teresting study for one inquisitive as to the Berkshire drift system, but distressful to the industrious farmer and the lazy excursionist. There is still, however, a tolerable road for the greater part of the height, and you may accomplish the rest without much trouble by driving " across lots." For equestrians, there is no difficulty. As I once approached the top of the Peak it was crowned by a well mounted group whose graceful figures "darkly painted on the clear blue sky " made a striking picture which I should be sorry to think it impossible to repeat. Thus easy of ascent, and temptingly accessible from Lenox, Lebanon Springs and Pittsfield, it is no wonder that the Peak has long been a favorite mountain re- sort, although it has no such romantic interest as that with which Bryant has invested Monument Moun- tain, nor such poetic fame as Dr. Holmes, Mrs. Kemble and Thoreau, have conferred upon Greylock. It remains unsung, although a poet of no mean powers and with hereditary obligation to do it honor, was born almost at its foot. The reason possibly is that its charms are in the views from, not of, it. Its individuality, although decided, is not of the perry's PEAK; in character which at ouce strike either the eye or the imagination. The celebrity of the Peak is in the worki of science, and there it has hardly a rival among the hills of New England; its fame however, to confess the truth, being less due to any startling wonders of its own than to the puzzling geological phenomena of the region of which it is the conspicuous head and centre.* It was these, together with its superb over- views, which led our Scientific Association to select Perry's Peak as the theater for their celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alex- ander Yon Humboldt. Think of a celebration which extended from the crowded capitals of Europe to the lonely mountain tops of New England. When did kingly conqueror have glory like that ? The most uniformly delicious week in the Berk- shire year is the second in S^tember. " Then, if ever, come perfect days." And the day of our anni- versary — the fourteenth of the month, was absolutely perfect. The universal voice proclaimed it entitled to the biggest boulder of the purest quartz on Crystal Hill, if ever day deserved to be " marked with a white stone." By the courtesy of the occasion, the party which ascended the mountain, that bright September day, was presumed to be an intellectual one, but it required no presumption to pronounce it a glad company, and the merriment was no worse for the attempt to give it a learned flavor. The result, whether a failure or a success as to the original intention, was always 112 • TAGHCONIC. funny enough to provoke a laugh that was genuine, if the wit was not. Reaching the summit we assembled on a spot marked by the coast survey, as 20S9 feet above the sea level. All around us the bare ledges were scored with parallel groovings on broadly polished surfaces and bore other distinct marks of glacial action. Within a few rods were strewn those wonderful boulders whose story has puzzled so many learned heads. • And there, with the tumbled ridges of four grand mountain-chains in view, and the purest of sapphire skies over-hanging all, we found as fitting a spot as could be desired to commemorate the cen- tennial birthday of the great naturalist. The formal exercises of the celebration, if they could be called formal, were brief and simple. Pro- fessor William C. Richards — poet, orator and naturalist — displayed a superb photograph of Hum- boldt — taken at Berlin and approved by its subject — and, with a brief introduction, read an appropriate ode full of poetic thought and feeling. Then, after an inspection of the evidences of glacial action on the Peak, we betook ourselves to a cool and pleasant grove, in which lay one of the largest of the famous Richmond boulders: and there, with appetites of mountainous proportions, discussed our pic-nic dinner. While thus agreeably engaged, we learned that the Peak took its name from the Rev. David Perry, who owned lands here and elsewhere in the town of Richmond, in which he was the second ministei perry's peak. 113 of the gospel. Mr. Perry was rather a liberal as liberality went with the New England clergy of hie day: that is, although a Federalist, as it was natural for a Massachusetts Congregational minister to be, he kept on good terms with his clerical brother of the next town, who was a flaming Democrat; I have no doubt that he could, and did often, dine with the only Episcopalian rector in the county, without any conviction of a neglect of duty in failing to smother him in his own popish surplice. Nevertheless, I fancy it would have given the good old gentleman a strange sensation could he have dreamed that profane philosophers would come from the ends of the earth to find, in his own personal and ecclesiastical domain, evidence that the world was no more made in six days than Rome was built in one; and I do not know what would have happened to him had he foreseen that one of his own descendants, in no very distant generation, would give himself to conducting a news- paper so devoted to the fleeting pleasures of this life as the New York Home Journal. It is fortunate, after all, that even ministers are but short-sighted mortals. I dare say that, if the sainted pastor is now able to look down and see all that has come about so strangely, he regards it with the same equanimity which his successors in office manifest. The dinner over, we devoted ourselves to the more strictly scientific work of the day, first listening to the story of the boulders from the lips of their vene- rable discoverer. But, as I purpose to go into that story somewhat at large, I will make it the subject of another section. vm. THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. ** One must go back to an age before all history ; an age which cannot be measured by years or centuries; an age shrouded in mysteries and to be spoken of only in guesses. To assert anything positively concerning that age, or ages, would be to show the rashness of ignorance. * I think that I believe,' ' I have good reason to suspect,' * I seem to see,' are the strongest forms of speech which ought to be used, over a matter so vast and as yet so little elaborated." — Kingdey's Idylls. TEN MILLION TEARS AGO. It may have been only one million years ago that the events I am to speak of occurred; but I put it at ten to cover accidents. It may have been less, or perhaps more; the record is not so precise as could be wished if title to real estate depended upon it. But for our present purpose the * vague mea^surement of the unnumbered eons of geology gives a more ade- quate conception of their immensity than could be obtained from the most definite statement in num- bers, even if we knew it to be exact: the mind is so apt to fancy it has a full appreciation of such a statement whereas it really has not the slightest. Let me give you a general outline of the physical THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. 115 geography of our hills as described by Dr. Palfrey in his History of New England, on the authority of Professor Guyot. " Only moderate elevations present themselves along the greater part of the New England coast. Inland the great topographical feature is a double belt of highlands, separated almost to their bases by the deep and broad valley of the Con. necticut River, and running parallel to each other, from the south-south-west to the north-north-east,till, around the sources of that river, they unite 'in a wide space of table land, from which streams descend in diflPerent directions." " To regard these highlands, which form so important a feature in New England geography, as simply two ranges of hills, would not be to conceive of them aright. They are vast swells of land, of an average elevation of a thousand feet above the level of the sea, each with a width of forty or fifty miles, from which asfrom a base, mountains rise in chains or isolated groups to an altitude of several thousand feet more." •'In structure the two belts are unlike. The western system, which bears the general name of the Green Mountains, is composed of two principal chains [the Taghconics, or Taconics, on the east, the Hoosacs on the west], more or less continuous, covered, like several shorter ones which run along them, with the forests and herbage to which they owe their name. Between these, a longitudinal valley can be traced, though with some interruptions, from Connecticut to Northern Vermont. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, it is marked by the Housatonic [and the Hoosack] ; in Vermont by the rich basins which hold the villages of Bennington, Manchester and Rutland, and farther on by valleys of less note. * * * " The mountains have a regular increase from south to north. From a height of less than a thousand feet in Con- necticut, they rise to an average of twenty-five hundred feet in Massachusetts, where the majestic Qfeylock, isolated be- tween the two chains, lifts its head to the stature of thirty-five hundred feet. In Vermont, Equinox and Stratton Mountains 116 TAGHCONIC. near Manchester are thirty-Be ven hundred feet ; Killington Peak, near Rutland, rises forty-two hundred feet ; Mansfield Mountain, at the northern extremity, overtops the rest of the Green-Mountain range with an altitude of forty-four hundred feet. " The rise of the valley is less regular. In Connecticut its bottom is from five hundred to seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. In Southern Berkshire it is eight hundred feet ; it rises thence two hundred feet to Pittsfield, and one hundred more to the foot of Greylock ; whence it declines to the bed of the Housa tonic in one direction and to an average height of little more than five hundred feet in Vermont on the other. Thus it is in Berkshire county that the western swell presents, if not the most elevated peaks, yet the most compact and elevated structure." Besides the shorter ranges, mentioned by Dr. Palfrey as lying along the Taconics and Hoosacs, the Berkshire valley is everywhere broken by spurs from the main chains and by hills, often of magnitude. The mass of up-tumblings and down-pullings which meets the eye that looks down upon it from some elevated point, is a marvel and a joy to the geologist. We have locally been accustomed to regard the un- derlying rocks — chiefly mica schists of different grades, crystaline limestones, quartzite and green- stone — as belonging to the very earliest formations. Thirty or forty years ago. Professor Emmons maintained a hard fight against cruel odds, to es- tablish that theory, and we fancied his victory com- plete. But now comes a newer, and very high, au- thority, Professor Dana, and relying upon the evidence of certain Yermont fossils, denies to our rocks any THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. 117 antiquity greater than the earliest period of the older Silurian epoch; not much, if at all, more than a hun- dred million years: and that likely to be fearfully cut down if certain still later theorists upon the ages prevail. I suppose I shall be told that we must submit to be thus deposed from our high estate and ranked among comparative parvenues; mere rocks of the second order. But "On wliat compulsion must we? Tell me that." The newest geologist is only infallible, while he is the newest ; an arrant brevity. Kever, within all the borders of Berkshire, in schist or quartz, in marble or greenstone, in dyke or bed-rock, ice-ground gravel or unburied boulder, was there ever found the slightest trace of organic forms, animal or vegetable: and shall our pure azoic rocks be robbed of their virgin fame because the Rev. Augustus Wing has detected the slip of a frail distant relative up in Vermont, a hundred million years ago ? Worse accidents than til at happen in the most primitive families. To be sure, our rocks have been greatly meta niorphosed, and there is indisjiutable evidence of violent heat in their impressible youth; but does thai ])rove that their metamorphoses were like Ovid's : My Berkshire blood is up, and, if I were younger, ] would myself ride a geological tilt in their defense as it is, I summon some youthful champion to put ol his armor of proof, and try a joust ^ith this renownecl knight of the hammer. Let him show that oar old mountain ridges are the very "bones of time;" not 118 TAGHCONIC. fossil bones by any means, but the veritable rock- ribs of mother earth. But, until such champion shall appear, we will, for the sake of peace, and in sub- mission to the geologic ruler of the hour, admit that we are only Silurians. It might have been worse; for, after all, the Welsh is a good old stock. At any rate, the rocks are there in very palpable mountains. Azoic or Silurian as you please; and they are covered far up their sides, if not to their very summits, by immense deposits of drift, composed of rounded and rolled fragments of all sizes from the huge boulder to the finest sand. The same drift covers the valley ; stones of all sizes and of every variety which could be torn from the neighboring hills, being jumbled together in utter confusion as to size, the largest often being at the top; as you may see finely exemplified on Jubilee Hill in Pitts- field and elsewhere. But, with regard to the pre- vailing rocks which compose it, the position in which they lie, and in other particulars, you will find the drift of different localities marked by distinct indi- vidual characteristics. Even in regard to size, con- fusion is not absolutely universal : you will find many gravel beds beautifully strati^.ed in this respect: but, as compared with the great mass of drift, these are exceptional. These queerly tumbled beds and piles of drift afford an altogether curious study; and one in which there are few adepts. I commend it to you as a summer recreation on the whole preferable to trouting; although, if you persist in gratifying your THE EICHMOXD BOULDER TRAINS. 119 murderous propensities, you may pleasantly com- bine the two. Scattered all over this loose, stony formation, which clothes the rocks of hill and valley as muscles clothe bones, is still another deposit of boulders, generally of considerable size and often very large. They are easily distinguished from the underlying drift; not being, like it, either buried, smoothed or rounded, but exposed, rough and angular, except when sometimes, their upper surface is worn to a rude dome shape. Neither the boulders or the drift are at all peculiar to Berkshire. Similar formations cover a large portion of the Northern hemisphere. The phenomenon which has drawn hither so many eminent geologists is the occasional arrangement of the exposed boulders in well-defined trains; which is exceptional, if not unique, so far as observations have been made and published. These remarkable trains were discovered, about the year 1840, by Dr. Stephen Reed, who, as Pre- sident of our Scientific Association, led our field- meeting on Perry's Peak. When the feast was over, that day, and we had fraternized with our genial and hospitable Richmond hosts, we listened to local story, told by venerable speakers from Lenox and Stockbridge, concerning Parson Perry, the second minister, and his parishioner, Col. Rossiter, who, as second in command of the Berkshire militia at the Battle of Bennington, did good service; recalling his men from plundering to fighting, and thereby saving 120 TAGHCONIC. the day which was well nigh lost after it had been once won. When we had thus done due honor to some of the old-time local worthies, our venerable president — who might well have served the most fastidious painter as a model for " an old geologist " — told the story of his discovery, illustrating his method very simply. " If," said he " you should see a cart loaded with apples of a peculiar variety, which, dropping from a leaky tail-board, were strewn all the way back to a certain orchard which alone bore that kind of fruit, you would have no difficulty in deter- mining where that apple train came from." By a similar process it is easy to trace the princi- pal, and most perfect, of the Richmond Boulder Trains to its source; since it is an exceedingly well defined and nearly continuous succession of large angular masses of a peculiar chloritic schist, wholly unlike the general bed-rocks of the vicinity, and also differing totally from most of the neighboring boulders. Following up this train. Dr. Reed found it termi- nate, three miles north-west of the Richmond meet- ing-house, on the summit of Fry's Hill, the highest, and almost the central point of the Canaan Mountains in Columbia county, N. Y. ; one of the short ranges which run along the Taconics. The top of this hill is composed of a chloritic schist, precisely like that of the boulders, and unlike any other bed-rock in all that region. Of course no doubt remained of the source of that train, and its discoverer, retracing his THE EICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. 121 steps, continued his investigations until he had followed it in the opposite direction across the towns of Richmond, Lenox and Lee, some ten or twelve miles in all. He believed that it reached still further, and perhaps even to Connecticut. I think he after- wards obtained some evidence that this supposition was correct, but of how conclusive a nature I cannot say. Subsequently he found another train of the chloritic schist, originating, like the first, on the Canaan Mountains, and five of limestone derived from the Taconic range; but none so complete as the first. In 1842, Dr. Reed published an account of his discovery in the "Lenox Farmer," predicting for the boulders a host of distinguished visitors and a wide fame; a prophecy which has been amply veri- fied; for during his life he piloted among them, Dr. Birney of Boston, Professors Chester Dewey, Hitchcock, Hosford, Hall and the Brothers Rogers, Sir Charles Lyell, Count Pourtales, and Professor De Saurre. Dr. Reed, in his first paper at least, contented himself with simply describing the boulder train. The apple-cart by which it was strewn had long disappeared, and he did not attempt to restore it from his imaginings, doubtless knowing full well that, if he did, the next geologist who came along would make it his first business to upset it. Some of his visitors, however, were not so discreet, and the result has been a dozen or more learned 11 122 TAGHCONIC. essays, ot which the most interesting are those of Sir Charles Lyell and Rev. John B. Perry. Lyell in his " Antiquity of Man," gives a spirited account of his visit and a graphic description of the rocks, making some very fascinating reading. His . theory, to use the condensation of another, is that " at the time of the drift period, the highest points of the Canaan, Richmond and Lenox ranges formed chains of islands in an ocean; and that the gaps in the Richmond an*d Lenox ranges were straits through which floated ice-bergs bearing, the chloritic blocks from the exposed parts of the Canaan range, and dropping them in their present positions." So strongly -did this notion impress itself upon Sir Charles, that he illustrated his work with a view of the islands, and the rock-laden ice-floes — not ice- bergs — floating between them. He has also given views of some of the larger boulders, and a diagram of the seven trains. Mr. Perry " divides the boulders which rest upon the surface of the drift into two classes, according as they are rounded or angular: those which make up the trains being rounded, while the angular are distributed without definite arrangement. He con- siders that the trains owe their formation to the move- ment of the general ice-mass which rested upon the region during the glacial period; the boulders, which are found in trains; and which he believes to be rounded [dome-topped ? ] having been torn from pro- minent peaks, and forced along under the ice-sheet, while the scattered ones were transported to their THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. l--i present position much later, when the ice-mass had become so much reduced in thickness that the peaks in question projected above the surface, so that masses of rock could be lodged upon the ice as well as dragged along under it. Since Dr. Reed's death, which occurred in 1SV6, Mr. E. R. Benton, of Boston has made an exhaustive survey of the locality of the boulders and a thorough study of their phenomena, and has published the result in a pamphlet of forty-two pages, forming Kumber Three of the Fifth Volume of the Bulletin of the Harvard College Museum of Comparative zoology. Odd, is it not, that of the three best treatises upon these rocks — which, however we may class them, show not the slightest vestige of animal or vegetable life — one should be found in a work upon the antiquity of man, and another in a bulletin of zoology ? Is then the absence of life the com- plement of its presence, as well before as after its existence upon this earth ? But, wherever we may find Mr. Benton's paper, let us be thankful for it: for it is the most complete, satisfactory and philosophical essay upon its subject, which we have, or are likely to have, unless he him- self pursues it further. Having given a concise resume of the statements and opinions of his predecessors, Mr. Benton pro- ceeds to a geological and topographical description of the Boulder Region, which is illustrated by maps showing the contours of the hills, their bed rocks and 124 TAGHCONIC. the course of the trains. I condense his description of the principal and best defined train. The crest of Fry's Hill in the town of Canaan, has an elevation of six hundred and twenty feet above the track of the Boston and Albany railroad in Rich- mond, which is one thousand and fifty feet above the level of the sea. This crest, extending one hundred and fifty feet down from its summit, is composed of a fine-grained foliaceous mica chloritic schist, very tough and of a green color. It is identical with the boulders of the main train, is of narrow extent here, and has been found, in place, in only one other locality on the range. To its limited extent Mr. Benton attri- butes the distinctness of the train, whose width varies from two hundred and fifty to five hundred feet; the difference being caused apparently by the varying contours of the hills in its path. From the summit of Fry's Hill the train descends in a south 54° east direction; then bends gradually to the southward till, at the base of the range, it has a south 27° east direction. Thence it extends just south of the North Family of the Shakers, and up the face and along the crest of a westerly spur of the Richmond range, called Merriman's Mount, to the crest of the western branch of the range. In so doing it gradually changes its direction, to south 68° east; and so crosses the Haskell valley and begins the descent of the Richmond range. In making this descent, it bends considerably to the south, crossing the main road in Richmond two miles north of the railroad station, till it attains a THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. 125 Bouth 25^ east direction, where it crosses the railroad. From the railroad the train continues on across the Richmond valley, but curves to the eastward as it mounts the western slope of the Lenox range crosses its two parallel ridges and descends into the Lenox and Stockbridge valley, where its direction is south 50° east. A half a mile south-east of Mr. Luther Butler's house, near the Lenox and Stock- bridge line, the train seems to lose its continuous character; the chloritic schist boulders in the same line, to the south-east, being few, small, and widely separated. Far the largest boulders of the train, averaging fifteen feet in length — are found on the eastern slope of the Canaan range; two of them measuring ninety and one hundred and twenty-five feet in cir- cumference respectively, and being about thirty feet in hight. On the western slope of this range there are no chloritic schist boulders. Near the Lebanon Shakers they average twelve feet in length; one having a circumference of seventy-five feet. Lyell mentions two with circumferences of seventy and one hundred and twenty feet respectively, and a hight of twenty feet above the soil, lying two miles north of Richmond station. Thence there is a con- stant diminution in size until, in the Lenox and Stockbridge valley, the average length does not ex- veed two feet. By the Richmond range, Mr. Benton means that portion of the Taconic Mountains which lies in Richmond and the adjoining town of Canaan on the 126 lAGHCONIC. west; and is separated by a narrow valley from the Canaan or Columbia range. Fry's Hill is two and lialf miles south of Douglas Knob, the picturesque elevation which almost overhangs Columbia Hall, and forms the northern terminus of the range. The Lenox range is a spur thrown off by the Taconics at Egremont, which, broken by the Williams River at West Stockbridge, extends north=eastward to Pittsfield, where it terminates in South Mountain and Melville Hill. Its domes and peaks form some of the most striking and beautiful features in the views, looking north from the Lenox, and south from the Pittsfield valley; while its southern extension, reaching to Stockbridge, is filled with the most de- licious scenery. But to return to the Boulder trains; Mr. Benton examined three others, all less continuous and com- posed of smaller blocks than the first; but he failed to find the chloritic schists, in place, upon the points in the Canaan range to which they led, and this, as well as the imperfection in the trains, he attributed to the early exhaustion of the knobs of this rock which formerly crested this ridge at in- tervals, but were of inferior thickness to that on the summit of Fry's Hill. He speaks generally of certain other curious but promiscuously scattered boulders, and of limestone trains; but appears to have been discouraged as to the latter by the inaccuracies of previous writers. All the three ranges mentioned exhibit marks of ghicial action wherever their beds are exposed; but THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. 127 none of them send out trains of boulders except the Canaan, as few others anywhere do. The explana- tion is found in the sharpness and narrow limits of Fry's Hill, and of the other, now obliterated, knobs of chloritic schist, in which the trains, undoubtedly had their origin. In accountiiig for the transportation of the boul- ders to the positions in wh'ch they are now found, Mr. Benton discards Lyell's theory of floating ice, since it implies that, during the period in which they were deposited, the level of the ocean stood above the crest of the Canaan range, or sixteen hundred and fifty feet higher than it now does. Other writers have shown that the same line of reasoning which leads to Lyell's conclusions would require a depression of parts of the glaciated region to a depth of five thousand feet below their present level: a depression which all the evidence indicates did not exist. Mr. Benton's own solution of the problem is based upon the fact, now generally admitted by geologists, that in the Post-Pliocene age, this region, in common with a large part of the northern hemisphere, was covered with an ice-sheet several thousand feet thick, which had a slow motion in this district from the north-west to the south-east. But he shows that the boulders could not have rested, and been borne along, upon the upper sur- face of this ice-sheet; since that pre-supposes cliffs upon the Canaan range which towered above that surface, whereas an ice-sheet which could move 128 TAGHCONIC. across valleys six hundred feet deep, without being materially deflected from its course, must have covered the highest land to the depth of many hun- dred feet. Nor could the boulders have been dragged along under the ice-mass, without leaving marks of abrasion of which none are to be seen. It is probable, he thinks, that the boulders were torn from their original bed by the ice sheet, and became imbedded in its mass instead of being dragged along under it. The sharpness of the knob called Fry's Hill favors this supposition, since boulders torn from its upper part would be at least one hundred feet above the lower surface of the ice along the neighboring parts of the crest; and the mass, closing again as soon as it had passed the sharp knob, would hold many of them firmly in its grasp, without al- lowing them to reach the rocks below, until the ice- sheet had ceased its grinding march and was in process of dissolution. Nevertheless, under the in- cessant influence of gravity, the imbedded fragments would be constantly working their way downward, and many of them, finally reaching the under surface, would be ground up by the crunching, superincum- bent, moving mass; and the farther from the source, the greater would be the amount of material lost to the trains, and added to the underlying gravel beds. In condensing a portion of Mr. Benton's essay, I have occasionally departed from the order of arrange- ment pursued by him, and have interpolated, now and then, matter of my own, but I believe that I have given correctly the facts and theories presented by THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS. 129 him, so far as I have attempted to give them at all; often using his own language. But he enters much more into detail than it would be possible or proper for me to do here, and touches upon some allied topics to which I have not even alluded. His pamphlet should be in the hands of every student of the boulder phenomena, or of the superficial geology of this locality. The boulder and drift deposits in the valley at the base of the Taconics, north of Richmond, offer a fresh and interesting field of investigation. At some points there are indications of arrangement in trains; but, whether or not if followed up those in- dications should lead to discoveries of that character, they could not fail of valuable and curious results. Some of the local deposits of boulders are strikingly suggestive. I have already spoken of the Balanced Rock group. In the romantic town of New Marlboro', next east of Great Ban'ington, is another rocking stone, quite as firmly based, and with a more pro- nounced and easy oscillation. Between Onota street and Lake Onota, in Pittsfield, some most singular boulders are strewn. One variety is composed of what appears upon the surface to be a net work, but in reality is a honey comb, of quartz cells filled with a hard schist. Sometimes cells, which were probably filled with a softer rock, are empty, leavmg a skeleton of quartz walls. Another variety of soft rock encloses rounded pebbles sometimes six or eight inches long. I think some summer or autumn days could be pleasantly passed in tracing these 130 TAGHCONIC. queer erratics to their source, and trying to imagine how they were made; and when; and why. I fear I may have wearied some of you by dwell- ing so long upon a theme in which you perhaps take small interest. But, when you think of it, is it not after all a wondrous thing ? As strange as any martel of the genii and, at the same time, if we can rightly read it, telling a tale as true as Holy Writ. If Sir Thomas Browne could properly call the moor-logs and fir trees found under ground in many parts of England, "the undated ruins of winds, floods and earthquakes," of what are these Berkshire boulders the ruins; and where is their date recorded? And now, one word more; that I may have the credit of, for once, closing a story with a sound moral lesson. The study of these rocks will aid you in the clear and conscious recognition of a truth, which I dare say you know already, but perhaps only in a dreamy, unthinking way. It is this, that in those immeasurable ages, matter was composed of the same elements and obeyed implicitly the same laws, which at this moment compose and govern it, both on this little spot of earth and in the illimitable heavens. Whether there were intelligent eyes to watch them or not, rising and setting suns measured the days; and, if not here, by reason of cold, yet at our anti- podes, the procession of the Seasons marked the coming and the going of the year. For as yet we have only begun to approach that epoch, when science and revelation alike require us to believe that the earth was without form a^nd void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. IX. THE WIZARD'S GLEN. Eight well I wote, most miglity soveraine, That all this famous antique historie Of some the abundance of an ydle braine Will judged be, and painted forgerie. Rather than matter of just memorie. Fairie Queene. A four miles' drive from our \nllage brings the ex- cursionist to a deep gorge, now called the " Gulf," but known in the earlier and less sceptical days of the settlement as the "Wizard's Glen." It is the wildest scene in our immediate neighborhood. A narrow valley is enclosed by steep hills, covered far up their sides with the huge rectangular flint rocks which mark this whole mountain range. You see them scattered everywhere, from Greylock to Tagh- conic; but nowhere else — unless, perhaps, at Icy Glen or Monument Mountain — piled up in such magnificent and chaotic profusion. It is as though an angry Jove had here thrown down some impious wall of the Heaven-defying Titans. Block lies heaped upon block, squared and bevelled, as if by more than mortal art; for of such adamantine hardness are they that never hand nor implement of man could carve them into symmetry. 132 TAGHCONIC. In their desolation they seemed charmed to ever- lasting changelessness; storm and sunshine leave fe^v traces upon them; the trickling stream wears no channel in their obdurate surface; only a falling thunderbolt sometimes splinters an uplifted crag, and marks its course by a scar of more livid whiteness. No flower springs from, no creeping plant clings to, them for support, save when the rare Herb Robert would fain cheer them with his tiny blossom; or some starveling lichen strives to shroud the livid ghastliness of their hues. It is a stern-featured place; and yet of a warm summer afternoon, one — no, not one, it is too in- tensely sombre for that — but a party can pass a merry hour there, in the cool depths of the ravine. There are some books too, written in a spirit akin to the fantastic and demoniac grandeur of the place, which can be read there with a double zest. Perched in the angle of a cleft boulder, I once keenly en- joyed some scenes in "Faust." "Manfred" would not be out of place there, nor would some parts of " Festus." But the best is, to mark how the most humanly merry laughter and the gentlest of gentle voices catch a fiendish echo from the rocky hollows. There is diablerie in the very air; the fairest form I ever knew, as it rose from behind one of those enchanted rocks, looked weird as Lilith, the first wife of Adam. He- cate herself could not have emerged from Hades with half the infernal grace and beauty; I am sure the place is bewitched. 133 Tradition indeed says that, before the decay of the native tribes — of whom a scanty remnant were found by the white man in the valley of the Housa- tonic — this used to be a favorite haunt of the Indian priests, or wizards. Here, it was said, they wrought their hellish incantations, and with horrible rites offered up human sacrifices to Ho-bo-mo-ko, the Spirit of Evil. One broad, square rock, which chanced to stand alone in the midst of a conveniently clear space, had the credit of being the Devil's altar- stone. Some crimson stains marked its upper surface, upon which the earlier settlers could not look with- out a shudder. They were believed to come from the blood of frequent victims — although, now-a- days, a sceptic with no analysis at all would find little difficulty in resolving them into " traces of iron ore." For my part, until the analysis is made, I hold fast to the older and better opinion of those who believed that around this ensanguined shrine a spectral crew of savage wizards nightly reenacted the revolting orgies of the past. I met, not long since, an old man of ninety winters — perhaps the last believer in their super- stitions. He had heard the story of the shadowy- sacrifices from an eye-witness, and related it with a credulous simplicity very difficult to gainsay. Not far from the year 17V0 (as he said), one John Chamberlain, a brave man and a mighty hunter, of Ashuelot (now Dalton), at the close of a hard day's chase, overtook and slew a deer, somewhere within 12 134 TAGHCONIC. the Wizard's Glen. While he was dressing his quarry, a terrific storm of thunder, lightning, and hail arose — as Chamberlain averred, with superna- tural celerity, as such often seem to do among the mountains. A thunder-storm, even in the ordinary course of nature, is not just the thing to be coveted in this place, by the hardiest deer-slayer; but come what will deer-slayers -must make the best of it. Seeking out, therefore, a spot where the rocks were piled one upon another, with cavernous recesses that formed a sort of natural caravansary beneath, he drew his deer under one boulder and ensconced him- self snugly under the shelter of another. Thus protected, he betook himself to such slum- bers as he might get, which turned out to be not the most peaceful. The thunder crashed, the lightning glared and the wind howled in a manner which seemed to our poor John altogether demoniacal. Sleep, in such a hurly-burly of the elements, was out of the question ; so, raising himself up, he looked out among the rocks, as he could very well do by the aid of the scarcely intermittent- lightning. You may be sure that, with all his courage, our hunter was not quite pleased to find himself in full view of tUe Devil's altar-stone. It was an ugly pre- dicament, to say the least of it; but there was no help in the case, and he had only to make the best he could of this also: which turned out to be bad enough again. His eyes once fixed upon it, the haunted spot kept them riveted by a terrible fascina- tion, while Chamberlain reflected upon his position 135 in a state of mind which was doubtless far enough from that of philosophic calmness. Very soon, however, his reflections were inter- rupted b^f a wilder rush of the storm, and a yet broader and more vivid flash of lightnings which illumined the whole valley and revealed the horned Devil himself, seated upon a broken crag and clothed in all the recognized paraphernalia of his royalty. Chamberlain thought him a very Indiany-looking devil indeed, which rather pleased him afterwards to tell, for he was no lover of the Indian race. This was aj^parently a gala night with Satan, although none of the guests were yet arrived. He was not now going to battle or to work, but rather to hold a royal drawing-room, by way of enjoying himself and receiving homage. His sable majesty has been too long intimate with earthly majesties and their courts, not to recognize the value of a becoming stateliness on the part of those who rule states, whether their capitals be here or below: tlieir subjects civilized or savage. He sat, therefore, on this occasion enthroned with a very commanding and royal grace, while the arrowy lightnings shot in circles around his head — very much, I judge, as you may have seen the swallows dart and soar of a sum- mer evening, around an old church steeple. His Majesty had not long to wait for his loving lieo:es, for suddenly from the darkness a huge, gaunt-framed wizard leaped out and mounted the altar-stone. If Chamberlain has not painted him blacker than he deserves, this high priest of Satan 136 TAGHCONIC. was a most villainous-looking rascal. His raw- boned and ghastly visage was painted in most blood- thirsty ugliness; scalps, dri]3ping with fresh blood, hung around, his body in festoons; on his own scul], by way of scalp lock, burned a lambent blue flame; his distended veins shone through the bright copper- colored skin as if they were filled with molten fire for blood — and, as for his eyes, they glowed with a fiercer light than those of the arch-fiend himself; whence Chamberlain maintained that an Indian priest was at least one degree more devilish than the Devil himself. The present was evidently a very potent magi- cian, for at his call a throng of ghastly and horrible phantoms came pouring in from every nook and cranny of the valley — each with a shadowy toma- hawk and. a torch, which did not burn with the honest and ruddy glare of pitch-pine, but with a blue color ard sulphurous odor, that revealed un- mistakably at what fire they had been lighted. Every ghost, as he came, made a profound obeis- ance to the rock-throned Satan, and then took his place in the circle around the altar-stone. By and bye, the chief priest set up a wild, howling cnani, and away went the whole rabble rout, yelling and rushing round the altar in a mad, galloping sort of dance, in which they lifted their feet all the while, as if treading upon burning coals or red-hot iron — a step w?iich is only learned in the dancing-schools down below. Many more such diabolical antics they cut, which, as they would neither be profitable 137 by way of example or warning, it does not matter to tell At last they paused, and Chamberlain thought it about time for them to take themselves off. But they were far enough from that: on the contrary, two barbarous looking phantoms — who might in life have been familiars to a savage inquisition — pre- sented themselves, leading between them a beautiful Indian maiden, robed only in her own long black hair. At another moment the beholder might have admired her graceful proportions and regular fea- tures — as he did when he afterwards remembered them — but now his senses were too much absorbed by horror. Not a word the poor girl spoke, but, stupified and silent, looked around from one unrelent- ing face to another, as if at a loss to comprehend what it all meant. Alas ! she soon knew; for one of the familiars, seizing her rudely around the waist, placed her upon the altar-stone before the priest. Then she shrieked — so wildly that the hunter de- clared the echo never ceased ringing in his ears to ^is dying day; — what part she had to perform there was no longer doubtful. But she shrieked not again nor spoke — only looked up into the fiery eyes of the priest so piteously that it seemed his heart should have melted, had it been formed even of Hint like the stone on which he stood; but it had been hardened in more infernal fires. So he took up his demoniac howl again, and went capering madly around the maiden. Then, suddenly pausing before her, he raised his hatchet and the 138 TAGHCONIC. whole phantom circle gathered closer around him, as if to gloat more nearly over their victim's pangs. It seemed the sacrifice was about to be consummated; but as the weapon was raised, the maiden's eyes (averted from it) met those of Chamberlain. The kind-hearted hunter, in whom compassion had over- come fear, could no longer restrain himself; so, taking out his Bible, he 2:>ronounced thegreatNAME — and witli a terrific crash of the elements the whole scene vanished, leaving him in impenetrable dark- ness — for although the lightnings ceased, as if they had accompanied th'eir master in his flight, yet the rain fell faster than ever. When the morning came, Chamberlain would have taken it all for a dream, for, exhausted with fatigue and excitement, he had fallen into a deep sleep; but he found that the wizards, unable to harm him, while protected by the holy volume, had revenged them- selves by stealing his deer, and perhaps givmg it to their familiars, the bears — for there were bears in those days — so that there can be no manner of doubt as to the truth and accuracy of Chamberlain's story. There is many another legend of this haunted dell; as for this, I hope you place the same implicit confi- dence in it which my old informant did. Passing through the gorge very late, one piercing cold winter night, the place looked very weird to me. The frozen air was still as death; the white moonlight was reflected from the snow, as I fancied with more of pallor than of brightness, and I heard a shriek which I tried to believe came from the wizard's glen. 139 maiden victim. But it may have been the scream of some far-off locomotive. Confound those "re- sonant steam eagles ! " — there's never a shriek, from Cape Cod to the Taghconics — though with the ghostliest ring to it — but they get the credit. X. UNDIIsrE'S GLEN. Page — Apelles, you must come away quickly, with the picture. The king thinketb, now you have painted it you play with it. Apelles. — If I would play with pictures I have enough at home. Page. — None perhaps you love so well. Apelles. — It may be I have painted none so well. [Exit page.] * * * Campasne, I have painted thee in my heart ; painted I nay, contrary to my art, imprinted, and that in such deep characters that nothing can rase it out, unless it rub my heart out. — Alexander and Campasne. It had been a week of rare sultriness with us — the fierce dying flicker of summer's life-flame. The maple leaves had lost the last remnant of their glossy fresh- ness; the cattle stood cooling themselves under the willow trees in the still pools of the river; long ago the birds had ceased their songs and fled into the deeper recesses of the woods; we, human idlers, lay listlessly under the shade of the nearer groves in dreamy reveries, or feeble speculations upon the destiny of some little cloud which might chance to speck the horizon — the forlorn-hope of* a thunder- shower. At evening we broached the mildest possible undhhe's glen. 141 topics of conversation. The nearest app»'oacli we made to vigorous effort was when a necessity aros>e for throwing cold water upon any chance theme or project which might heat the blood. On the most fiery day of that fiery seven, came a friend who, then of all times, must climb to Wash- ington Mountain. No flaming sword of the elements could fright him from his purpose, and all the chivalry of friendship forbade me to leave him to the chances of being roasted, alive and alone, on some sun-burnt exposure of quartzite: a very possible fate for him who in his scientific ardor lingers too long on those natural gridirons. My friend had passed the livelong summer in New York, and minded our mountain heats no more than Monsieur Chaubert did a furnace only heated three times, instead of seven. Washington Mountain is the higher portion of that part of the Hoosac range which lies in the town of Washington, and is to be carefully distinguished from Mount Washington, the grand mass of Taconic hills in the south-western corner of the county. The point which we were to visit, was the shore of a pretty and lonely mountain lake, which lies seven miles east of Pittsfield and seven hundred feet above it, or seven- teen hundred above the sea-level. The bed-rock here is pure quartz, which is a good thing for the Pittsfield people, who get their luxurious abundance of pure water from the lake, and from mountain streams which flow over the same insoluble formation. It takes here the form of granular quartz — which mineralogists, absurdly to 'my thinking, nickname 142 TAGHCONIC. quartzite. When distintegrated, naturally or arti- ficially, it becomes the silicious sand of the glass manufacture. A very valuable bed of this sand lies on the eastern shore of the lake: of which, more by and bye. I mention it now, merely to confess that it was some speculative interest in the money-value of its contents, and not any fanatical devotion to mountain scenery which led us to undertake that j)ilgrimage which threatened to'be so like that from Morocco to Mecca: what ever of a romantic character finally attached itself to the excursion, was purely subsidiary. But in Berkshire, if there is any sus- ceptibility to the romantic in you, you can hardly go to market for a pig without its betraying itself. Thinking to escape the more violent heat, we set out at a very early hour, but the air was already in- tensely sultry, and, still worse, was filled with a fine white dust, that completely penetrated eyes, nose, and mouth. We could neither see, breathe, nor speak, with comfort; and the gritty particles between our teeth sent a nervous shudder through the whole frame. As we ascended the mountain we came upon a tine breeze which never fails there, and which at the same time aggravated the plague of the dust, and inspired us with vigor to devise and execute a remedy. Ever and anon, by the road-side, appeared glimpses of a deep, rocky gorge. Up this, L. proposed to ascend the mountain by a path familiar to him, and, accordingly, sending our horse forward by a willing youth — who, I rather doubtfully hope, did not seize irtfDINE's GLEN. 143 this rare opportunity to violate the precepts of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals — we plunged down a steep descent, thick beset with brambles. At the bottom, a little brook came tumbling and purling down the hill, and, yielding to its suggestions, we indulged in a series of luscious ablutions. None but those who have experienced the like, can know the thrilling vigor and elasticity which penetrated us with the cool mountain air when the burning and inflammatory dust was once re- moved from the pores. Filled with new life, we push-ed eagerly up the brook, now clambering over huge angular blocks of flint rock, now sauntering along smooth patches of green sward, and anon pushing our way through a thorny hedge of blackberry bushes, hanging full of the ripest fruit. Still L. led on, till we came to a little level spot of green sward, around which the brook swept in a graceful curve, while a thick leaved maple overhung it. We were here shut out from all sight of human habitation. The only traces of man's ravages were the weather-beaten stumps, which stood, ghastly memorials of his parricidal war with nature, like the bleached sculls which the ploughman turns up on an ancient battle-field. The precipitous hills, on either side, were yet shaggy, although not as of old, with the maple, the beech, the fir, and the hemlock. Just up the gorge, the streamlet leaped down a black ledge in a silver white column; while, beyond, the glen was dark with nar- rowing cliffs and over-hanging trees. Bravely, but 144 TAGHCONIC. in vain, the gorgeous sunshine darted its arrowy rays into tliat Thermopylae of gloom. L. flung himself at full length beneath the maple, and I was glad to follow his ex-ample. " Do you know," he said, " this is Undine's Glen ? Shall I tell you the story of how it got its foreign name ? " One day in June, some ten years ago, there came to the village hotel in Pittsfield two ladies; the one, Miss Helen Y., an heiress, and what was more, a spirited, brilliant, and natural girl. The other was her maiden aunt, Miss M., neither young nor pretty, yet a little romantic and not a little stiff in her manners. Miss M. held moreover the responsible office of guardian to her niece, which that young lady took the best care should be anything but a. sinecure. Riding, walking, and reading, the lone dames whiled away a week or two; when, provokingly enough, just as the last page of their last light read- ing was cut, there came a rainy, dreary day, as such days will come, even in June. At such desperate junctures, solid literature and re-readings, are not to be thought of; so recourse was had to the land- lord. That functionary was anxious to serve his fair guests, but unfortunately his shelves were but meagerly filled. Suddenly his face brightened with a new idea. Among his boarders was one Dr. M., who, to enliven his hours in the country, had brought with him from New York a curious library. This gentleman was summoned, and made his appear- ance — a very personable young gentleman, and a 145 clever. The wants of the ladies were made known to him, and he invited them to examine his library for themselves, and some pictures which he prized, as well. Helen was delighted, although she did not exactly say so then; Miss M. hesitated, with some secret misgivings, but finally, overcome by the fiend ennui, and the frank bearing of M., she, courteously enough, accepted the invitation. Evening was upon them before they had completed the survey; for, besides his paintings by other artists, M. modestly displayed his own portfolio, filled with sketches of foreign as well as neighboring scenery. Helen eagerly turned them over, and M. had an enthusiastic word for many a remembered scene. After Miss M. had several times reminded her of her prolonged stay, Helen se- lected De La Motte Fouqu^'s delightful romance of " Undine " from the library, and that evening M. read it aloud to them in their parlor. Before they parted, the ladies had consented to accompany him on the morrow to this spot, of which he was going to complete a sketch. So does friendship ripen when the right sun-light falls upon it. They came hither; the artist fixed his easel and wrought upon his sketch. Helen, seated at the foot of this maple, read " Undine " to her aunt. But both found an interval to wander up the glen; so with reading, sketching, romancing, — and most likely eating — the day wore away and the night came, — a moonlight night and a moonlight, ride home. Some days passed, in which M. gained hugely in 13 146 TAGHCONIC. the good opinion of his fair friends, who continually teased him for a sight of his sketch — which he de- clared should not be seen until it was completed. Thus, something of an air of mystery had woven itself around the picture when at last he brought it out, altogether with the air of a man who knows he has done a nice thing, and is rather proud to have the world see it. Never was pride more completely dashed, or lover more completely puzzled. Helen blushed and smiled, but looked strangely and heartily vexed. The guardian aunt frowned unequivocally — not to say scowled. Poor M. turned from one to the other in most innocent and ludicrous bewilderment; but finally settled down into a fixed consideration of the cloud which had so suddenly gathered on the old lady' s brow — as a summer storm sometimes will over the placid surface of Lake Ashley. The sum- ■ mer storm is transient, but Miss M. seemed to have an inexhaustible magazine of wrath behind her wrinkled forehead. So, taking a hint from Helen's eye, at the first growl of the thunder, M. fled. The tempest was brewed in this wise. The good old lady, with all her romance and stateliness, had a spice of puritanism about her, and the special phase in which it showed itself was a prudish modesty in the matter of pictures. Why it took this form, more than any other, might be discovered, perhaps, if we could pry into the crooks and crannies of her early history. At present it only concerns us to know that it was there, and that in consequence of it she U1 issued a husky edict for M. to " take his vile picture hence." Now this vile painting was neither more nor less than a simple and spirited sketch of this scene, into which the artist had interwoven a portrait of Helen in the character of Undine. All very well — only the painter, with the modest assurance of his art, had changed the maiden's chaste garb for a bit of flimsy drapery, which displayed the ivory neck and swelling bosom, the taper leg and rosy foot, as circumstantially as though he had had the original all the while be- fore him for a model. O fair and false imagination, to steal away so fair and true a reality ! Miss M. would have thought her ward's character irreparably compromised by interchanging a word more with the immoral young man M. had proved himself, in her estimation. Helen thought quite otherwise. Fortunately for M. there was another difference in their notions. The aunt loved her morning pillow — the niece her morning walk — and this taste of the damsel's now acquired a. new strength that would have charmed Dr. Alcott. In another point of view these sunrise excursions to South Mountain and Mellville's Lake might have been thought alarmingly frequent. The young lady could not have been expected or desired to make her walks solitary, but one who saw how demurely they met at the breakfast table would not have surmised that the painter had been her companion an hour before. But the end was not yet; walking, it seems would not content them — they must ride as well. So one 148 TAGHCONIC. balmy morning in the gray twilight, a pair of spirited greys were reined up at the south door of the Berk- shire House, while our young friends took their places behind them; and then, heigho for Lebanon ! *' They'll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth young Lochinvar." Gallant champions of Love, those same fiery greys ! Before then, and since, they have borne beating hearts up the hills and down the valleys of that seven miles of Hymen's highway which lie be- tween the jurisdiction of the puritan publishment laws and the marriage-encouraging state of New York. I wonder if any where in this western world more visions of happiness have been dreamed, more passionate pulsations throbbed, than between the tall Elm of Pittsfield and the all-curing Springs of Le- banon. The very murmurs of the groves have caught the soft tones of lover's vows; the sparkling streams reflect the ardent gleam of expectant bridegroom's eyes. Over this hymenial highway, that balmy morning, our happy couple were rapidly whirled, and before the sun was up, the words were said which bound them in that union which no words can unloose. I doubt if their steeds were urged as impatiently on their return, but they reached their hotel again while the careless guardian, fatigued with the last night's novel, yet slept. How they ever reconciled matters with her I never heard; but it was done, for last week she sat quietly by, while M., in a little recessed back parlor in Brooklyn, told me the story of his wooing. On the wall, too, he pointed out to me the TrNDESTE'S GLEN. 149 identical "vile painting;" and by her mother's side a little Undine of eight summers shook her sunny- curls and laughed. I don't think the painter ever regretted his day's sketching in the wild glen he christened " Undine's Gorge." " Can you believe the doctor was ever guilty of such nonsense as that ? " said JMi'S. M., laughing and blushing, as she handed me a delicately tinted and perfumed paper. It was one of her husband's effusions in the days of their courtship, and I noticed that his nonsense had been carefully copied in her own neat penmanship. " And will you be- lieve that those silly lines .once had the power to make me tell my poor aunt a little fib, and then walk half a mile to meet the saucy fellow, by Elsie's Haunted Pool ? What weak things gii'ls are ! " Of course I could but beg a copy of the verses; and here they are: Geeen Hjlls of Taghconic. All sounds are hushed to silence, Save tlie insect's lulling drone And the murmur of the brooklet O'er its bed of pebbled stone. Far off, the green hills of Taghconic In the glow of the sunset lie, Entwined with a chaplet of roses And clasped in the arms of the sky ; For, round as the bosom of beauty, They swell from the vale i_^n the west, And, catching the rose hue of twilight, Seem blushing to be caressed. 150 TAGHOONIC. One wreath of a silvery vapor That awhile on the hill-top hung, Like a gossamer scarf by a maiden O'er her ivory shoulders flung, Is gone ; for the sky — a right lover — The beautiful wearer kissed, And drew to himself for a token The scarflet of silvery mist. But lo, for the token he taketh A token more fair he bestows, For, see, on the brow of the mountain A starry diamond glows. To-night by earth and heaven Alike is love-lore taught, And the air witii the sweetest wisdom Of happiness is fraught. Then come to our tryst in the gloaming, Our tryst by the whispering beech, And we'll con the lessons duly That the sages of nature teach ; While near us the clear Housatonic Meandering flows to the sea, And sounds, with the silence harmonic. Are blended in melody. The story told, and a bumper drained to the health of the heroine — again up, still up, the cool gorge, till it diverged to the north, while our path lay southward. XI. WASHINGTON MOUNTAIN AND LAKE ASHLEY. ** A lonely mountain tarn.'* Emerging from Undine's Glen, and reclaiming our carriage, we soon reached the shore of Lake Ashley, a pretty sheet of water, but more remarkable for its elevation, its loneliness and its unrivalled purity, than for any beauty of contour. The cold, pure serenity of its dark waves, as we looked upon them that day, was indeed exquisite. Lined on all sides but one by unbroken woods, fed only by fountains which gush from below, with neither speck nor boat on all its tranquil surface, it seemed, as we rode along its eastern border, the very waters of solitude. It should be so, for since the Indian's graceful bark is gone forever, there remains none which would not disturb the calm beauty of the scene. In long delicious draughts of the cool, sweet wave, we drank deep to the mountain maids, and certain maids of the valley: to the spirits of earth, air and water — to all kindly spirits whatever; not forgetting those who were then planning the grand project, since grandly perfected, of teaching these 152 TAGHCONIC. solitary and secluded waters to thread their way through the homes, and sparkle in the fountains of thirsty Pittsfield. They are as refreshing there as a lively, bright-eyed country girl in a Fifth Avenue parlor. Bless them both, girl and mountain stream ! And then we got down — or, rather, up — to the solid business of the day. Washington Mountain, as I have said, is composed largely of quartzite. On the western slope it lies in laminated strata, of which some, from three to six inches thick, are quarried for flagstones and like purposes. - In the earlier days of the settlement they were oc- casionally used for grave-stones, although of such adamantine hardness as almost to defy the sculptor's most irresistible chisel. You may see, in the " Pil- grim's Rest " of the Pittsfield cemetery, some curious specimens, a hundred years old, on which the in- scriptions, whose depth is almost imperceptible to the eye, yet look as fresh as if cut yesterday; so little has a century done to smooth the thin, white roughening, the painstaking old sculptor was able to effect. From these rude quarries, the people of old time called this " Rock Mountain; " a name quite as dis- tinctive and appropriate, to say the least, as that which it now bears. In other parts of the mountain the quartz is of finer grain, and not stratified. Still, like the quartzite boulders you find all the way from the Canaan range to the Hoosac, it appears compact; but, crush it under a hammer or in an iron mortar — or throw a heated fragment into water — and you WASHINGTON MOUNTAIN. 153 shall see it fly into a sand identical with that used by the glass-makers. In Cheshire, Lanesboro', and other localities along the Hoosac range, this quartzite is found naturally disintegrated, in immense and valuable beds, from which large quantities of silicious sand are annually taken for the local glass-works and for exportation; for it is very widely used. It is altogether probable that the light by which you read these words comes to you through material which once lay in our Berkshire sand-beds, now transformed to window glass and lamp chimneys. I had learned that one of these precious deposits lay under a little well-wooded noppit which rose not far from the eastern shore of Lake Ashley. It supplied silicious material for glass- works during the war of 1812, but afterwards fell out of use, and almost out of mind. There was now a new demand for it; and hence our haste in seek- ing it that torrid summer day. A small recess in the side of the noppit was the only trace which re- mained of the labors of the old miners; but there were sufficient indications of a rich deposit. I shall have more to say hereafter of the beautiful and curious quartz formations of Berkshire; but for the present it is enough to add, concerning this peculiar bed, that the indications of its wealth were not de- ceptive. It proved among the best in the country, both as to extent and quality; and has long been the source of supply for the famous glass-works at Lenox Furnace. Such investigations as we had the means for mak- 164 TAGHCONIC. ing were soon finished, and we had still time to seek for an extended mountain view. Knowing nothing of the region, we found this a task of no small diffi- culty; but there was a great reward. By mere ac- cident we came upon an outlook open on every side to the surrounding mountains, but cutting off every glimpse of valley. " Nunc coelum undique et undique" montes! Although there are many similar views' among our Green Mountains, there are few in which the seclu- sion of sky and mountain-tops is so complete as in this. To the north-east a wild billowy sea of moun- tains stretched far away — a taller peak sometimes dashing its splintered crest into the sky, and a white village spire, or a red farm house, appearing here and there, a floating waif upon the waste. Upon a lofty point, miles away, the pretty village of Mid- dlefield glittered in the light of the setting sun. On the north and on the south as far as the eye could reach, extended the long, rolling, billowy swells of the Hoosacs. On the west, the ever beautiful Taconics; and, looming far beyond them, the shadowy Catskills, looking like huge ghosts of perished moun- tains — long ago murdered by crashing earthquakes or smothering ice-sheets. The fastnesses of Washington Mountain were among the last strong-holds in Massachusetts where the defeated, but not yet wholly desperate, insur- gents of the Shay's Rebellion took refuge; and met with new disaster. The sad case of men "who have been in arms against the government," and by WASHINGTON MOUNTAIN. 155 failure are placed at the mercy of insulted and vin- dictive law, has long been one of the most touch- ing themes of historical romance. In this instance, to be sure, the triumphant government, doubtless conscious that it was itself not without sin in giving cause for the revolt, was more merciful to the trea- son than it had been to the poverty which provoked it; but at the time of the rally on the heights of the Hoosacs, this clemency was by no means well assured, and I doubt not that there was enough of dread and suffering and sorrow there, to touch our deepest sj^mpathies could we but recall their story. An excellent road — the old Boston and Albany highway, leads to " Washington Center," and thence another runs southward along the crest of the moun- tain, through a level pastoral country, affording a charming, invigorating drive with frequent bold and striking prospects. If your imagination is potent to bring back a ragged squad or two of those forlorn old rebels, to enliven the foreground, it will im- prove the picture. In default of that, a trim school mistress in a jaunty hat, a bronzed and bright-eyed ploughman, and perhaps a grim and grizzled wood- chopper, must serve. xn. MARVELS OF THE TUNNEL CITY. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God : Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low ; And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. — Isaiah. The chariot shall be with flaming torches, in the day of his preparation ; And the fir trees shall be terribly shaken ; The chariots shall rage in the streets ; They shall jostle, one against another, in the broad ways ; They shall seem like torches ; they shall run like lightnings. Nahum. Whither shall we go this fine morning ? For one I am inclined to extend our rambles a little: and an hour or so on the rail will enable us to spend a long day in any of those delightful localities, brimful of interesting objects and associations, which cluster thickly around Williamstown and North Adams on the north, Sheffield, Great Barrington and Stock- bridge on the south, and in the rich mineral fields of the Corundum hills on the border of Hampshire county. Or we may take the wings of " the resonant steam eagles," and fly away to towering, sparkling, TUITNEL CITY. 157 splashing, darkling, Bash-Bish. But I think bright, busy, bustling dashing North Adams, with its lively streets and peculiar surroundings, will show off well in this cool, clear atmosphere: hot and hazy, or wet and misty, days do not favor them much. To my mind, the most notable thing in this fine old town, or its bright new village, is the people: not to disparage some very noble scenery, or perhaps the most remarkable natural curiosity in the common- wealth ; and, least of all, to speak lightly of the grand Tunnel. But North Adams is, I verily believe, the smartest village in " the smartest nation of all crea- tion:" the concentrated essential oil of Yankeedom. As you pass through its streets, you see the evidence of this great truth everywhere; in the shops, in the manufactories, in the hotels : and, if these do not con- vince you, there will be no room for doubt when you come to the Hoosac Tunnel, which is almost as much a North Adams product, as the shoes made by the aid of Chinese cheap labor, or the textile fabrics woven by more costly imported help. We look with admiring awe upon the engineering skill and persistence which penetrated from side to centre of that enormous mountain-mass, in exact conformity with their intention; but not less skillful and persistent was the engineering which carried the Tunnel measures through that solid, but ever-fluctuat- ing body, the Great and General Court; which, like the demoralized rock of the Hoosac Mountain, was all the more difficult to manage for the insta- bility of its constituent material. You think that 14 158 TAGHCONIC. the waters of the Deerfield river generated the power which bored the Tunnel. Doubtless, in a secondary way, it did; but not until a rill from the state treasury had become a helpful tributary of the Deerfield. The primary motive force was furnished by that bold engineering which dammed the treasury, and turned a golden stream Tunnelward; and North Adams furnished the engineers. Do not misconceive me. I do not use that word, engineering, in an offensive sense, although I admit it to be, in some sort, slang. Slang is often, as in this instance, only metaphor vulgarized by the news- papers. Every public movement must be engineered; not one, that I know, was ever so non-antagonistic to private interests, or so self -evidently for the common good, that it would engineer itself — move off spontaneously; and, by virtue of its own native goodness, finish its course triumphantly. Even a revival of religion is not achieved that way; and I seem to have read somewhere that our American Revolution was adroitly " worked up." As for those who, by engineering or otherwise, helped on the bor- ing of the Hoosac Tunnel, I fully believe that they deserve, and will in due time receive, the gratitude of every unselfish well-wisher of the commonwealth. Having read in the old records that, after the Boston and Albany Railroad was opened, its mana- gers were in great doubt whether freight enough would ever be offered, to require the use of the two locomotives which they had placed between Spring- field and Pittsfield, I have the courage to find, in the TUNNEL CITY. 159 great traffic which already seeks an avenue through the Tunnel, the promise of an adequate direct return for the State's vast expenditure there. But, even if that promise fail, I have the faith in reserve that the deficiency will be more than made good, indirectly, by increased wealth and population. But what have we to do with profit and loss, in our search for romance and beauty ? Of romance, we shall surely find enough in the undertaking and ac- complishment of that stupendous Tunnel enterprise; and, if there be any lack of beauty — of which I am not sure — it will find abundant compensation in the grandeur of the work; a much more rare attribute of Berkshire marvels. The Tunnel, however, as well as the glories of the scenery around North Adams, has been celebrated by a pen so much more competent than mine, that it would be presumption for me to attempt more than the briefest glimpses at them; a barley-corn of quit-rent, as it were, in acknowledgment of homage due. The Hoosac Tunnel project is of no recent birth. It is more than sixty-five years since the Massachu- setts people, provoked to good works by the success of the Erie canal, conceived the idea of making the Hudson River climb over the Berkshire Hills and run down to Boston; or if, under the protection of certain laws not subject to repeal by the General Court, or to be evaded by its engineers, the waters of the great river obstinately refused to run up hill, then to take from them the ever-iiicreasino- burdeji 160 TAGHCONTC. of western commerce, which they perversely carried to New York, and turn it eastward by means of a little Yankee Hudson — to wit, a canal — to be manu- factured, until it crossed the Hoosacs, out of the lakes and streams of Berkshire. One proposition for carrying out this scheme, was to follow nearly what is now the route of the Boston and Albany railroad ; but there was some doubt whether Pittsfield and the neighboring heights could furnish an adequate sujDply of water; and, besides, as one can readily believe, the " rocky nature of the ground between Pittsfield and Blandford was discouraging." On the route now followed by the Troy and Boston raih'oad, the engineer found no very troublesome obstacles, except that, immediately east of North Adams, the Hoosac Mountain reared a barrier fifteen hundred feet high, and, at his very moderate com- putation, four miles thick. Here was something that, even with our advanced scientific and material engineering facilities, would give the boldest projector pause; but if it intimi- dated those old enthusiasts at all, it must have been only for a brief space. Late in the winter of 1825, Governor Eustis appointed Nathan Willis of Pitts- field, Elihu Hoyt of Deerfield and H. A. S. Dearborn of Boston, commissioners, and Colonel Laomi C. Baldwin, engineer, to consider the possibility of the scheme for a canal from the Hudson to Boston; and in January, 1826, they reported it to be perfectly practicable, by means of a tunnel through the Hoosac Mountain, nearly at the point occupied by the pre- TTJNKEL CITY. 161 sent tunnel. The proposed dimensions were four miles in length, twenty feet in width' and thirteen and a half in height; requiring a total excavation of two hundred and eleven thousand cubic yards. The elevation of the mountain ranges which still remained was to be overcome by a series of locks, whose total rise and fall were to be three thousand two hundred and eighty-one feet. The commis- sioners estimated the cost of the canal, one hundred and seventy-eight miles long, at about six million dollars, including that of the tunnel which they put at less than one million. Colonel Baldwin was probably the daring spirit who first conceived the idea of this gigantic under- taking — far more gigantic than he, in his profes- sional philosophy, dreamed. But, whoever was father to the thought, the people of the Tunnel Region eagerly adopted it; and, though for a time it seemed to others to die, they knew that it only slept; and never lost sight of it until a locomotive, instead of a canal boat, emerging from the bowels of the mountain, rejoiced their waiting eyes. In 1826, a Boston newspaper-writer demonstrated, to his own satisfaction at least, that, on the commis- sioner's own showing, it would require fifty-two years to complete the proposed excavation. Never- theless, had it not been for the timely introduction, at that very moment, of steam as a motive power on railroads, there is much reason to believe that the state would have undertaken the tunnel. It is cer- 162 TAGUCONIC. tain, at least, that there would have been a strong party in favor of its so doing. And now, if you will consider what chemical and mechanical appliances were at the command of the engineer in 1825; what was the cost of labor, and what the pecuniary resources of the state, I think you will concede some grandeur to the courage that did not flinch from a work which has since, under far different conditions, almost frightened some very solid economists from their propriety. The successful use of steam on railroads effectually cured the canal fever, which was raging with symp- toms very threatening to the public purse; and attention was diverted from the Hoosac Mountain — the highest mass of the Hoosac Range — to the more moderate grades of the same chain in Central and Southern Berkshire ; which, at no ruinous cost, could be made available even with such locomotive power as the skill of that day was able to provide. The tunnel project, thus put to rest, slept an unquiet slumber, until it was re-awakened in 1848, by the charter of the Troy and Greenfield railroad with a capital of three million five hundred thousand dollars. A proposed capital only; for the arbiters of finance did not look kindly upon the scheme, and it languished — in a morning nap perhaps — until its friends, in 1854, secured a loan of two million dol- lars from the commonwealth. The tunnel work was begun with energy in 1856. But I am not going to attempt the story of its troubles and its triumphs. What with demoralized TUNNEL CITY. 163 rock and demoralized legislators; with the rudest inexperience to be transformed to accurate practical knowledge; with useless, followed by the most effi- cient, machinery; with inadequate, and then with almost too violent, rending power; with sad waste of treasure; with still sadder sacrifice of life — there was enough, both of obstacle and the overcoming of it. But the final victory came at last; and, as I think, that first locomotive which, on the first of March, 1875, thundered through the vanquished mountain, was the proudest triumphal car that had ever cele- brated conquest. If. you think my estimate exaggerated, what will you say of Rev. Dr. Todd, Pittsfield's quaintly elo- quent, but thoroughly orthodox, divine, who found in our railroad era the fulfilment of the sublime prophecies which I have placed at the head of this article? This was in that glow of feeling excited in the warm-hearted pastor by his official participation in the golden welding of those iron bands by which the Pacific railroad binds together the east and the west; and I am not sure whether he counted his words well grounded doctrine, or merely the play of his bold poetic fancy. But you and I have heard many a less plausible interpretation of prophecy gravely propounded by reverend lips. Well, there the Hoosac Tunnel is — not at all the visionary thing it seemed to many eyes, even a quarter of a century ago; but a very palpable fact; BO palpable indeed that you can feel the darkness within it. You may visit it; but, before you do so. 164 TAGHCONIC. consider well the strength of the old Titanic moun- tain wall, which, so far as it was a barrier to com- merce, it has thrown down; consider the wealth of treasure and of intellect, of human labor and human life, which have gone to its construction; get some conception, if you can, of the mighty flood of travel and traffic which rolls through it in ever-swelling volume. Thus prepared, you may feel the grandeur of the Tunnel; otherwise you may almost as well spend eleven minutes in your coal-cellar. Unless, indeed, you chance upon an hour when the cavernous walls are, for some special purpose illuminated; then, I dare say, you will experience some curious sensa- tions; it may be of an exalted nature. And now let us return to the Tunnel City: where, however, I shall not attempt to paint for you Mount Hawkes, Williams, Adams or any of the grand hills which look down upon it. They have already been gladdened by a more golden light than I could throw upon them. But I cannot resist the temptation to repeat a visit which I made many years ago to The Natural Bridge: a piece of carving by the Water Nymphs, which I do not find surpassed by any thing which Dame Nature's eccentric work-people have effected anywhere in New England. Some years ago I took a walk, with a noted tra- veller, along the bending valley of the Hoosac, to North Adams and Williamstown; thence to the summit of Greylock, down its most precipitous side into one of its* wildest recesses; and down the valley of the Housatonic to Pittsfield. You will wander TUXXEL' CITY. 165 long before you meet another route so rich in ad- mii-able landscape or in objects of marked individual interest; but none of them were impressed on my memory so vividly and pleasantly as this bridge, and the ravine by which it is best approached. Reaching the vicinity by a winding road which afforded superb views towards the south and east, we entered the ravine at its lower terminus. We made no measurements, but the following description, furnished by Rev. John W. Yeomans for the " His- tory of Berkshire" published in 1829, perfectly ac- cords with my impressions. " About a mile north east of North Adams village, Hudson's brook has worn a channel thirty rods long, and in some places sixty feet deep, through a quarry of white marble. The ledge terminates at the south in a steep precipice, down which it seems the water once fell ; but, finding in some places natural fissures, and in others wearing away the rock, it has formed a passage from thirty to sixty feet below its former bed, and with a mean breadth of fifteen feet. Across this chasm, two masses of rock — one ten or twelve feet above the other — lie like bridges. The upper is now much broken : under the lower, which is beautifully arched, the stream has sunk its bed nearly fifty feet." The walls of the ravine are perpendicular cliffs of pure white marble, highly crystaline in coarse granu- lation — a dolomite, if I recollect rightly, susceptible of a fine edge under the chisel. They are mottled all over, from top to bottom with indentations of various shapes and sizes: but oftenest circular and concave, like a saucer, with ^ an average dia- meter, at a rough guess, of eight or ten inches: making a very pretty Arabesque fret work. But, 166 TAGHCONIC. small or large, the indentations were evidently made by rolling pebbles kept in motion by the waters of the sinking stream. Frequently one of the niche-like recesses has almost its exact counterpart precisely on the opposite side of the chasm; as though a marble mass — in which was a hollow space, like an inverted cauldron or old-fashioned dinner-pot — had been sharply rent in twain, and the sides withdrawn fifteen feet apart: ah explanation which has sometimes been rashly made. The phenomenon seems rather to in- dicate where a ledge of fixed rock extended nearly across the bottom of the brook, forcing the grinding pebbles against the wall on each side. Ask the sculptor who makes gravestones of that marble, how long he thinks it took the water nymphs to carve out that ravine and fret its walls so curiously. Entering the lower opening of the ravine, we waded squarely into the brook, which we found easily fordable; and as it was a warm summer day, we weat merrily splashing our way almost to the bridge; whereby we got the best possible appreciation of the whole thing. And a high appreciation it was, as my companion expressed it in an animated speech when we had ensconced ourselves in opposite niches in the marble walls. XIII. LANESBOROUGH SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW. Man has two minutes and a half to live — one to smile, one to sigh, and a half to love : for in the midst of this we die. But the grave is not deep ; it is the shining footprint of the angel who seeks us; and when the unknown hand throws the fatal dart, man boweth his head, and the shaft only lifts the crown of thorns from his wounds. — Jean Paul Richter. Nestled closest in the bosom of our hills lies the little village of Lanesboro' — the very fondling of Nature. Thither turns never the good mother her wrinkled front; near pressing as the mountains clasp the narrow valley, you must not look among them for frowning precipices, or earthquake-rifted chasms. High into the air their summits press, but not in jagged peaks — only with the full, round swelling of loving breasts, upon which you may repose, if you will, in the gentlest of summer reveries. There is one eminence — in patriotic gratitude they call it Constitution Hill — with such a winsome, neighborly look to it, that in our streets, miles away, it seems near as your own garden. If you have in you any yearnings at all after beauty, I am sure you cannot look upon, and not be irresistibly drawn to it, to be lifted up gently and humanly, 168 • TAGHCONIC. above the baser things of earth. Lying under its druidical oaks, or seated, farther up, upon a pearl- white quartz rock, in the shade of a whispering birch, you will see below you, groves and farms, and broad, fresh meadows, with laughing lake and winding rivulets — like silver embroidery on the green ban- ner of Erin. Many fair villages, as well, wiU dot the scene, whose names — if you do not know — I hope you will never ask, but be content to remember, that under each roof of them all, human lives are wear- ing themselves out. Then let your own heart in- terpret for you what the overlooking woods whisper. If you know well the story of one hearth-stone, think what a thrilling tale it is; and if, in your re- veries upon the hill-tops, you multii^ly that marvellous but common story into the thousand dwellings of the valley, the resultant mass shall be mightier than the mountains which encompass it. I could point you to an antique mansion — a grey spot it appears in the far distance, with no over- hanging cloud to distinguish it — at whose story I am deeply moved, as often as I look upon it. The splendors and the shadows, which have by turns darkened and illumined its chambers, pass and repass in spectral reiteration, over my spirit. Whether I will or not, come the ghosts of fleeting joys, irradi- cable sorrows; the loftiness of human pride and the lowliness of pride's abasement, which have passed and left no record there; and yet that grey old homestead is no accursed roof, devoted to misery LANESBOKOUGH. 169 from its foundation, but one even such as its fellows are. Ah ! if we could look within the seemly exte- rior of any home — if we could penetrate the heart's chambers of any man, w^hat might not meet us there ? Those glowing windows which gleam so cheerily on our evening path, by what funereal torches may they not be lighted? Those radiant faces which meet us smilingly in our noonday walk by what in- fernal passions may they not be driven on ? So, under the green and smiling earth, lie pent the hidden fires, and help the genial sun to quicken the blossom and ripen the fruit. This Constitution Hill must be a great promoter of reverie. I have a friend — a bachelor Jriend — who, no sooner is he seated upon it, than off he goes dreaming over the whole valley, in a very marvelous way. I do not believe there is a dwelling in sight, from Greylock to Yocun's Seat, that he has not, at some time, made hmi^Qli pater faniiUas in it. Bring him up hither, and his respect for the Tenth Com- mandment vanishes like the mist of the valley. Another friend -of mine — an artist — never looks down from this hill, but — presto ! change ! — the hard work of a century is all gone, and the i*ed Indian comes back again, with wild-wood and wig- wam, council fire and hunting ground. So you, if you come wdthin the charmed circle of our hill's shaven crown, may, perchance, work some wonderful phan- tasmagoric changes. I do not know how it all comes about. Perhaps some good genius has cast a spell upon the sjiot — a 15 170 TAGHCONIC. mode of solving such difficulties to which I confess myself prone, being naturally of a superstitious as well as lymphatic turn of mind. It may be only another fancy of mine, but the leaves here seem to have a perfection of beauty not attained elsewhere. Nature's work is finished with more care; the curves are cut with a more accurate grace, and the green more faithfully laid on. In the Fall, too, the rich enamellings are done with greater depth of coloring, and without shrivelling u]d the work in the process, as the careless elves are very apt to do in other groves. The specimens of their workmanship which I have seen here were perfect gems in their way. You shall not desire to see a more gorgeous sight than Constitution Hill in Oc- tober. Just on the western declivity is a good sized cavern, which, a witty lady thinks, may be the home of these elfin workmen; but in spite of the high authority, I must doubt; such underground tenements are more fit dwelling places for bears, wolves, and such like ugly gnomes, than for any gentle "spirits whatever. No, ours are " Some gay creatures of the elements. Who in the colors of the rainbow live And play 'i the plighted clouds." Descending from the hill, you may wander up the stream which flows at its base. If a follower of the " gentle craft of angling," you will not neglect to lie awhile where some thick-leaved maple overshadows a LANESBOROUGH. 171 deep pool, where you may drop your line with the reasonable hope of bringing to shore a dozen fine figh __ perhaps even the " Hermit Trout " himself who is believed to haunt these pools, and only dimple the shallows in the pale moonlight; — a wary old fellow he, •' Too shrewd To be by a wading boy pulled out I " But I^ trust you are no patron of this treacherous sport. You were better to sit on some warm bank of green-sward, or dangling your feet over some rustic bridge, to watch the smoothly gliding current, and " The shadows of sun-gilt ripples On the pebbly bed of a brook." There is no wine, or oil of gladness, which has such a balm for the wounded spirit as the soft mur- murs of a rural brooklet. Wandering on, you may, if you are fortunate as I have been, sometimes catch a glimpse into dream- land — like a vignette to an old romance, of a youth 'seated under a spreading elm, with a guitar in his hand and a maiden by his side; or even catch Titania shooting grasshoppers with elfin arrows among the ox-eyed daisies and buttercups. When I was a citizen I used to think such things confined to poetry and Spain; but here, in the quiet days of summer, things often occur which convince one of the truth of Hood's remark, tliat '* it is dangerous to sw^ar to the truth or falsehood of a romance, even of one's own making." 172 TAGHCONIC. On a gentle hillock, by whose side the stream flows in deep willow shade, is the village grave-yard. Do not fail to enter it. Among its thick-clustering monuments you can linger with best profit, undis- turbed by quaintly ludicrous epitaphs, or monstrous heraldries of death. The touching inscriptions on the simple marbles bespeak alike the chastened spirit and the cultivated mind. What wild woe — paternal, filial, fraternal, and conjugal — this narrow spot has witnessed, I shrink from recalling. The marble bears record only of the subdued grief and the Christian hope; the story of the early woe, when the one joy of life perished — when " the young green bole was marked for f ellage," is not told to the stranger's eye, and is sacred from the stranger's pen. Yet, for that stranger is the place deeply consecrated; how holy, then, to those whose best of earth is mingled with its dust. I am here often reminded of a beautiful thought of Richter: "The ancients had it, that not even the ashes of the dead should be embarked with the living, for fear of the storm which would be sure to follow. We have learned better, and know th?t. to be accompanied on the voyage of life by the memory of the dead brings calm and not storm; he who always feels one loss, will be less accessible to new sorrow." The Old Worshippee. In this grave-yard I once witnessed a scene, so touching and solemn, and yet so far removed from any agon}^ of woe, that to speak of it can open anew THE OLD WORSHIPPER. 173 no half healed wound. It was one of those occasions when the sorrows of earth are so gloriously trans- muted into the joys of Heaven, that we, who remain " of the earth, earthy," look upon the transfiguration in far-off wonder; while philosophy strives in vain to characterize emotions, in which the consoler, Christ, enables the mourner to mingle — as in His own mysterious nature — so much of human sorrow with so much of Divine confidence. Not far from the village grave-yard, is the church — a modest gothic structure, built of the grey stone of the country. This was once, for many months, my own place of worship; and still, on a pleasant Sabbath morning, I love to stroll to it. The bracing walk of some half dozen miles, through a delightful region, is no unworthy preparation for the devotions of the sanctuary; and, through the day, the voices of woods and waters seem to mingle with the deep responses of the congregation. Nature, with her thousand voices, joins in the jubilant chorus, and in subdued tones echoes the supplications of the solemn litany. The first morning upon which I entered this church I was struck with the venerable figure of an old man, who sat in front of me, completely absorbed in worship. Never had my ideal of Christian de- votion been so completely filled; no painter could have desired a finer model. His whole soul seemed informed and penetrated with the spirit of the liturgy, in whose eloquent words he poured forth his soul to God. 174 TAGHCONIC. His veteran form was tall and martial in its bear- ing; in the deep lines of his countenance you could not mistake the characters of strong intellect, self respect, and unbending firmness of purpose. You would say he was one not likely to yield much ob- sequious homage to his fellow man; but here, in the presence of Jehovah, his whole bearing was con- formed to the most lowly, yet manly, humility. Nothing could be more impressive than the earnest tones with which he joined in the services of the church. Sabbath after Sabbath, my eye sought and found him — the most noticeable figure in the room — until one summer's day, when I entered, the people were waiting, in that hush of expectation which in a country congregation tells one that a funeral is about to take place. On my way to the church I had lingered a few moments, as was my wont, in the grave-yard — and had found an open grave in the lot of the venerable worshipper. I now looked to his pew; it was vacant; and I at once guessed that it was he who was about to enter the sacred portals for the last time. But it was not so: a whisper from a neighbor informed me that it was the wife of the old man who was no more — the wife of his youth. Presently, as the procession entered, I saw the widowed husband following close behind the coffin, his head a little bent, as if to approach nearer the form of the sleeper, and his voice a little more tremu- THE OLD WOESHIPPEK. 1V5 lous than usual, as he joined in the Scripture ap- pointed to be then read. The coffin was laid before the altar, and the old man took his seat, with that forced calmness where the quivering lip shows the struggle hardly yet over, and the victory only half won. As the sublime promises of future reunion were read; as the sympathizing tones of consolation fell from the lips of the preacher, I thought the few re- maining clouds vanished from the aged face, and a perfect serenity overspread it. When the sermon was ended, with an aspect almost cheerful, he rose up, to follow to her burial-place all that remained on earth of her, with whom, for more than fifty years, he had walked, in sunshine and in storm. What emotions were at work within, none could read — the fixed eye, the firm-set lip, revealed nothing — the prying eye of curiosity, the anxious gaze of friendship, returned alike baffled. And yet, with what overwhelming power must the busy memory of that lonely old man have brought back the thick- crowding events of half a century, from the first thrilling meeting to this last brief parting ! It is such moments which must disclose most viv'dly to the mind of Eld what this life is, which passeth like a dream. Such might have been the retrospect of the mourner of three score years and ten, as he took his few brief steps from the temple to the tomb — or, perchance, his better spirit reached forward to a glorious meeting in that home to .which sorrow and parting can never come. 176 TAGHCONIC. The coffin was lowered to its place; the people gathered around. The pastor began that beautiful service, in which the church commits earth to its kindred earth, and proclaims the spirit returned to the God who gave it. There, at the clergyman's side, stood the tall and veteran form of the mourner, his thin grey hairs streaming in the mountain wind, as he repeated, firmly, the proper responses. For a while he looked steadfastly down into the grave — but as the pastor read: " And the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Him shall be changed and made like unto His own glorious body," the de- pressed eyes were raised to Heaven with an expres- sion of most triumphant and joyous hope. The struggle was over. The grave had lost its sting; "Death was swallowed up in victory." It was a spectacle most touching and sublime. Yet a few moments, and the grave was closed; the people separated to their homes — and the mourner, likewise, departed to his — but for not long. He was soon missed from his accustomed seat in the sanctuary. With the fall of the leaf, he went down into the grave — and the grass which in the spring grew upon his wife's mound, waved over two. There is another and older graveyard in the town, white with its multitude of marble testimonials. Here there used to be a tomb, carved with masonic symbols, and having a heavy iron knocker on its door. Here, often at midnight — whether the still moon shed her pale light on the ghastly tombstones, or the dark and howling temj^est was on — a criazed THE OLD WORSHIPPER. 177 woman used to enter the grave-encumbered ground, and strike such a peal on the ringing iron that the sleepers in the near dwellings started trembling - from their slumbers. There is something terribly significant to me in that gloomy visitation of the tomb. What earnestness of agonized longing for their repose, may have impelled that wild nocturnal summons to the dead. " Wake ! wake ! ye peace- ful dwellers in the tomb," perhaps that weary, brainsick woman said: " Open your dark jjortals and give me rest beside ye. Wake ! — the living turn from me, and do you also spurn me ? — me, who shudder not at any loathsomeness of yours ? " But cheerier thoughts for the cheerful light of summer — and, passing the mildewed realms of death, do you hie away to some beautiful hill — Pratt's, Prospect, St. Luke's, or ''The Noppit;" or to some fair valley — whither I may not stay to ac- company you. Lanesboro was the birth place of that queerest and wisest of humorists, the Yankee Solomon, Josh Billings: 7iee Henry Savage Shaw. The people of the village used to affect a certain rural English style, and the older inhabitants still love to speak of it as " The Borough." Hon. Henry Shaw, the father of our humorist, and one of the ablest statesmen who have represented Berkshire in congress, was the Lord of the Manor, and quite held his own in most of the traits which are conventionally ascribed to that class of gentry in Englanxl. But there was one notable variation; he was no Episcopalian, but 178 TAGHCONIC. always occupied with his family, the square and spacious pew of state in the Congregational meeting- house. The rector of St. Luke's, although bearing the same name as the squire, was proud of his descent from the old Brentons, and clung fondly to the customs of his ancestral church, as well as to its doctrines. Overflowing with genial wit, charitable, given to hospitality, and devoted especially to the kindlier duties of his priestly ofiice, he might have furnished Goldsmith or Praed, a model for their de- lightful pictures of the English country clergyman. A man greatly to be loved. In matters of religious dogma and form, there was not that happy accord between the squire and the rector, which usually prevails between similar classes in England; but, although both seemed to belong to another state of society than that which prevailed outside of the Borough, each seemed exactly fitted for the niche in the great temple — the world — in which it had pleased his Maker to place him. That is, so far as his home in the Borough was concerned — outside of that the squire, at least, who tot)k a large part in public affairs, fared like others who mix in the mad whii'l of politics and finance, and get more or less of their deserts, as it may chance. But in their retired niches at home, each would gladly have preserved every dear antique ornament, however grotesque, of the life which surrounded him. But the well-born and polished clergyman and the stately, courtly squire were not the only original characters HENEY SHAW. 179 in the Borough : it was full of them, from these con- spicuous specimens down to the sardonic dealer in oysters and poultry — nay, to the very blackest picker of black-berries in " The Gulf." Such was the early home in which Josh Billings meditated fun and — I have not a particle of doubt — mischief. Here he made curious observation of the odd people about the village, and perhaps treasured up the wise and piquant sayings for which the squire and the parson were renowned, the county over. I will cite one of the squire's, which he ejaculated with some emphasis, although he had the smallest possible personal experience of its truth: " Confound " — that is not exactly the word, but I translate — " Confound poverty: it never did any body any good ! " What do you think of that for truthfulness, compared with the old sentimental philosophy on the same point ? XY. LAKE ONOTA AND ITS WHITE DEER. Can I forget? no, never, sucli a scene; So full of witchery — Roger^ Italy. I said, the other day, that Pontoosiic is not quite my favorite among our mountain lakes. Onota is. Of all the hundred lakelets of Berkshire — exquisitely lovely as many of them are — I think there is not one which equals this in grace of outline, or in its rich back-ground of wood, field and hill. It lies in an elevated valley only two miles west of our main street ; and, if you will come with me to the com- manding elevation upon its south-west shore, and look across its broad and tranquil surface, towards Constitution Hill and Greylock, you will confess that I have not too highly extolled its charms. I am sure, at least, that I never heard such an admiring .shout over any other piece of landscape as went up from scores of Stockbridge and Albany field-meeting visitors when this view was suddenly revealed to them, one glorious summer day. I should have bid you, as you approached the lake, take note of the twin elms which crown the hill upon its eastern side and form a perfect arch — St. Mary's Arch, they LAKE ONOTA. 181 call it. But you may observe it from many points in the village. When I first wrote of this lake, I said with truth " Of all our enticing groves, none are more perfect than the woods upon the eastern shore of Onota. Few have so hermit-like a solitude, yet none are so far removed from a desolate loneliness. These shades are sometimes very solemn, but one need not be very sad in them. A merry company might be very gay." As to a large extent of wood, this de- scription still holds generally true, although costly mansions have arisen by the lake-side, and streets are creeping towards it. AYe must still ramble through woods, and for a little space scramble through brambles, to reach its northern shore. But it is worth the trouble; for the view south- ward is wild and picturesque. I have heard artists commend it as the best to be had of the lake. I cannot so think; but its peculiar formation is cer- tainly here displayed to the best possible advantage, and is very curious. At about one-quarter of its length from its northern end, it is divided by a narrow isthmus; the northern j^ortion being the work of those industrious and skillful engineers, the beavers — who formed it by building a dam across a small stream which still runs through it, over- flowing their embankment in sufficient quantities to turn the wheels of large factories at some distance below. The main or southern lake is fed by springs and Taconic mountain-brooks. The fringed gentian, the cardinal and other gor- 16 182 TAGHCONIC. geous wild flowers, grow in profusion at the north of the lake. The more pleasant resort, however, is upon the south, where, of a dreamy summer after- noon, one can recline in luxurious reveries, as he watches the image of the mountains, sharply re- flected in the clear waters; sometimes in the green leafiness of June, sometimes in the melancholy gor- geousness of autumn, or better still, when the haze of the Indian summer invests them with hues of pearly delicacy and richness. Perhaps, while you look, a broad-winged eagle will appear above you, soaring and sweeping in the silent sky, till it vanishes into the heavens; or a blue king-fisher will perch awhile upon yonder blasted bough, and then suddenly darting into the water bear away its writhing prey to some hidden haunt. Other gentler birds will sit a-tilt on the lithe green branches — and, if it be in early summer, serenade your slumberous ear. Near by, the cattle will stand in groups on a pleasant point of land which runs out into the lake, and which they seem to love better than other spots. Around these shores were some of the earliest settlements; and, before the intrusion of the white man, they were the favorite haunt of the Indian. A gentleman digging into a bed of peat and marl, upon his farm on the east of the lake, found, at great depth, stakes pointed artificially — evidently the remains of wigwams built ages ago, when, perhaps, the marl bed was a lakelet as crystal clear as Onota. Remains of the rude arts of the later Indians used LAKE ONOTA. 183 to be found in the neighboring fields; but now they are rarely, if ever, turned up by the plough. Upon the eminence to which I first took you, a fort of some pretense was built, during the second French and Indian war, for the protection of the settlements at the south and east; and relics are still occasionally found of the regiments which rested here on their way to the campaigns which ended in the conquest of Canada. There were four of these forts in Pittsfield, garrisoned partly by soldiers sent by helpful Connecticut; and partly by the settlers, who, compelled to abandon their log cabins, took their families with them to these places of refuge. And a jolly time they seem to have had of it, shut up there cozily together — a perpetual tea-party. The commissariat accounts are, some of them, still preserved, and afford us a peep at the housekeeping on Fort Hill a century and a quarter ago. They tell us that the larder of the garrison was plentifully supplied with venison at five pence a pound; wild turkey at a shilling, and beef at twelve pence. Trout were to be had by the hundred for the catch- ing, and partridges for the killing. But the old ac- counts are chiefly occupied with charges for spirituous liquors in drams of rum, bowls of punch and mugs of flip. Persons of the lower rank took their drams; their superiors revelled in punch; while the more temperate, and the ladies, were generally content with the mild beverage, flip. On some days merri- ment grew merrier, as on a certain sfecond of Novem- ber — perhaps thanksgiving day — when the gallant 184 TAGHCONIC. Captain Hinman, of the Connecticut troops, is charged with several punches for himself, and " a mug of flip for Mrs. Piercy." And, just below, we are startled by this entry : " The wife of Deacon Crofoot, for a mug of flip — a kiss." A merry party of fair women and brave men, there must have been that chill November evening in the old fort; maugre the possibility that a legion of Onuhgungo fiends would be howling for their scalps before morning. But antiquarian research dissipates any visions of the " rosy juncture of four melting lips " as a result of that charge against the Deacon's wife, by show- ing that the good dame was then sixty-six years old. Which doubtless is the reason that the account is not recorded to have been ever liquidated. There are a couple of legends about this Onota, perhaps worth the telling. The first is well authen- ticated, and the other not improbable, as legends go. The Legend of the White Deer. There is hardly a country where a deer ever trod in which there does not linger some legend of one or more of these graceful animals, either wholly or in part of a supernatural whiteness. It is a fancy which seems to spring spontaneously in the rich soil of a woodman's imagination. The " White Doe of Rylston," and Bryant's "White-footed Deer, will occur to every one, as instances of the use to which these forest tales have been put in poetry. Traditions of a similar character are said to exist in many tribes THE WHITE DEI;R. 185 of American Indians, and among others, those of the Housatonic valley. A gentleman tells me that in the old witch times — long after the Salem delusion ended — there were no firmer believers in that sort of supernaturalism than the peoj^le who lived about Lake Onota; one of whom was his own grand-father, of whom he relates the following anecdote: Coming in one day from an unsuccessful day's hunting, he was surprised to see a white deer stoop- ing down to drink at Point Onota — the little cape which extends into the lake at its south end. In- stantly his rifle was at his shoulder; but before he could pull the trigger, his dog howled, and the startled deer fled into the wood. The marvellous story of the white deer of the Mohegans at once occurred to him, and it entered into his head that his dog was bewitched; or rather that an old hag who lived in " The North Woods " — a section on the north-western side of the lake — had assumed his form; which, among other freakish powers, she had the perilous reputation of being able to do. With never a doubt, therefore, that he was all the while belaboring the witch, our disappointed hunter waled his poor hound till the woods howled again with his piteous cries. This done, he posted away in hot haste to the cabin of the old crone, and demanded that she should show him her back — never doubting that he would find upon it the marks of the stripes he had inflicted upon his miserable beast. Of course the old woman 186 TAGHCONIC. was in a tempest of wrath when she learned the errand of her visitor; and it is believed that he made a retreat more discreet and rapid than valiant, under a sudden shower of blows from that notorious article of house-hold furniture which was supposed to serve its mistress the double purpose of a broom by day and an aerial steed by night, and which now answered another very excellent turn. Another gentleman, to whom I mentioned this anecdote, tells me an aboriginal legend of this same White Deer. " Long before the Englishman set foot in the Housatonic valley," he said, " the Indians used to notice a deer, of complete and spotless white, which came often, in the summer and autumn months, to drink at Onota. Against this gentle creature, no red man's arrow was ever pointed; for, in their simple faith, they believed that with her light and airy step she brought good fortune to the dwellers in the valley. ' So long,' the prophecy ran, 'So long as the snow-white doe comes to drink at Onota, so long famine shall not blight the Indian's harvest, nor pestilence come nigh his lodge, nor f oeman lay waste his country.' In the graceful animal, the tribe re- cognized and loved their good genius. He among them who dared to harm her would have met swift punishment as a sacrilegious wretch and traitor." Thus protected by the love of her simple friends, year after year, soon as the white blossoms clothed the cherry, the sacred deer came to drink at her chosen fountain; bringing good omens to all, and THE WHITE DEER. 187 especially to the maiden wlio first espied her, glitter- ing brightly among the foliage. Finally she brought with her a fawn, if possible, of more faultless purity and grace than herself; and that year more than the usual plenty and happiness reigned around the lake. Not long after this, the first French and Indian war broke out, and a young French officer — Montalbert by name — was sent to incite the Housatonic Indians to join in the league against the English colonies. In his sacred character as an ambassador, he was welcomed to their lodges, had a seat at their council fire, and listened eagerly to their wild and marvellous tales. Among others, he heard the story of the White Deer; and, however incredulous of her sanctity, suffi- ciently admired the description of her beauty. Among those reckless and ambitious adventurers who set up the standard of France in Canada, it was a passion to carry away some wonderful trophy of the forest domain, to lay at the feet of their sovereign. Even the persons of the savages had thus been j)re- sented at the Court of Versailles, and royal favor had not been niggard in rewarding the donors of the more unique and costly troj)hies of barbaric spl«endor. It was for such reasons that an uncontrollable de- sire to possess the skin of the White Deer took pos- session of Montalbert. He already enjoyed, in imagination, the reward which could not fail him who brought so rare and beautiful a peltry to the splendid Louis. Not fully aware of the veneration which the Deer received from the natives, he first offered liberal 188 TAGHCONIC. rewards to the hunter who should bring him the coveted spoil. For half the proffered price, the chiefs would, perhaps, have alienated their fairest hunting- grounds; but the proposition to destroy their sacred i)eer was received with utter horror and indignation. It was gently hinted to Montalbert that a repetition of the offer might ensure him the fate he designed for the Deer. But the Frenchman was not of a nature to be so baffled. He had noticed that one of the native war- riors — Wondo, by name — was already debased by the use of the white man's fire-water, of which Montalbert possessed a large supply. Concealing his purposes for a time, the adventurer sought out this Wondo, and shortly contrived to foment the poor fellow's appetite to such a degree that he be- came the absolute slave of whoever had it in his power to minister to his desires. When the hunter was thought to be sufiiciently besotted, Montalbert ventured to propose to him a plan to secure the skin of the White Deer. De- praved as he had become, Wondo at first recoiled from the thought, but appetite at length prevailed and he yielded to the tempter. Years of unmolested security had rendered the Deer so confident in the friendship of man that, when at last treachery came, she proved an easy victim. Before conscience could awaken in the sacrilegious hunter, the gentle animal was taken and slain, and the ill-gotten fur was in the possession of the white man. THE WHITE DEER. No sooner had Montalbert secured- his prize than, concealing it in his baggage, he set out for Montreal; but the legend hints that he never reached the French border, and the beautiful skin of the Indians' sacred deer never added to the splendors of French royalty. Among the natives, the impious slaughter was not suspected until the fire-water of the slayer was ex- pended, and a returning consciousness compelled him to confess his deed of horror, and to meet the speedy vengeance which atoned for it. Long and earnest were the supplications which the frightened natives sent up to the Great Spirit, that He would avert from the tribe the punishment due to such a crime; but its prosperity never again was what it had been, and its numbers slowly wasted away. XVI. ROARING BROOK AND TORY'S GLEN. Fear God, honor the King. — JSt. Peter, The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever there- fore resistetli the power, resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. — St. Paul. And what saith the Koran ? ' ' Speak truth to thy Prince." — Blue Beard, "Every state and almost every county of New- England has its Roaring Brook — a mountain stream- let, overhung by woods, impeded by a mill, en- cumbered by fallen trees, but ever rushing, racing, roaring down through gurgling gullies, and filling the forest with its delicious sound and freshness; the drinking places of home returning herds; the mysterious haunts of squirrels and blue jays; tho sylvan retreat of school-boys, who frequent it in the summer holidays, and mingle their restless thoughts with its restless, exuberant, and rejoicing stream.'* Thus speaks Professor Longfellow of one of the most charming features of our hillsides. Our Roar- ing Brook, I think must be familiar to the poet. Indeed, it is shrewdly suspected that it is the ori- ginal of that where Churchill and Kavanagh passed so delightful a day with Cecilia. Alice, and the LONGFELLOW. 191 schoolmaster's wife. If not, it might well have been, for the description is perfect; and there is every reason to believe that the author was familiar with the original. There is a shorter road to it now; but that over which the author of Kavanagh must have driven, is both so pleasant and so rich in me- mories that I prefer it still; and so will you. We will not hurry over it. Passing down the broad elm-shaded, old-fashioned, courtly street which leads east from the Pittsfield Park, we come, at the distance of a few rods to a bold and picturesque knoll, upon which stands one of those square old dwellings, such as it was the fashion of the New England gentry to build seventy- five or a hundred years ago: and which still delight their descendants, although, like antiques in other branches of art, they seem to defy modern imitation. This was long the country seat of Hon. Nathan Appleton of Boston, whose wife was a daughter of the builder of the mansion, and whose daughter be- came the wife of the poet Longfellow. On the landing of the broad stairs at the end of its long entrance hall, stood the old clock so touchingly com- memorated by him: " Somewhat back from tlie village street Stands the old fashioned country seat ; Across its antique portico, Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, — And from its station in the hall An ancient time piece says to all — Forever, never, " Never, forever." 192 TAGHCONIC. The mansion, now the residence of Mrs. Thomas F. Plunkett, has been to some extent remodelled ex- ternally, but it preserves all the features noted in Mr. Longfellow's poem. A couple of miles further south, on what is known as the old road to Lenox, is the villa built by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which he resided for several years. Dr. Holmes had an hereditary interest in Pittsiield; his great-grand father Col. Jacob Wen- dell of Boston, with his kinsman, Philip Livingston of Albany, and Col. John Stoddard of Northampton — " the great New-En glander " — having been equal owners of the township, six miles square, before its division by sale among the first settlers. These great proprietors — or at least Stoddard and Wen- dell — reserved some of the best lands for themselves; and Col. Wendell making choice of the farm on which Dr. Holmes afterwards built, either he or his son, Judge Oliver Wendell of Revolutionary fame, erected a mansion upon it for a country seat. Li the fierce political feuds, before and during the war of 1812, Judge Wendell was a great stay and consolation to the Pittsfield Federalists to whom he gave much support, moral and pecuniary. The First Church still cherishes among its precious relics, a baptismal basin of solid silver, which he presented to the Federal section when it was divided on poli- tical issues. I will continue the story in the words of Dr. Holmes's speech at the Berkshire Jubilee in 1844: *' One of my earliest recollections is of an annual pilgrimage BOAEING BEOOK. 193 made by my parents to the west. The young horse was brought up, fatted by a week's rest and high feeding, prancing and caracoling, to the door. It came to the corner and was soon over the western hills. He was gone a fortnight ; and one afternoon — it always seemed to me a sunny afternoon — we saw the equipage crawling from the west towards the old homestead ; the young horse, who set out so fat and pranc- ing, worn thin and reduced by the long journey — the chaise covered with dust ; and all speaking of a terrible cru- sade, a formidable pilgrimage. Winter-evening stories told me where — to Berkshire, to the borders of New York — to the old domain ; owned so long that there seemed to be a sort of hereditary love for it. " Many years passed, and I travelled down the beautiful Rhine. I wished to see the equally beautiful Hudson. I found myself at Albany ; and a few hours t^-ought me to Pittsfield. I went to the little spot — the scene of the pilgrim- age — a mansion — and found it surrounded by a beautiful meadow, through which the winding river made its way in a thousand graceful curves. The mountains reared their heads around it. The blue air, which makes our city pale cheeks again to deepen with the hue of health, coursing about it pure and free. I recognized the scene of the annual pilgrimage and since that I have made an annual visit to it." Three or four years after the Jubilee, Dr. Holmes built, upon a round knoll or hill, near the old mansion, a neat plain villa, commanding a fine view of the whole circle of Berkshire Mountains and of the Housatonic winding its serpentine way through the Canoe Mea- dows; so-called because the Mohegan Indians used to leave there their frail barks, perhaps to visit one of their burial grounds in the vicinity, or perhaps considering this the head of canoe navigation. The knoll was barren enough when the poet-professor 17 194 TAGHCONIC. bnilt upon it, but his liberal planting has covered it with rich turf and an abundance of- trees and shrub- bery. The place is however chiefly notable as having once been the home of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the spot where he performed work, the fame of whose results is now sure to be as lasting as it ii» universal. Some of these results are closely associated with the name of Berkshire. Among those locally most highly prized is Dr. Holmes's poem at the dedication of the Pittsfield Cemetery: equally charming in its way is "The New Eden," which was read before the Berkshire Horticultural Society at Stockbridge, in the September following, the excessively dry summer of 1854, when " We saw tlie August sun descend Day after day with blood-red stain, And the blue mountains dimly blend With smoke-wreaths on the burning plain. ** Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings We sat and told the withering hours, Till Heaven unsealed its azure springs. And bade them leap in flashing showers." In a still finer vein is " The Plough-boy," which was written for the anniversary of the Berkshire Agricultural Society in October, 1849. Dr. Holmes was chairman of the committee upon the ploughing match; the large old church was, as usual on such occasions, crowded almost to suffocation, and when his turn came, he mounted half-way up the pulpit- stairs and read a report of which I quote a part: " Time and experience have sanctioned the custom of putting OLIVER WEXDELL HOLMES. 195 only plain, practical men upon this committee. Were it not so, the most awkward blunders would be constantly occurring. The inhabitants of our cities, who visit the country during the fine season, would find themselves quite at a loss if an overstrained politeness should place them in this position. Imagine a trader, or a professional man, from the capital of the state, unexpectedly called upon to act in rural matters. Plough-shares are to him shares that pay no dividends. A coulter, he supposes, has something to do with a horse. His notions of stock were obtained in Faneuil Hall market, where the cattle looked funnily enough, to be sure, compared with the living originals. He knows, it is true, that there is a difference in cattle, and would tell you that he prefers the sirloin breed. His children are equally unenlightened ; they know no more of the poultry -yard than what they have learned by having the chicken-pox, and playing on a Turkey carpet. Their small knowledge of wool-growing is ]am(b)entable. The history of one of these summer-visitors shows how im- perfect is his rural education. ^ He no sooner establishes him- self in the country than he begins a series of experiments. He tries to drain a marsh, but only succeeds in draining his own pockets. He ofiers to pay for carting off a compost heap ; but is informed that it. consists of corn and potatoes in an un- finished state. He sows abundantly, but reaps little or nothing, except with the implement which he uses in shaving, a pro- cess which is frequently performed for him by other people, though he pays no barber's bill. He builds a wire-fence and paints it green, so that nobody can see it. But he forgets to order a pair of spectacles apiece for his cows, who, taking offense at something else, take his fence in addition, and make an invisible one of it, sure enough. And, finally, having bought a machine to chop fodder, which chops off a good slice of his dividends, and two or three children's fingers, he con- cludes that, instead of cutting feed, he will cut farming ; and so sells out to one of those plain, practical farmers, such as you have honored by placing them on your committee, whose 196 TAGHCONIC. pockets are not so full when ho starts, but have fewer holes and not so many fingers in them. It must have been one of these practical men whose love of his pursuits led him to send in to the committee the following lines, which it is hoped will be accepted as a grateful tribute to the noble art whose successful champions are now to be named and rewarded." Dr. Holmes then read the poem now known to fame as the " The Plough-man," which, in his read- ing, all must have recognized as grand poetry. But I suspect that not one of the applauding audience — and probably not even the author himself — realized that they were listening to what would afterwards be recognized by the world's great critics as the finest georgic in any living language, or perhaps in any language whatever. I have my doubts if many understood to the full even, the exquisite fun of the ** report." Yielding to his own good nature and the soft persuasions of a committee of ladies, Dr. Holmes once contributed a couple of poems to a fancy fair in Pittsfield. The writer does not gather them into the fold of his published collection, and I do not know that it is quite fair to print them here; but, of course, they got into the newspapers of the day, and I cannot deprive you of the pleasure of reading at least one of them, even if the poet does consider it a trifle, too light for preservation. Each of the poems was enclosed in an envelope bearing a motto; and the right to a first and second choice, guided by these, was disposed of in a raffle, to the no small emolument of the object of the fair. EO-aJBING BEOOK. 19*? I think that the two pieces are now represented by at least a square yard of the quaint ecclesiastical heraldry which illuminates the gorgeous chancel window of St. Stephen's Church. The motto of the first envelope ran thus: " Faith is the conquering angel's crown ; Who hopes lor grace must ask it ; Look shrewdly ere you lay me down ; I'm Portia's leaden casket." The following verses were found within. ** Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art, Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care, And — hush, O hush thy beating heart ; The One thou lovest will be there." " Alas 1 not loved by thee alone. Thine idol ever prone to range : To-day all thine, to-morrow flown. Frail thing that every hour may change. ** Yet when that truant course is done, If thy lost wanderer reappear. Press to thy heart the only One That nought can make more truly dear ! " Within this paper was a smaller envelope, con- taining a dollar bill, and this explanation of the poet's riddle. " Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell If this is not a truthful letter ; This is the one (1) thou lovest well, And nought (0) can make thee k)ve it better (10). Though fickle, do not think it strange That such a, friend is worth possessing : For one that gold can never change Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing. 198 TAGHOONIC. You see now, in part, why our people claim a sort of joint ownership with Cambridge and Boston in Dr. Holmes and his fame. They have moreover a real affection for him, which leads them even to con- done his irreverent sneer at Pittsfield's Old Elm, as " sadly in want of a new wig of green leaves : " and the charity which covers a multitude of sins could stretch its skirts no further than that. He has so much human nature in him that, in spite of some social and educational impediments, he, every little while, gets right down to the heart of things. That is the Berkshire version of the " one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin." And that is what makes Dr. Holmes the most popular of scholarly writers. Do you suppose the world would tolerate so much learning in any body else ? A very few rods beyond the Wendell Farms, we come to Arrow-head, the fine estate formerly owned by Herman Melville. Mr. Melville is a grandson of that Major Thomas Melville, who, a few generations ago, was known to all Bostonians as the last genuine specimen of the gentleman of the old school left in the city, the last wearer of the costume of the Revo- lution, and the last survivor of the Harbor tea party. His son, of the same name and rank, was commandant of the military post at Pittsfield during the war of 1812, and, after the war, president of the Agricultural Society, and otherwise a leader of men in Berkshire, besides being a man of rare culture. AYith him, his nephew, Herman, was domiciliated for a time, while in his youth, he, played school-master in a wild dis- trict — under the shadow of Rock Mountain, I think. HERMAN MELVILLE. 199 It was probably the memory of this early experi- ence which led Mr. Melville in 1850, in the first flush of his literary success, to retire to Pittsfield, and soon purchase a fine estate with a spacious old house; ad- joining, in the rear, the farm of his early residence with his uncle. This quaint old mansion, he made the home of the most free-hearted hospitality; and also a house of many stories — writing in it Moby Dick and many other romances of the sea, and also " The Piazza Tales," which took their name from a piazza built by their author upon the north end of the house, and commanding a bold and striking view of Greylock and the intervening valley. " My chimney and I, " a humorous and spicy essay, of which the cumbersome old chimney — overbearing tyi-ant of the home — is the hero, was also ^\Titten here. And so, of course, was " October Mountain ," a sketch of mingled philosophy and word-painting, which found its inspiration in the massy and brill- ian" tints presented by a prominent and thickly- wooded j^rojection of Washington Mountain, as seen from the south-eastern windows at Arrow-Head, on a fine day after the early frosts. Mr. Melville was almost a zealot in his love of Berkshire scenery, and there was no more ardent and indefatigable excur- sionist among its hills and valleys. And now, let us drive on to the Roaring Brook, which — as you may possibly recollect — we set out to visit. Our way lies through pleasant rustic scenes and the pretty agricultural hamlet of New Lenox, 200 TAGHCONIC. Passing this, and guided by the sound of the brook, we come to the mouth of the Tory's Glen, through which its waters leap, tumbling down. From the broad summit of Washington Mountain, the brook comes dashing down the deep ravine, Bmiling in the rare sunshine, glooming in the fre- quent shade, brawling with the impeding boulders, toying in amber pools with the mossy banks; but for the most part rushing impatiently from fall to fall, for five restless miles, until, just without the glen, it loses itself in the indolent curves of the Housatonic, which here puts on its gentlest mood. It must be a sweet relief to the water — vexed and wearied by its rough passage among the sharp- angled flint rocks, and by its arduous labors in turn- ing mill wheels — thus to repose at length in the flower-bordered bed of the river, and wander about the meadows, in what leisurely and graceful curves it will. Just below the entrance to the Tory's Glen, at a point in the road where it winds around the base of Melville's grand October Mountain, the curves dis- play themselves in a breadth of beauty which they rarely exhibit north of Stockbridge, and help make up a much admired view. It is the beginning of that system of beauty which distinguishes the Stock- bridge valley, and affords a kindly relief to the eye, if it wearies of mountains, lakes and waterfalls. One warm October day, many years ago, a three miles walk in pleasant company, brought me to the smiling and fertile valley, just without the glen. BOARING BROOK. 201 and following directions given with kindly zeal, we soon entered it mentally contrasting the courtesies of rustic life in New Lenox, with the urbanities of Broadway, not to any flattering extent in the interest of the city. You can see the black opening in the mountain side which indicates the location of the glen from many points in the village of Pittsfield, and if you ask the people what it is they will perhaps tell you, if they are of the fanciful sort : " Oh, that is the Jaws of Darkness; " and you will reply, " Oh yes, I see it is ! " And, although you would not be quite correct, the contrast between the cheerful light of the hamlet and the wild, sombre solitude of the mountain gorge is strikingly impressive. From the shadeless field, you enter upon overarched paths — among mossy trees, along precipitous rocks, under the shadow of overhanging mountains. The heart feels the change instantly, and conforms itself in- stinctively to it. Here we find again those adamantine blocks of flint-rock which characterize and rudely adorn this whole mountain range. Sometimes they lie con- fusedly upon the mountain's steep slope; then, again, they impede the rushing course of the brook. In the bed of the stream, the ever-rolling current, in the course of ages, has polished the surface and rounded the edges of even these obdurate masses. It is startling to think by how many years of constant at- trition the soft flowing wave accomplished its purpose. How many centuries ago did the savage stoop to 202 TAGHCONIC. drink at this mountain stream, and think of nothing but the cooling draught — least of all that the smooth, gliding fluid was bearing away a portion of the solid rock whereon he stood, to form a soil for a conquering race ! These rocks form the bed of the brooks; and are piled up along its banks in mad confusion, with crevices and dens between and beneath them, which iu former days sheltered a tenement-house popula- tion of wild beasts. In one cave which lies under the road. Revolutionary tradition affirms that an outlawed Tory, one Gideon Smith of Stockbridge, once found refuge for weeks. It is a dreary habita- tion — not in the ornamented style of grotto at all — a couple of small rude chambers built of huge over- lapping flint-rocks, without a pendent stalactite or sparkling encrustation, nor even a grotesquely shapen fracture, to relieve their barren walls. Not a desirable residence, in any respect; and, since the war has been ended for a hundred years, and it can do the country no harm — and, especially, as he is dead and it can do him no good — I sincerely pity that hunted Tory, driven out to make his home among wild beasts. Although, I dare say, he came out, as often as he dared, to sun himself, as the t)adgers do, in the openings of the wood, if he could find any in that shady retreat. I do not know what offense had made him espe- cially obnoxious to the committees of vigilance, to which the safety of the young republic was en- trusted; but there is a touching anecdote of him, Tory's glen. 203 which, if it was known, ought to have softened even tne asperities of war times. It is to the effect that, when concealed in some hiding-place at home, he made his wife cause all his children to pass daily before the crevice which supplied him with light and air; so that he might see their innocent faces and be comforted with the knowledge of their health and safety. ISTot a bad man at heart, that ! Smith seems to have been often a " hunted " man. In May, 1776, he harbored a certain Captain McKay, a British prisoner of war, who had escaped from Hart- ford, by the aid of John Graves, a Pittsfield Tory. Smith's treasonable hospitality becoming known to the committees, the hue and cry was raised against him; and a party, of which Linus Parker, a famous Pittsfield sharp-shooter, was one, repaired to his house. His family reported him not at home, but the seekers, confident that he was in the barn, summoned him to surrender. He appeared at the half -open door, peered curiously around, and, after some parley, gave him- self up. Smith and Parker were nevertheless per- sonally upon friendly terms; and after the war, the former being, with his wife, on a visit to Parker's house. Smith reverted to the incident described, and said that when he opened the barn-door, being an extraordinary runner, he felt certain of making good his escape; but, seeing Parker with his famous rifle in hand, he Tvas afraid to make the attempt. " And now, Parker," he added, " I want to know if you really would have shot me -? " " As quick as I ever shot a deer ! " was the reply. 204 TAGHCONIC. " Then it would have been all over with me," ex- claimed his friend, feeling that he spoke in truthful earnest, and trembling at the memory of the danger which he had escaped. Such are the amenities of civil war. There were a good many Tories in Berkshire county, as in every other; made so doubtless, as in all civil conflicts men range themselves, both on the better and the worse side, some from base and selfish, some from pure and noble, but most from mixed, motives. The Tories of Berkshire — it might be courteous to call them " loyalists," but it would hardly be distinctive, since loyalty to the crown meant treason to the people — the Tories of Berkshire were mostly of the wealthier, the magisterial, and the more refined, classes; and of those in other grades of society who were bound to them by one tie or another. Not that all, or even a majority, of these classes failed under the test which tried men's soula: but, as ever, wealth and ofiicial position proved powerful persuaders against revolu- tion: and, early in the war at least, the leading Tories evidently believed in the prophecies which they ut- tered so unctuously that, to Whig ears, they sounded unpleasantly like threats: to wit, that the king's generals would come down upon the rebellious colony from Canada, with his resistless army and his savage allies; and that Berkshire would be the first county to feel his vengeance, as it had been the first to pro- voke it by suppressing his courts. It was a prudent error which made most of the Tories; they knew not what this means: " he that seeketh his life, shall lose toey's glen. 206 it " — lacked the virtue which risks all in conflict for the right; and had neither the daring wisdom nor the wise courage which plucks the flower, safety, from the thistle, danger. Before the war was over, most of them were — often by rather heroic remedies — cured of their perversity — at least as to its external mani- festation. I fear the cure was not always radical; but it sometimes was, as in one instance which I am going to cite for you. No doubt, however, many were religiously sincere in their loyalty: and all were able to make a very plausible, even if hollow, defence from Holy Writ. When a man has made up his mind to do a mean, vicious or cruel thing in his own interest, a text of scripture, which seems to commend or justify it, is very soothing. I think some of us can recollect when the garbled text " servants obey your masters," and St. Paul's injunction to a fugitive slave — Onesimus by name — salved the conscience of almost an entire nation, sorely lacerated by all the rest of the New Testament, to say nothing of the Deca- logue, the Declaration of Independence and the great book of nature. The Tories could make out a much better case than that; as you see by glancing at the head of this article. Those of them who were, or had been, magistrates or officers in the militia had moreover taken the most iron-clad of oaths, not only to bear faith and true allegiance to King George, but to the best of their power, to defend him against all traitorous conspiracies, and to make all such known to him. " All these thinsjs," said the 18 • 206 TAGHOONIC. subscribers to this oath, " I do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear according to the express words by me spoken, and according to the plain conunon-sense and understanding of the same words, without any equivocation or mental reservation whatever: " and, however the majority of good men might find that in the conduct of " the man George," which released them from the obligations of that oath, and discharged them from all allegiance to him, I hope that you will not bestow unmitigated reprobation upon those whose tender conscience, and the loyalty to " His Sacred Majesty," sedulously in- stilled by education into their heart of hearts, re- fused to be so relieved. I am-speaking of moral condemnation only: how- ever tenderly we may appreciate the sentiment of natural, but mistaken, loyalty which governed the conscientious adherent to the royal cause, the com- mittees of safety and vigilance could take little ac- count of it. Stern necessity, and duty to a holier cause, imperatively demanded that it should be re- pressed with a strong hand. And it was done; harshly perhaps and unwisely at times; but effectu- ally, and not with half the vindictiveness and cruelty which would surely have been visited upon the committee-men had the Revolution failed. Pardon me for this prolixity; but I am heart-sick of the overstrained magnanimity, falsely so called, which concentrates all its charities and praises for the defeated champions of the wrong, and reserves all its censures and denunciations for the triumph- CONVERTING A TORY. 207 ant defenders of the right. If I recall some of the traits which relieve somewhat the odium justly due to even conscientious support of tyranny and antagonism to freedom, or something of the imper- fections which marred the record of the patriots, let me not be construed as denying that, to the memory of the rudest sincere Whig, honor and glory are due which that of the most refined and con- scientious Tory must never share. And now let me to my stories, the first of which I heard from that best, and most abundantly sup- plied, of all Berkshire story tellers. Governor George N. Briggs; who, by the by, I am sure would have sanctioned the sentiments I have just expressed. In the early part of the Revolution there lived in Lenox a staunch old Tory, who openly professed his allegiance to King George, and his hostility to the rebel cause; but, as he confined his opposition to words, and was greatly respected and beloved by his fellow citizens, for his many excellent qualities as a friend and neighbor, he. was allowed for a long while to enjoy his opinions unmolested. But the contest between England and the colonies waxed every day more bitter, and the Committee of Safety began to be troubled with doubts if it were con- sistent with their duty to permit one who so loudly vaunted his toryism to live among them, and en- courage others to commit outrages of which he would not be personally guilty. The matter was often a subject of deliberation, but the committee were reluctant to act. At length, 208 TAGHCONIC. however, in some dark and trying hour — perhaps in the bitterness of defeat, perhaps after hearing of the horrors of Wyoming — they resolved to move. Or, perhaps, as happened in some emergencies, their zeal was quickened by orders from head-quarters. At any rate, paying a visit to the Tory, they in- formed him, they had come to the conclusion that his example was too pernicious to the cause of liberty to be any longer permitted. They regretted the circumstance, but their duty was imperative; in short, he must take the oath of allegiance to the colonies — or swing. The oath was peremptorily and unhesitatingly re- fused; and the next step was an extemporaneous gallows, erected in the public street, beneath which t£e recusant was placed, and the rope tightened around his throat, but immediately loosened and the oath again proffered, and again declined. All arguments and threats proving abortive, the contemptuous loyalist was again drawn up, and left to hang until he became purple in the face — care being taken to lower him and apply restoratives, before life was extinct. Consciousness being once more restored, the oath was again tendered, and he was entreated to yield to the necessity of the case: but his stubborn spirit was not ' yet broken; here- fused to renounce his allegiance to the Crown. Things had now come to an awkward pass; and the committee, who possibly were by this time sorry they had taken the matter in hand, retired to the tavern for consultation. The New-England com CONVEETING A TOBY. 209 mittee-man could no more deliberate without his mug of flip than the New Amsterdam burgher with- out his pipe of tobacco. But whatever counsels of mercy there may have been under that genial in- fluence (of which the prisoner was not denied his consoling cup) it was flnally resolved that, having put their hands to the plough, it would never do to turn back. Regard for dignity and the authority of the committee forbade' it. In short the good of the cause required that the prisoner should take the oath, or suffer death for his contumacy. The loyalist received their decision with unflinch- ing determination not to yield a hair's breadth in what he believed to be the right. The committee were equally resolved, and he was again drawn up — perhaps with some angry violence. And at once it seemed that the work of death had been too effectu- ally done. It may be that the committee had not designed to carry their measures to so extreme a length. Pos- sibly they doubted if the authority given them to ** handle the Tories " was sufficient to warrant them in it, for, although the people of Berkshire, from 1774 to 1781, would admit no courts of law among them — submitting only to their own committees — there was a tacit exception of capital cases, which were tried before the Supreme Court at Springfield. But, whatever may have been the feeling or intention of the committee in their anger, the sight they now wit- nessed might well bring back their old affection for a tried friend and kind neighbor. They hastened to 210 TAGHCOJSriC. cut down the body, and use every effort to undo their fatal work. There seemed at first little hope of reanimating the senseless clay; but at length the limbs slightly relaxed their rigidity, the eyes moved, and the livid hue began to disappear from the cheek. Conscious- ness slowly and painfully returned; the victim sat upright — and the question was again asked: "Will you swear ? " " Yes," faintly responded the half -dead convert to patriotism. A few moments afterwards, as he was sitting be- fore the tavern fire and a glass of steaming punch — furnished by the order, if not at the expense, of the committee — warming himself after his dangerous exposure to the chills of the shadow of death, he was heard to mutter thoughtfully to himself — " Well ! this is a hard way to make Whigs — but Wll do it I " And, accordingly, from that day to the close of the war, he was one of the most zealous and unwavering of the patriots. Another story illustrates still more remarkably the same trait of unflinching integrity. It was told to me by the late Hon. Henrj^ Hubbard, who was^well versed in Berkshire traditions; but I remember to have read it in my childhood, and, although I cannot' recall the name of the book in which I found it, it is likely that I have used some of the phraseology which Avas impressed upon my youthful memory. It seems that, at some time during the Revolution, one Nathan Jackson of Tyringham — a romantic and beautiful farming town of Southern Berkshire — was A Tory's integrity. 211 accused of the crime of high treason against the United Colonies, or States. The trial was to be at Springfield, but the court did not sit for some weeks — during which interval Jackson was confined in the Berkshire county gaol, at Great Barrington, which was in so dilapidated a condition that he might easily have escaped at any time, had he not scorned an act which might indicate cowardice, or reluctance to suffer for his principles. Unwilling, however, to waste his time in idleness, he applied to the sheriff for permission to go out daily to work, promising to return faithfully to the prison every night. So well was his character for integrity established, that, al- though he was committed on a capital charge, and did not deny the facts alleged against him, the sheriff did not hesitate to comply with his request. And so well was that confidence deserved, that the prisoner never failed to return to his quarters punctu- ally every night to be locked up. What follows is a still stronger proof of the re- liance placed upon his word. The court was to be held at Springfield, and the journey to it was then a weary one, over rough forest-roads. Jackson was the only prisoner to be carried on, and the sheriff complained bitterly of the trouble to which he was subjected, particularly at this busy season of the year. The Tory told him that it was quite unne- cessary for him to go — he could go just as well by himself; and again he was trusted, and set out alone and on foot, to go fifty miles through the woods to surrender himself to be tried for his life, upon a 212 TAGHCONIC. charge where he could not hope for an acquittal, and by a tribunal whose right to judge him he could conscientiously deny. Surely, if ever a man had an excuse to palliate a violation of confidence, it was he; the idea, however, seems never to have occurred to him. Luckily for him, on his way he was overtaken by the Hon. Mr. Edwards, then a member of the Execu- tive Council, to attend a session of which body h© was then on his way to Boston. This gentleman entered into conversation with Jackson, and, with- out disclosing his own name or official position, learned the nature of his companion's journey, and something of his history. Pondering upon what he had heard, Mr. Edwards pursued his way to Boston; and Jackson, trudging on, soon reached Springfield, and surrendered himself, was tried; did not deny the facts alleged against him, and, as a matter of course, was found guilty and condemned to death. In due course the petitions for pardon of persons under sentence of death, were considered by the Honorable Council which then exercised the su- preme executive authority in Massachusetts. After all had been read Mr. Edwards asked if none had been received in favor of Nathan Jackson of Tyring- ham. The reply was that there was none; and a member of the council, who had been present at the trial, remarked that the case was one of such un- doubted and aggravated guilt, and the attachment of the condemned man to the King's cause was so inveterate, that there could be no reason for granting 213 a pardon in this case, unless it was extended in every other. Mr. Edwards, in reply, related his adventure with Jackson on the road, and also his story, which he had taken pains to have substantiated by the sheriff of Berkshire. A murmur of admiration went round the council board; it was unanimously agreed that such a man ought not to die upon the gallows, and, after some brief discussion, an unconditional pardon was made out and dispatchM to Springfield. The stories suggested by the Tory's Glen have led us far away from it; and we will return only for the purpose of passing again through the pleasant village of New Lenox and its sunny valley; and to answer a question asked me by a companion with whom I once rode through it: "Has so pretty a place no story ? " To be sure it has; but of that kind which is best told in verse. Sunnyvale. One sunny summer afternoon, The gladdest in all joyous June, Happiest man beneath heaven's dome, A farmer brought his young wife home ; And, as they reached the mountain's brow. And saw his cottage smile below, He bade his bonnie bride mark well How gaily there the sunshine fell. June came again — a babe was born. It came once more — the child was gone : Yet, though the farmer's face grew sad. 214 TAGHCONIC. A smile of new-found peace, it had. He strove the mother's grief to calm, And said the June days brought a balm ; For something more than sunshine fell From where their child had gone to dwell. June came again — the farmer's wife Was passing from our mortal life ; They laid her in. our si. nniest glade Before its frailest flowers could fade. That year the farmer did not mark If earth or sky were bright or dark, Yet still the careless sunshine fell Gaily, as if all things were well, June cometh now. From scenes the dead Had left too lone, the farmer fled ; And strangers, from his lonely hearth, Dispel the gloom with household mirth, While not a tone in any voice Says some have wept, where they rejoice; And still the blithesome sunlight falls As gaily round those cottage walls. XYH. BASH-BISH AND THE DOME. ** For here these pathless mountains free Gave shelter to my love and me, And every rock and every stone Bare witness that he was my own." — GampbeU. Doubtless the wildest and most awe-inspiriag gorge among the Berkshire Hills is the deep and shaggy recess in the western side of Mount Wash' ington, into which the famous cascade, Bash-Bish Falls, comes dashing in a striking series of bold leaps and plunges. Speaking of the passage down- ward, along the side of the little cataract, a writer familiar with the Alps, but a little inclined to start- ling statements, says ; " the descent over the rocks, along the awful rent made in the mountain, was wild as an Alpine gorge, and even more perilous." Mount Washington is the huge mountain pile — a portion of the Taconic Range, which fills the south-western corner of Berkshire. In grandeur it is rivalled by Greylock alone among our hills; the inhabited portion having an elevation of from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet abo^ve the level of the surrounding valleys, while the summit rises to an 216 TAGHCONIC, altitude five or six hundred feet greater. Its grand- eur, however, comes from other peculiarities as well as from its height. It has also long been famed for scenes of picturesque beauty; and has of late gained new renown and interest as the locality of Sky Farm; the romantic home of the charming child- poets, Elaine and Dora Goodale. K you chance to be in the vicinity of Great Bar- ington, or if you desire, and have leisure for, a pro- longed drive, your better way to Bash-Bish is through that town and Egremont, past Bryant's Green River and over Mount Washington. That is certainly the old fashioned poetic route; but I am going to tell you how the falls looked, one day, to a field-meet- ing of certain scientific associations of Troy, Albany and Pittsfield. Bash-Bish lies at an equal distance from Albany and Pittsfield, and an hour's ride on the Boston and Albany railroad brought the excursionists to Chat- ham, midway between the two — while another hour on the Harlem road carried the united party to the pleasant village of Copake, renowned chiefly for its iron works. The location of the village is unique: with an out- look over the smiling fields of New York, on the west, while the frowning mountains of Massachusetts almost over-hang it on the east. The falls are about a mile and a half from the village, and not many rods east of the state boundary line. The road to them is delightful. Indeed the first glimpses of it were so enticing that a majority BASH-BISH. 217 of our party preferred to walk over it, although our hosts — the Troy and Albany Associations — had provided liberally for riding, and the kindly people who welcomed us, gave warning that the ladies, at least, should reserve all their strength for the falls. After lingering awhile in the village, we moved on, to the great stone stack of the iron blast-furnace: the most picturesque of manufacturies, and the only one which adds to, rather than mars, the attractive- ness of a region like this. A little further, and we came to the handsome and finely located Swiss cottage of Mr. Alfred Douglas, of New York, the proprietor of Bash-Bish and its romantic surroundings; where, by his hospitable in- vitation, we wandered at will through the spacious grounds and deliciously-filled conservatories. Even after leaving this charming resting place, most of us did not heed the hurrying summons we began to hear in the impatient roar of the cascade; but dallied listlessly in the park-like groves, by the shady way- side, or on the banks of the stream whose dashing, flashing, gleaming rocks and amber pools reminded us of our own Roaring Brook. Still the day was not very far advanced when we came where the gorge, widening a little, throws up its barriers into bare cliffs and shaggy, precipitous, or pillar-like, eminences. Through the top of the central cliff, the stream has worn down its way, leaving its walls on either side like huge horns. Be- tween these in no very great volume — but snowy, silvery, summer coud, foam-like — its waters come 19 218 TAGHCONIC. down 111 a succession of bold leaps, divided midway by a rocky shelf into " The Twin Falls." A column worthy, almost, of the Alps or the Yosemite. One peculiarity of the basin at the foot of the falls, is the great variety of views which it affords of the cascade and the rocks which mingle grandly or grotesquely with it. And, wandering from point to point in search of these — now standing on the rudest of rustic bridges, and now on slippery rocks; here on bare and gravelly beaches, and there under green branches — scores of laughing groups helped to fill up and enliven the landscape for each other. This for half an hour, or more; then ambition seized them. " By that sin fell the angels " — Shakespeare's angels; and the danger seemed 'imminent that it would have a similar result for ours. But the first effect was quite the reverse: it carried them right up — almost straight up — the steepest of all possible log-and- rock-encumbered paths, to the Eagle's Nest, Prospect Rock, and all manner of preposterous places. And grosser mortals, whether laden with scientific lore or otherwise, went along per-force. It was impossible in the brief time of our visit to make a thorough survey of the falls, and I there- fore condense the detailed account of President Hitchcock, who devoted three visits to it: From a spot upon Mount Washinsrton whose beauty the President glowingly euloofizes, one descends, two thousand feet, to find himself by a noisy stream, about a rod wide, which for a short distance, tumbles rapidly down between perpendicular cliifs of talcose slate, a liuudred feet high. Soon, striking a huge barrier of this rock, the brook turns, at BASH-BISH. 219 right angles, to the left, and for fifty or sixty rods, rushes down a declivity of eighty degrees. Here the water has per- formed its greatest wonders. Sinking its bed for unknown ages, and at the same time beating with its waters on the edges of the slate, it has worn a dome-shaped cavity to the depth of one hundred and ninety-four feet. At the bottom of this cavity, one is at the foot of a vast wall of rock [the base of " The Eagle's nest,"] which encloses him on the east, south and west ; and as it rises, curves outward. So that, looking upward, he sees it, at the height of nearly two hun- dred feet, projecting full twenty-five feet from its base. From the uppermost fall, the stream leaps in several smaller cascades perhaps sixty feet in the aggregate, half hidden by huge boulders and over-hanging trees. At length we arrive at the principal fall. The water divided in twain by a huge boulder poised upon its brink, falls over a nearly straight and per- pendicular precipice, about sixty feet, into a deep basin. Anj single view, as this detailed description shows, can take in but a small portion of the scenery of Bash-Bish Gorge. President Hitchcock estimates the perpendicular height from the top of the highest precipice to the bottom of the lowest fall at three hundred and twenty feet. Among the striking prospects offered by these stupendous heights, there was a very clear one that some unfortunates would glance off the paths, slippery with the needles of evergreen foliage, and, going sheer down that fearful distance, get undis- tinguishably mashed upon the bare rock beneath: which, for the moment, would have been disagree- able, however much of pleasing interest it might have added to the scene for future visitors. But the day passed with no more thrilling incident than a sudden plunge from an insecure plank into the cold 220 TAGHCONIC. stream. Never was so adventurous climbing with so little of startling adventure. As the afternoon wore to a close, we gathered for the favorite landscape of the gorge: that from Sun- set Cliff, which rises a few rods below the fall. Here the view is down the gorge, westward. For a mile, there is a wooded glen with the stream thread- ing its silver way through it, while at its termination two abrupt hills — Cedar and Elk Mountains — rise on either side, like Herculean pillars, to the height of more than a thousand feet. Near the end of the glen we see the fitly placed cottage of Mr. Douglas, with the American flag floating in grace and beauty by its side. But this bold and pleasing picture is only the foreground to the grand view of the Cats- kills, which are seen to loom up in the distance lofty, majestic, dim and cloud-like. In perfectly clear days their outlines are sharply cut on the blue sky or sunset clouds. One may doubt which of the two aspects is the most to be enjoyed. We were en- raptured with that which was vouchsafed us. The explorations of the day over, carriages were more in request than they had been in the morning, although an enthusiastic minority preferred to stroll back as they came. Then we dined luxuriously in the rude but comfortable freight depot: the Albany and Troy Associations still being our hosts; and Mr. H. S. Goodale, of Sky Farm, adding to the fare two fat turkeys, one of them including in its dressing a witty poem of welcome, and the other a mineral- BASH-BISH. 221 ogical tribute in the shape of a superb specimen of kyanite. Finally we gathered in the tasteful little church, to ascertain what anybody had done for science during the day. I had not observed that any soul had cared for anything except, with might and main, to enjoy the scenery, the scrambles, the ram- bles, the climbing and all the rest of the woodland jollity. Somebody has said that notes to a fine poem are like an anatomical lecture upon a savory joint; and I greatly feared that some such comparison would fit a scientific report upon Bash-Bish. But those field-meeting savans, with their eyes trained to special observation, are at home everywhere with their minute philosophy ; and everywhere find sources of rare enjoyment which, however they may have before been " caviare to the multitude," they contrive to make the multitude enjoy with them. In some departments, Bash-Bish had proved a rich field. Professor Peck, the State Botanist of New York, and a specialist in fungi, had detected in the gorge five species which were new to him, as well as some rare and beautiful varieties of the fringed gentian. Mr. Homes,* the State Librarian, had made a study of the peculiar and valuable hematite ores. Others contributed their share of scientific dis- cussion : so that the day was found to have been not altogether squandered in pleasure. The notes to the poetry of the occasion were furnished, in anything but an anatomical style, by 222 TAGHCONIC. learned and quaint Professor Tatlock of Pittsfield. "They might be epitomized, said a writer in an Albany newspaper, by the line of Horace: NuUus argento color abdito m torris : or, in other words, what is all the beauty of nature that we have been admiring, without men and women — and especially the Albany Institute and their friends — to admire it ? " There seemed nobody to say anything for the really very interesting local history of Mount Wash- ington and its vicinity. I might indeed, myself, have told the little story which I am now going to tell you; but there were reasons why I should avoid doing so. The Swiss Lovers. You may have read — or, at any rate, whether you have read it or not, it is true — that, at a very early date, there was a Swiss colony of iron-makers upon Mount Washington. Miss Sedgwick asserts that they gave the name of Bash-Bish to the cascade — that being the patois of their canton for a small water- fall. But I have my doubts as to that: first, because two or three Swiss gentlemen of whom I made inquiry were not aware of anything of the kind; and, secondly, because Dr. O'Callaghan, the New York historian, once pointed me to an old vocabulary of the language of some western Indian tribes — in Illinois, I think — in which Bash-a-Bish is given as signifying a water-fall. Still Miss Sedgwick may be correct, as she had visited in Switzerland, and was THE SWISS LOVEES. 223 the intimate friend of the historian, Sismondi, and his family. A resident of one canton in Switzerland is not necessarily familiar with the patois of another, and makers of Indian vocabularies are a long way from infallible, as I grieve to know. But, however it may have been with regard to Bash-Bish, Miss Sedgwick is certainly good authority for the assertion that the Swiss colony gave the name of Mount Rhighi to the locality where they settled, in honor of the famous mountain they had left be- hind. She was a descendant of the most prominent of the early settlers of southern Berkshire, and was likely to be well informed in regard to its history. One more preliminary. The brown hematites, which abound in Berkshire, from Mount Washington to Lanesboro' and Cheshire — as well as here at Co- pake, and in the neighboring Connecticut town of Salisbury — are among the most precious of iron ores. They are among the most beautiful, also, when, as they often do, they assume the stalactical form. The black and glossy bubbling shape of many speci- mens gives the impression that they were made by heat; but the real agency was water. The hematite beds were certainly deposited from the decomposition of primitive, or magnetic, ores which once lay at points higher than they. Break one of those glossy pieces, and you shall see the stalactical crystalization in exquisitely delicate and symmetrical radiation. It is worth one's while, even in the region of rarest landscape, to stop curiously by the side of a rusty ore-heap. There is nothing more admirable in the 224 TAGHOONIC. painting of the loveliest flower, nothing more won- derful in the upheaval of the mightiest hills, than you may find in the formation of those myriad crystals, about to be cast by rude hands into the seven-fold heated furnace. When the fields were first cleared these ores, scattered in boulders over the surface, or not deeply buried, were easily accessible, and iron works sprang up everywhere: not the costly and massive structures you now see, but forges, scarcely more in appearance than expanded blacksmith shops; although they made iron that was iron. It was this slightness of structure and consequent change of location as often as convenience required, that renders it impossible for me to tell you precisely where the forge and iron- master's dwelling of my story stood: but you will observe that it could not have been far from the Bash-Bish gorge; perhaps — who knows? — on the very site of the present Copake furnace. Doubtless you think this a queer, matter-of-fact introduction to a love-story. But this will not be much of a story, after all. You must recollect that it might have been a field-meeting report. And, moreover, the love-stories in this volume are, none of them, mere things of fancy; but the genuine growth of this Berkshire soil — or, at the least, fixtures attached to the reality. And there is poetry in the iron-master's trade, Listen to but one verse of a spirited song put into his mouth bv J. E. Dow: THE SWISS LOVERS. 225 •* I delve in the mouutain's dark recess. And build my fires in the wilderness ; The red rock crumbles beneath my blast, While the tall trees tremble and stand aghast. At midnight's hour my furnace glows, And the liquid ore in red streams flows, Till the mountain's heart is melted down. And seared by fire is its sylvan crown." Yes, the monotony of woodland excursions by day is grandly relieved by a visit to an iron furnace by night. And the ladies should know that the light from the glowing metal is a great intensifier of some kinds of beauty. And now to my story. It must be more than a hundred years since there lived near the base of the Bernese Jura, two men quite opposite in character, and — as one of them, at least, conceived ■ — of somewhat different ranks in life. Peter Goubermann earned a moderate liveli- hood in a narrow recess of the mountain, which, besides the necessary room for his forge and dwell- ing, had barely sjTace for a modest garden, and pasturage for a single cow. It was a laborious and humble life he led; but he had little ambition to exchange it for one of more wealth and ease; and none at all to rise in the social scale above the station which liis fathers had occupied before him for he knew not how many generations. Content that he was secure in the reasonable comforts of his home, and that it was safe from the terrors of the avalanche — whose crash sometimes roused him from his peaceful slumbers to utter a thankful prayer and 226 TAGHCONIC. fall quietly asleep again — almost his sole pride was in his forge, whose iron was unrivalled in the Berne market, and his garden which, for its rods, had not an equal in the canton. But, if he exulted in these, his chief pride was his pretty daughter, Annette; not his pride alone, but the pride of the whole neighborhood; its pride and flower, by the consenting voice of all, except an envious few. And the envy must have been base indeed, which could sour those whom it pos- sessed against one so unspoiled by flattery as An- nette Goubermann — the gentlest, kindliest and most unassuming, as well as the most beautiful, of Bernese maidens: as all accounts agree. The moral antipodes of that Swiss Yalley-Forge was only a mile and a half distant from it, where the possessions of Anton Yon Stachel, the great landed proprietor of that region began. The rich man had commenced life with Peter Goubermann; and as plain Anton Stachel, the poorer of the two. But he was of that class against whom the prophet Isaiah pronounced the curse: ** Woe unto them that join house to house, That lay field to field, till there be no place, That they may be placed alone in the earth," And he succeeded so well that it seemed as though he would finally leave no place in his mountain mi- crocosm for any neighbor. The superstitious peo- ple said he had discovered the philosopher's stone, or possessed some talisman of that sort: and so he had; but it was only his own stony heart, that grew THE SWISS LOVERS. 227 harder and harder every prosperous year. There are many people who prosper under the same poten- tial charm; but wise old Isaiah knew what he was prophecying: it is but a bitter woe to them all at last. As the rich man grew in wealth, he increased also in vanity, and either discovered, or pretended to discover, some far-away connection with a gentle German family; whereupon, assuming gentility to himself, he jerked an aristocratic syllable into his plebeian name, and became Anton Von Stachel. That is, he so called himself; and all the neighbors, who held him in awe* so addressed him, although the high and mighty council of the canton contemptu- ously persisted in enrolling him simply as " Stachel, yeoman." And he almost bit his tongue through with vexation when he was compelled to answer to the humble patronymic of which his honest father had been proud. In republican Switzerland, the legitimate dis- tinctions of social rank are not very marked; but, as ' in republican America, the craving for them, such as they are, often half crazes the unfortunates upon whose vanity it takes hold; and poor, rich, Stuchel — now with, and now without, the " Von " — was a very sad case of this mental malady. His social ambi- tion possessed his soul almost equally with his avidity to add field to field in^ what he called his "domain." Indeed the two seemed only different developments of the same consuming passion. The gossips said, in whispers among themselves — 228 TAGHCONIC. that he had worried his poor wife to death by his attempts to make her conform lo his notions of gentility, assume superiority over the friends of her youth, and even half disown her own family rela- tions. It is certain that, what with his vanity, his tyranny and his absurdity, he led her a most un- happy life, in a vain attempt to conquer her aver- sion to falsehood and pretence, and check her generous charities. It is certain moreover that, with all due submission in things reasonable, she made a brave, honest, and womanly resistance to wrong and folly, while she could. And then she died. Whether the gossips were right as to the cause of her death, I shall not at this distance of time pretend to say; but in their mysterious female Vehme- Gericht — that shadowy tribunal which j^revails in all lands, and holding its secret sessions undetected in the midst of crowds, deals doom to high and low, as insidiously and irresistibly as the viewless angel of the plague — in this grewsome conclave, the gossips continued to mutter judgments. And none among them was more positive than this; that Madame Stachel had left a son who had a deal of the mother in him — or, as the more emphatic put it, " was all mother " — and that he would one day worry the life out of the old man, unless he fore- stalled him in that pleasing process. As the boy, Hermann, grew up to be a fine, bold, generous-hearted young man, it began to look as though the doom pronounced by the feminine THE SWISS LOVERS. 229 Vehme-Gericht against the house of Stachel, would befall it. The whole neighborhood rang with stories of the wrangles between the father arid the son; al- though even the old man's most cringing adherents were compelled to admit, when pressed to the wall, that Hermann was disobedient only to his most odious commands. Of course in due time, the young man lost his heart to the Pride of the Valley. There was nothing strange in that; all the youth of the canton suffered in the same way. The peculiarity of this case was that the honest Annette, rather than Hermann should be robbed, gave her own in exchange. There was a little halcyon period of courtship; but when the betrothal was fully determined upon, neither Father Goubermann nor the young people, were of the mind to make a clandestine affair of it. That was not in their truthful natures. Perhaps, too, they did not anticipate the stubborn and violent opposition with which the elder Stachel received the announcement of his son's intentions. To be sure, the iron-master was not rich, and not even the prefix of, " Von," could make the name of Goubermann sound otherwise than peasant-like; but then he could afford his daughter a decent dower; and, as for his name, there was not one in all Switzerland which stood higher for the integrity and sterling worth of .its owner. And, then, everybody knew that An. nette might have gone to the best mansion, or one of the best, in the city of Berne,- as the bride of the wealthiest young burgher there; and what was more, 20 230 TAGHCONIC. a right worthy fellow. But the Yalley-Forge match would have thwarted one of the fondest schemes of Stachel's ambition, and he set his face against it as flintily as though it had been his heart. I need not tell in detail the story of the long months of waiting and hoping, loving and hating, threatenings and defiances. Suffice it, that Father Goubermann would not hear of any marriage with- out the consent of Father Stachel, at least until further effort was made to obtain it; nor would he listen to Hermann's plan of learning the iron-maker's art, in order that he might make himself inde- pendent. Six or eight months had passed in this manner when, in an interval of comparative peace — doubt- less cunningly prepared — his father commissioned Hermann to attend to some affair in connection with his mother's family in a remote section of the con- federacy; and, after a tender parting with his be- trothed, he set out on his errand , without suspicion of treachery. But he had scarcely crossed the borders of the canton when the storm which had long been brewing burst upon the household he loved so well. In his life-long course of evil-dealing, Stachel had necessarily secured legal tools, as reckless of right and mercy as himself; and now, having determined to break off his son's marriage at any cost, he put the business into the hands of one Beza, a weasel- faced lawyer of Berne. Even the ferret-eyes of the attorney, squinny them as he would, could discover THE SWISS LOVERS. 231 nothing in the conduct of Annette upon which the most harpy-like slander could fasten; and that resort was speedily given over. Nothing remained but, by some device, to bring the iron master into the power of the oppressor; and the unimpeachable in- tegrity of the man forbade all hope of effecting this by criminal accusation, or by enticement into any rash act. Thus far, the righteousness of the threatened household was a wall of defence round about them. But, almost mad with the ill success of his wicked schemes — which did not even come to the knowl- edge of those against whom they were plotted — Stachel spurred on his agent with new promise of reward: and not in vain. Beza discovered, or forged, some flaw in the Goubermann title to the iron-works and the land attached to them; and his employer hastened to purchase the rights of the person in whom the property would vest, if the flaw should prove fatal: and no efforts were spared to make it so. Before Hermann departed on his journey, the new claim had become so well fortified, although no hint of it had spread beyond the circle of the con- spirators, that it seemed impregnable; and, as soon as the young man was well out of the way, the masked battery was uncovered. The revelation came upon Father Goubermann like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky. That he rightfully and legally owned the property of which he had so long held undisputed possession, he had no more doubt than he had of his own existence: and that any man should attempt to deprive him of it, seemed 232 TAGHCONIC. to his simple and honest nature, too monstrous for belief. But there lay, staring him in the face, a formal — a very legally formal — demand that he should, not only surrender it, but also account for long arrears of rents — making an astounding sum total. And the claimant was Anton Von Stachel, who, more than once, had found means to wring from an unwilling tribunal, a decision which, though legally correct, the judges knew to be essentially unjust: a man of many well concocted' appliances in resisting the right, was Von Stachel. That night, it needed no thunder of the avalanche to rouse Goubermann from his slumbers : it found him, for the first time, restless on his bed at midnight. No sleep came to him; and, with the earliest dawn, he startedf or the city, to consult an honest lawyer — his long-time friend. He found small consolation there. Herr Zwingli had no doubt that Stachel's claim was fabricated and fraudulent; but to resist it would in- volve a ruinous and doubtful law-suit. Nevertheless, he advised resistance, as affording some small hope, and at any rate postponing for awhile the ejectment of the Goubermann family from their home. The ruin of resistance could be no more complete than the ruin of submission. Stachel, who had anticipated this legal consulta- .tion and its results, met his victim as he was return- ing home, laden with this woeful counsel. He had waited for this before seeking an interview; and now, conscious that the hypocrisy of any attempt to give his purpose a friendly coloring would be instantly THE SWISS LOVERS. 233 detected, he came bluntly to his proposition, which was substantially this : that the Goubermann family should leave Switzerland at once, to remain for a given number of years; that they should leave no trace of their course, nor ever in any manner, com- municate, so that it could reach Switzerland, the place of their retreat. On these conditions, Stachel offered to pay the iron master such a sum as would enable him, in England or elsewhere, to establish himself in a better position than he left, and con- senting, moreover, that he might take with him such personal property as would not betray his course. Goubermann listened to these cruel terms silently, and as if in a dream; but they were stamped upon his memory as if branded with a hot iron; and, no less, the savage warning, uttered by his enemy as they parted, of the probable consequences to his invalid wife of a rejection of this his offer. There was another sleepless night at Yalley- Forge — a night of agony and prayer, in which the daughter shared, but not the mother, who slept uncon- scious of the impending evil. In bitterness of soul the father wrestled with his own spirit, and sought counsel of his God. What thoughts possessed the . young girl, conscious that her innocent but unhappy love had brought about all this misery, I leave you to imagine; what rebellious thoughts to be crushed back, what youthful longings to be repressed, what pitying compassion for her lost lover; before the victory was won. I do not say that Annette's 234 TAGHCONIC. .dream of happiness and Hermann was altogether dissipated by her silent vow; but she said quietly to herself, " If it pleases the good God, it will all come to pass yet; as for me I will perform this present duty which He imposes upon me, without murmur- ing." And then with a saintly smile, she said : " Father, we will go." The father half smiled, half sighed, his blessing and his assent. When Hermann returned from his journey, he could learn little more from the sorrowing people of the neighborhood than the deserted cottage had al- ready told him. The Goubermann family had been missed from their home, one morning, a week pre- vious. They had departed without farewell or expla- nation ; which was strange in such honest and kindly folk, and only to be accounted for as the result of something connected with Stachel's claim upon their property, which Lawyer Zwingli made public with a free expression of his opinions as to its rascality. It needed but an incautious word, dropped by his father in the heat of passion, to enable Hermann to divine all the rest. In looking for the success of his plot the father had counted too little upon the depth and constancy of his son's affection for the noble peasant girl, and altogether failed to comprehend the strength and faithfulness of his whole nature, as well as his quick- ness of perception. His own experience in hearts led him to believe confidently that, the object of Hermann's youthful fancy, once sent away, would THE SWISS LOVEES, 236 soon be forgotten, and the young man ready to re- ceive the impression of new charms. It was not the only mistake he made. In sending Hermann on that trumped-up errand, he was the unwitting means of his obtaining a considerable sum of money in hand, and a large bequest afterwards, from a maternal uncle who regarded him with affection for both his moral and personal likeness to his mother. Hermann now found this gift much to his purpose; and thus a good Providence justified the faith of the pious and submissive maiden, and made the device of the wicked help to the very end it was intended to prevent. It was but a day after his return before Hermann disappeared as secretly as the iron-master and his family had departed. But the smiling and smirking gossips made no ado in guessing upon what mission he had gone. Nobody feared that he had plunged rashly into the lake, or laid himself down in the path of a glacier — as unhappy people, now-a-days, do before a rail-road train. Probably Stachel had counted as much upon his son's inability to follow the exiles, as upon his measures to conceal their route and hiding-place ; but the uncle's gift — which the young man did not deem it needful to boast of — was an obstacle to that ele- ment in the plot. In the region of passports and police with which Switzerland is surrounded, there is no great difficulty for one disposed to use money with moderate — not to say lover-like — liberality, in tracing any body 236 TAGHUONIC. whom the government is not disposed to hide. Still it took the inexperienced youth some little time to ascertain that the objects of his pursuit had passed through France on their way to Great Britain. A wearisome and heart-sickening search there ended, by mere chance, in the discovery that — Father Goubermann not taking kindly to the ways of his rude English fellow -craftsmen — the family had sailed for America. No one could tell him for what port they embarked; but, by good luck, the first ship up was bound for New York; and, impatient of delay, he took passage. ,At New York, he was bewildered by the report that little iron- works, like those I have described, and similar to the well remembered forge in the Jura — were springing up everywhere in the wild woods of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachu- setts and other provinces. It was a discouraging out-look; and, with a heavy though determined heart, he resumed his loving pilgrimage, resolved that it should end only with success or death. But now, fortune — which, in storm and sunshine, with his consciousness, or without it, had still been urging him towards the haven where he would be — again came visibly to his aid. As the sloop in which he had taken passage lay becalmed on the Hudson, a barge, heavily laden with iron from above, dropped alongside; and the skipper, questioned as to the source oi" his cargo, shouted: " From Mount Rhighi ! " Hermann was startled almost into crying out : but the barge floated out of hailing distance, and he was THE SWISS LOVERS. 23"; only able to gather from the sloop's people that she was from Kinderhook, and that Mount Rhighi must be somewhere in the same vicinity. Had he known the remarkable way New York people had of appropriating foreign names, he would have understood that the clew was of the faintesti but, for once, ignorance helped him to a correct con- clusion. The idea that this Swiss name would lead him to a colony of his countrymen, and finally to those he sought, seized upon him so forcibly that he sprang on shore at Kinderhook with a lighter step and heart than he had known for months. The village was not large, and he easily found Peter Van Schaack, the merchant who had shipped the iron; a warm-hearted gentleman who listened with sympathy to the broken English of the young Switzer's story, and overwhelmed him with joy by expressing his belief that a certain foreign family who had, a few months before, passed through town to Mount Rhighi, were none other than his friends. Mr. Van Schaack pressed him to accept his hospitality for a day or two, until he could have conveyance to the iron-works; but he would not have been the true lover he was, had he not set out at once, and — since that was necessary — on foot, to make his way through the wilderness. On the second afternoon after this interview, An- nette Goubermann was standing thoughtfully upon the brow of Sunset Cliff in the Bash-Bish gorge. Whether she had come down the mountain to enjoy the sunny outlook, or had gone up the glen to revive 238 TAGHCONIC. her Alpine memories, will be determined when some field-meeting or other shall fix upon the locality of the Goubermann forge. But, there, on Sunset Cliff, she certainly stood, looking dreamily towards the Catskills, and doubtless meditating such things as befit such a maiden at such an hour and on such a spot; when she suddenly uttered a piercing cry, and fell, senseless, to the ground. In an instant her lover was by her side, and, by the aid of the appliances immemorial in such cases, she was soon restored to consciousness: although it was a long while before Hermann was sufticiently sure of her full recovery to suspend the use of his restoratives; and, even after that, imminent danger of a relapse seemed frequently to recur. I count it selfish on their part — -unless Annette's health posi- tively compelled it ; which, Hermann admitted, her complexion did not indicate — for the pair to keep Father Goubermann and his good wife so long from sharing their felicity; but the evening shades had sent him in search of his daughter before they thought of leaving their meeting place. The rock which was their seat that evening, and many a happy hour thereafter, is still there on Sunset Cliff. The antiquarian may still detect it by the fact that it is just long enough for two, and, unless time has effaced it, by the inscription, Hermann Stein. If it has become obscure with age, some " Old Morta- lity " should restore it. I need not paint for you the joyous meeting with the father and mother, nor the mutual explanations THE SWISS LOVERS. 239 which preceded the speedy nuptials of Hermann and Annette. But I trust you will be glad to learn that the whole family lived with delightful harmony in their new home, that Hermann became a very skillful and renowned iron-master; but took with him father and mother, as well as his beautiful wife and children, when he was called back to Berne, to enjoy the property which became his by the death of his father; including the old forge whose fires were now relighted, not from necessity, but out of love for the noble art, Stachel fully intended to bequeath his whole es- tate to some hospital or other public institution; but, like all prosperous and self-important men, he conceived that life would be long with him, and de- layed his preparation for death until it came upon him fearfully and suddenly: for he never recovered from an apoplexy with which he was struck upon learning that the supreme court of the canton had adjudged a poor wretch, whom he thought in his clutches beyond rescue, not bound to Anton Stachel yeoman, by an obligation given to " Anton Von Stachel, gentleman." Rank and name had real meaning in those days. Lawyer Zwingli, who made the point, had come so utterly to hate the old usurer that he smiled, with grim satisfaction, when he heard the fatal result of its success; but the gentle Annette wept that her enemy was cut off in the midst of his sins. Such is one story of the Swiss occupation of 240 TAGHCONIC. Mount Washington and the Alpine gorge of Bash- Bish. The Dome of the Taghconics. While we are in this romantic mountain corner it would be the most unpardonable lese-majesty, not to pay our homage to the kingly Dome of the Tagh- conics. And yet — I confess it with shame — never having been presented at that court myself, I am disqualified for introducing you, and. must request Mr. Headley to act as usher, with that golden rod, his eloquent pen: "Two or three miles from Bash-Bish, is tlie Dome of the Tagliconics, a lofty mountain risipg, precisely like a dome, from the ridge of which it forms a part. It is in our estimation, far superior to the Catskill, for you have from a single spot, a perfect panorama below you ; you have only to turn on your heel, and east and west, nortli and south, an almost endless prospect spreads away on the vision. You are the center of a circle at least three hundred and fifty miles in circumference ; and such a circle ! The mountains that stretch along the horizon between the Connecticut and the Hoosac river on the north-east, fade away as the northern Tagliconics, the Berlin and the Canaan Mountains greet you in the north- west ; and these in turn are lorgotten as your eye falls on the dark mass of the Catskill showing its huge proportions against the weste n horizon. " And then, between is such a wealth of scenery. The valley of the Housatonic, for miles and miles, spreads all its loveli- ness before you. There, too, are the two settlements of Canaan, and, further up — a mere spot on the landscape — Sheffield ; and, still farther up, Great Barrington, hardly visible amid its forest of old elms, while the white cliffs of Monument Moun- THE DOME. 241 tain shut out old Stockbridore from view, and the distant spire of Lenox church closes the long train of villages. " Old Saddle-Back of Williamstown (the Qreylock Range in Adams, North Adams and Williamstown) stands up to ita full height against the misty mountains that repose further off in the horizon — a peculiar feature of tlife landscape. Egre- mont stands alone in the valley of the Green River, but its sloping land and swelling hills present a still lovelier variety. A low line of mist is dimly seen stretching along the black base of the Catskills, so indistinct that you would scarcely observe it; and yet that is the lordly Hudson, heaving its mighty tide seaward, laden with the commerce of a nation. A mere pencil mark in the landscape, here, it gives no token of the haste and busy lif(i on its surface. Close under the foot of the mountain on the south, sleep the sweet lakes of Salisbury, while other lakes dot the horizon in every direction. " But I cannot tell you of the prodigality of beauty which meets the eye at every turn. You seem to look on the outer wall of creation, and this old dome seems to be the spot on which nature set her great compasses when she drew the circle of the heavens. A more beautiful horizon, I have never seen than sweeps around you from this spot. The charm of the view is perfect on every side — a panorama, which becomes a moving one, if you will but take the trouble to turn round." 21 XVIII. GREYLOCIC Qreylock, cloud-girdled, from his mountain throne, A voice of welcome sends ; And, from green summer fields, a warbling tone. The Housatonic blends.— Frances Ann Kemble. Spirit of Beauty 1 Let thy graces blend With loveliest nature all that art can lend. ********* Come from the steeps where look majestic Jorth From their twin thrones, the giants of the'north On the huge shapes that, crouching at their knees. Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain, Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain ; There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, Nature shall whisper that the fading view Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. — 0. W. Holmes. Greylock is the figure-head of the county of Berk- shire. I might say that it is the figure-head of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, if some Boston critic would not cry out that the hill-folk are trying to run the ship of state stern foremost. But the figure-head of the county, it plainly is; and a GREYLOCK. 243 noble one. - What a grand terminal it affords for the mountain bulwarks that so grandly sweep up to it on either side the symmetrical valley. How proudly it lifts itself against the northern sky; the crested front of the mighty landscape ! We see it from a myriad points of view, varying its aspect with the different stand-points of the spectator, and with the perpetual changes of the atmosphere; although the general directness of the perspective from the south renders the apparent al- terations in its contour, from change in the line of vision, to be much less frequent than with most of our mountain shapes. The isolated mountain range between the Hoosacs and the .Taconics, now generally known as the Greylock Range, is not so much a chain as an inter- twisted cluster of mountains in the towns of Adams, North Adams and Williamstown ; from which a spur strikes southward through New Ashford, Cheshire and Lanesboro', to Pittsfield. The main cluster has a length, from east to west, of about six miles, and an average altitude of perhaps twenty-four hundred feet above the surrounding valley. It consists of six or seven distinct peaks and ridges rising above a common base. The highest peak — the Greylock, from which the cluster takes its name — is upon the east, and has an elevation of thirty-five hundi-ed feet above the sea level, or twenty-six hundred above the valley of the Hoosac, at its base on the north and east. The twin peak on the west, less in height than Greylock by three or four hundred feet, commands 244 TAGHCONIC. no view, being covered by woods and having its nearer outlook cut off by surrounding summits. Nor has it any generally recognized name. But it is more conspicuous from the south, than its taller brother, and, being of a graceful contour, will make a capital monument, if nothing else; and, for one, I heartily approve the proposition to christen it " Sy- mond's Peak " in honor of the grand old Williams- town Colonel who led the " embattled farmers " of Berkshire in their glorious fight at Bennington. The combination of these peaks in the view from the south, bears a rude, but rather striking, resem- blance to a saddle, which suggested to the early settlers the name of Saddle-back Mountain by which the cluster was long called; but the comparison was prosaic ; and, besides, a similar likeness had caused the same name to be given to mountain ridges in more than one locality. A finer imagination early seized upon the likeness to the grey locks of an old man, which the top of the highest peak presents when whitened by the snows or frosts of the late fall or early spring, while the body of the hill is clothed in dark forests; and that summit became Greylock; one of the most poetic names which ever added grace to the loveliness of nature. The rudeness and lack of distinctive meaning of the name " Saddle-back," as applied to the cluster, have caused it to be gradually disused, and the pret- tier designation has been extended to the whole group, with the addition of "group," " range or "mountain;" so that the name " Saddle-back " is rarely heard. GREYLOCK. 24(5 except from lips which say " his'n " and " hern " for "his" and "hers." But you will observe that there is a difference between " Greylock " and " Greylock Mountain " or " The Greylock Group." You recollect Grace — the wild and witty Berk- shire girl, we met one day down by the borders of Pontoosuc Lake. Well, a while ago, a geologist deeply enamored of her and Berkshire rocks, after showing her a wonderful piece of contorted strata by the road-side near the lake, was explaining that it was really the most marvellous specimen he had ever met: when the saucy thing threw him com- pletely off his balance by exclaiming, with eyes dis- tended in mock astonishment: " What a twdstification! Isn't it nice, though ? It looks just like half -worked molasses candy. Did you ever help pull candy, professor ? Its awful jolly ! " " Awful " and " jolly," I ought to explain, are words which Grace reserves for the sole purpose of extinguishing over-exquisite admirers; but I have no doubt that, if I were to set her to explaining the queer iuterlacings of the Greylock ridges, she would dash me with something like this: "What a twisti- fication ! Its just like one of cook's dough-nuts Arn't there some in the lunch basket ? Let's have them out ! " And I feel very much inclined to dis- pose of the matter in the same way. In quiet earnest, the peaks and ridges, the ravines and cascades, the rugged notches and picturesque nooks of this, as yet only half -studied, mountain group, are food for a season, rather than a tit-bit for a hasty excursion. 246 TAGHCONIC. They seem moreover to belong to the peculiar do- main of the Williams College people, and the summer denizens of Greylock Hall; to whom I commend them, although it sounds very like a stranger com- mending to a man, the charms of his own wife. Such counsel is not always superfluous. The rest of you, nevertheless, must come with me through the more noted and striking scenes whose beauty boldly challenges us on the peaks, or lies hid in the recesses, of this loftiest and most pic- turesque mountain of Massachusetts. One who has not climbed to the top of Greylock has taken no very high degree as a Berkshire ex- cursionist; and, to be initiated into the highest, he must pass a night there. If you are an invalid, or have any other very valid reason for it, I will, how- ever, help you to take your degrees by proxy: although, for the more convenient connection with what is to follow, I must give the story of my two ascents of the great mountain in reversed order. Night and Morning on Greylock. It was a laughing, sparkling, companionable, well- assorted party that, passably well supplied with brains, and thoroughly well versed in the matter- in-hand, met one evening in the most deliciously comfortable of parlors, to organize — as the sum- mons of onr queenly chief put it — f or a new^crown- ing of Old King Greylock. There is much good in thesfe preparatory meetings. In the first place a Buccessful excursion must be organized by some- NIGHT AND MORNING ON GEETLOUK. 247 body. However you may tumble into it at hap-bazard, somebody has planned and prepared for it. The victories which nobody organizes are no more to be counted upon, in any undertaking, than the for- tunes that fall to lucky people from forgotten Calif or- nian uncles. And, least of all, can you trust to chance for the successful issue of a day and night moun- tain excursion, where a single fault in the commisa- riat or the quarter-master's department may cause infinite disaster. To be sure, some, considerate or generous persons generally provide all things ne- cessary; but it is every way better to do it in merry committee of the whole. If there were no other reward for this equitable course, it is enough that it doubles your pleasure; which you take in two installments; the first being in hand, and sure: to whatever fate, foul weather or other misfortune may bring the second. And, by and bye, when both come to be alike far-off me- mories, you may doubt which was the richer, and more real. And then, again, in this cosy and infor- mal preliminary gathering, you assimilate your party; which — particularly if there happen to be new elements in it — is very desirable. It saves much delay and awkwardness on the morrow. Nobody is distrait, as strangers are apt to be, when you meet for the start; and sometimes very pleasant unex- pected pairing results — permanent or otherwise. Our council in preparation for Greylock had no perplexing subject of debate. A railway ride to Adams, where carriages to the mountain-top had 248 TAGHCONIC. been engaged, disposed of the matter of transporta- tion. Apparatus for open-air cooking, we always had ready; and supplies of cold meats, boiled eggs, sandwiches, fruits and all manner of pic-nic fare were reported in quantities that only mountainous appetites could expect to do away with. It only remained to provide for protection against the night dews, and the mists of the mountain top; and that was soon carefully arranged. In view of the pro- spective fatigu-es of the morrow, only a very small allowance of dancing was allowed; and then, to help our anticipations and dreams, Henry Thoreau's graphic account of his night and morning on Grey- lock was read. It is an episode in his charming " Week on the Concord and Merrimac," from which I shall presently quote a paragraph; but you should read the story in full, with the characteristic moral and philosophical observations of the great Secular Solitary. His conveyance and commisariat were even simpler than ours, and much more self-reliant. " I had come over the hills on foot," he writes, " on foot and alone in serene summer days, plucking the rasp- berries by the wayside, and occasionally buying a loaf of bread at a farmer's house; with a knapsack on my back which held a few traveller's books and a change of clothing, and a staff in my hand. * * f Reaching the mountain top, I had one fair view of the country before the sun went down; but I was too thirsty to waste any light in viewing the prospect, and set out directly to find water. First, going NIGHT AND MORNTING ON GREYLOCK. 249 down a well-beaten path through a scrubby wood, I came to where the water stood in the tracks of the horses which had carried travellers up. I lay down flat and drank these dry, one after another — a pure, cold, spring-like water; but yet I could not fill my dipper, although I contrived little syphons of grass- stems, and ingenious aqueducts on a small scale; it was too slow a process. Then, remembering that I had passed a moist spot near the top, I returned to find it again'5 and here, with sharp stones and my hands, in the twilight, I made a well about two feet deep, which soon filled with pure water; and the birds, too, came and drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and making my way back to the observatory, collected some dry sticks, and made a fire on some flat stones which had been placed on the floor for that purpose; and so I soon cooked my supper of the rice I had bought at North Adams, having already whittled a wooden spoon to eat it with." With Mr. Thoreau's resources one could afford an extended tour. Mr. Thoreau ascended the mountain, from North Adams through " The Notch,", a savage cleft be- tween Greylock peak and a lower hill upon the east. Through this rugged pass, dashes a crystal brook, which supplies to the village waterworks, an abun- dance of pure water; and also, with its foaming cascade and other brookly beauties, affords an at- tractive as well as accessible resort for citizens and strangers. At its southern end,^ where the narrow- ing notch " slopes up to the skies," it is called " The 250 TAGHCONIC. Bellows-pipe." In our wild northern storms, the fierce winds bellow through it in thousand-fold con- centrated fury. Our ascent, from Adams, was much more prosaic. We sacrificed a little romance, for the sake of a good deal of ease: still we we were often tempted from our comfortable conveyances into groves, glades and recesses among the rocks by the road-side. There was no need of haste. Even after a socially pro- longed dinner, enjoyed in full view of a magnificent, but comparatively narrow, landscape, we had ample time to ascend the observatory and enjoy the stu- pendous scenery which presented itself in every direction. We were in rare good fortune. The atmosphere was exceptionally pure, rendering the view as clear and distinct as one of such vast proportions ever can be. Approximately to measure that vastness in your mind, consider that the diameter — not the circumference — of the horizon revealed to you, is some three hundred miles. Away in eastern Wor- cester, you see Mount Wachusett; the Grand Monad- nock in south-western New Hampshire; the lofty peaks of the northernmost Taconics in Vermont; the Adirondacs of New York in the north-west, and the Catskills in south-west. In the south, the far-a- way hills of Connecticut me.lt dimly into the Sound- ward slope. From Mount Tekoa, Mount Tom, and Mount Holyoke in the Connecticut valley, successive ridges rise continually, to the Columbian Moun- tains of New York; pile after pile in most admired NTIGHT AND MORNING ON GRETLOCK. 251 disorder, for a breadth of more than sixty miles: longitudinally, some seventy miles southward; and northerly as far as the eye can reach. Mr. Gladden, quotes President Hitchoock as say- ing: "I know of noplace Avhere the mind is so forcibly impressed by the idea of vastness, or even of immensity, as where the eye ranges abroad from this eminence: " and it is not for us, in the imme- diate presence of this majestic over-view, to look for a rival to it in Alps or Sierra. The nearer and gentler, but still bold and com- manding, view is close upon the south, where the great Berkshire valley lies spread out before us: in its centre the streets and spires of Pittsfield, with their fair cordon of glassy lakes glittering around them, and, on every side, half-hidden villages and village churches gleaming white upon the verdant back-ground of woods and fields; conspicuous among them the fine old meeting-houses of Lenox and Dalton — while, most distinct of all, almost under our feet, and so close to the mountain's base as to seem a very part of it, lies the thriving, busy and hand- some town of Adams. A scene, take it all in all, to be tenderly yearned over by the children of thai glorious valley, and to be lovingly admired by the merest chance-comer to the hill-top. While we lingered dreamily over it, the sun went down, leaving on that transparent sky, no such cloud- shapes of fantastic gorgeousness as often veil his parting; but, along the whole- western horizon, one broad, uniform band of glowing light — softening, 252 TAGHCONIC. from richest orange through all golden tints, until it melted from liquid amber into crystal chrysoprase, and then was lost in the prevailing azure. The gold paled from the western heavens: and then the grey was absorbed in the blue. The evening shadesfilled the valley; crept up the mountain side; enveloped grove and tower, and the little group who silently awaited their coming. " Darkness upon the mountain and the vale ; The woods, the lakes, the fields are buried deep In that still, solemn, star- watched sleep : No sound, no motion, and o'er hill and dale, A calm and lovely death seems to embrace Earth's fairest realms and heaven's unfathomed space. The forest slumbers; leaf and branch £ind bough, High feathery crest, and lowliest grassy blade. All restless, wandering wings are folded now, That swept the sky, and in the sunshine played. The lake's wild waves sleep in their rocky bowl : Unbroken stillness streams from nature's soul, And night's great star-sown wings stretch o'er the whole I" Mrs. Kemble. As was fitting, even in the merriest party, we yielded for awhile to the solemn promptings of the hour; but it is not fitting, even were it possible, that they should long curb the glee of a mountain excur- sion. The voice of our chief reminded us that we had promised our friends at home to signal our presence on Greylock by a blaze which they could see. The appointed hour had come, and the beacon was lighted. Our friends were kind enough to be- lieve they saw it beaming like a star, or a light in a NIGHT AND MORNING ON GEEYLOCK. 253 distant window. Perhaps they did. It certainly- cast a strange, wild, red glare upon the old tower and the overhanging foliage; and invested the ladies, who gathered around it, with a weird, gypsy beauty that was very enchanting. The little grotto of light, we had wrought out in the great darkness, had hardly disappeared, when the white moon rose up the eastern sky, revealing new realms of splendor. Little by little, the hills and valleys emerged from the shadow ; reposing in the pallor, or gleaming in the silver sheen, ©f the white radiance. There was no longer any color in the picture. It was drawn in crayon — all light and shade. Nor was there day-light's sharpness of out- line; the landscape lay in broad surfaces and heavy masses, except in the close foreground. There is something altogether delusive in the brilliance of moonlight. ^ It dazzles, but cannot illuminate. It will light you gaily to your serenade; but you can- not read a sentence by it, at its brightest, as you can by a very dim twilight. You need the yellow rays of the spectrum for that; as you will discover by attempting to read in a church whose " dim re- ligious light " streams through stained windows, and then in one where the garish light of day is ren- dered still more garish, by being strained through ground glass, which eliminates most of the yellow from it. You will observe the same difference, although in a less degree, between the yellow flame of a kerosene lamp, and the white blaze of a gas-jet ; 22 254 TAGHCONIC. the eye tiring much the quicker uuder the lattei. But it was not dread of spoiling our eye-sight which led our prudent chief to order us to our couches. Indeed the glamour of that illusive splen- dor seemed magically projected on the scene for our immediate enchantment and witchery. But the white mists which first traced, in delicate lines upon the dark surface, the curves of the river and the lurking places of the lakes, had filled the lower valley, until as we looked down upon it, it lay out- spread like a great snow-shrouded plain. And now tall, ghostly, phantom-like shapes upreared them- selves on the mountain ,side. We knew that their embrace was uncanny, if not deadly, and we fled before the advancing specters, screaming —r with laughter. The floors of the two stories of the tower had already been spread with elastic boughs, of balsamy odor, from the near woods: slinagy bear and buifalo robes, army blankets and rubber coverings were now liberally distributed. Generous draughts of hot coffee were dealt out. Prayers were read. Then stillness was enjoined upon the wakeful,and soon those not too much excited b)^ the novelty of the scene slumbered peacefully. Before morning all enjoyed a healthful sleep, undisturbed except, once or twice, by a fitful cloud-rack w^hich drifted through the open windows — just to remind us how near we were to heaven. Before I tell you of our awakening, I will read you what Mr. Thoreau says of his : • NIGHT AND MORNIXG ON GREYLOCK. 255 '* I was up early and perched upon the top of the tower to see the day break ; for some time readinpr the names that had been engraved there before I could distinguish more distant objects. An ' untameable fly ' buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance as on a molasses hogshead at the end of Long Wharf. Lven here I must attend to his stale humdrum. As the light increased, I discovered around me an oce*an of mist which reached up by chance exactly to the base of the tower, and shut out every vestige of the earth ; while 1 was left floating on this fragment of the wreck of a world, on my carved plank in cloudland : a situation which it required no aid from the imagination to render impressive. As the light in the east steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly the new world into which I had risen in the night : the new te7'ra firma perhaps of my future life. There was not a crevice left through which the trivial places we name Massachusetts, Vermcnt and New York could be seen ; while I still inhaled the clear atmosphere of a July morning — if it were July there. All around me was spread for a hundred miles on every side, as far as the eye could reach, an undulating country of clouds, answering in the varied^ swell of its surface to the terrestrial world it veiled. It was such a country as we might see in dreams, with all the delights of Paradise. There were immense snowy pastures apparently smooth-shaven and firm, and shady vales between the vaporous mountains ; and, far in the horizon, I could see where some luxurious misty timber jutted into the prairie, and trace the windings of a water course, some unimagined Amazon or Orinoko, by the misty trees on its brink. As there was wanting the symbol, so there was not the sub- stance, of impurity : no spot nor stain. It was a favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this vision. The earth below had become such a flitting thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been before. It was not merely veiled to me ; it had passed away like the phantom of a shadow, crxio^ «vac:, and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed 256 TAGHCONIC. above storm and cloud, so by successive day's journeys I miglit reach tlie region of eternal day ; aye, * Heaven itself shall slide, And roll away like melting stars that glide Alonff their oily thread.' But when its ovn sun began to rise on tins pure world, I found tuyself a dweller in the dazzling halls of Aurora — into which poets have had but a partial glance over the eastern hills — drifting among the saffron-colored clouds, and playing with the rosy fingers of the Dawn, in the very path of the Sun's chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy dust, enjoying the benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting glances, of the god. The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under-side of heaven's pavement ; it is only "when at a favorable angle of the horizon, morning and evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed. But my muse would fail to convey an impression of the gorgeous tapestry by which I was surrounded ; such as men see faintly reflected afar off in the chambers of the east. Here, as on earth, I saw the gracious god ' Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, * ♦ * Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.' Never here did ' Heaven's Sun ' stain himself. But, alas, owing as I think to some unworthiness in myself, my private sun did stain himself, and Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly wrack on his celestial face ; for before the god had reached his zenith, the heavenly pave- ment rose and embraced my wavering virtue, or rather I sank down again into that ' forlorn world ' from which the celestial 8un had hid his visage." Mr. Thoreau, descending the mountain, soon found himself in the region of clouds and drizzling rain; and the inhabitants affirmed that it had been a rainy and drizzling day wholly. NIGHT AND MORNING ON GREYLOOK. 257 Our party, had a somewhat different experience, yet Avith a general likeness. A bugle, surreptitiously carried to the mountain top, roused us with pleasant surprise by a wild reveille as soon as light began to kindle beyond the Hoosacs. The surface of the mist-sea w^hich filled the valley, lay calm and level some tw^o hundred feet below the summit on which we stood; everywhere dazzling- white, except upon its extreme eastern verge which flushed with rose- red — changing soon to gold, and then to golden blaze. The sun came up and added new splendor to the glowing scene before the morning breeze began to disturb its serenity. From the first, three or four distant peaks were seen, like far-off islands in a foaming ocean. Now the mist began to lift itself with the breeze, and roll away into the blue sky; while new islands, promon- tories, capes, began to appear, until the green earth lay again beneath us, revealed in all its summer beauty. So, to some angel, worshipping in awe and wonder, the broad scene of creation may have been revealed when God said, " Let the waters, that are under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so." I made an excursion to Greylock prior to the one I have just attempted to describe; and I recall it now for two specific pufposes. After the visit to the natural bridge at North Adams, of which I gave an account some while ago, my companion and my- self walked to Williamstown, where we passed the night. In the morning we walked to South Williams- 258 TAGHCONIC. town, where, being told that the " Hopper " would be intolerable on a day so intensely hot, we aban- doned our intention of exploring that torrid gulf, and went up the mountain. We had no guide, nor any but very obscure directions as to the path we were to pursue; and, making our way pretty much at random, we found ourselves first upon Symond's Peak. Rectifying our mistake, we reached the tower on Greylock, at about one o'clock: not at all fatigued by our tramp. Nor were we unpleasantly wearied when we reached the hotel at New^ Ashford in the evening, or after our walk to Pittsfield the next day. I make this point to correct the impres- sion that the ascent to Greylock is either difficult or unduly fatiguing to persons of ordinary health and powers of endurance. I have also taken you to the top of Greylock again, to tell you of our descent from it on that first trip, and how it brought us into The Heart of Geeylock. It was not until the middle of the afternoon that we yielded to the stern fact that lack of supplies and camp equipage would repress our noble rage to pass the night upon the mountain top; and we shaped our course homeward, taking our bearings solely with reference to diii'ectness. " Straight is the line of duty, Curved is the line of beauty; Follow the first and thou shalt see The other ever follow thee." THE HEART OF GREYLOCK. 259 And that, we found true. Our straight course brought us to the verge of a precipitous descent of something more than a thousand feet, but with sufficient inclination to give root-hold to a mod- erately thick growth of trees. Down this sharp descent, we dropped rapidly, clinging for support to the branches and under- growth, and deliciously refreshed by frequent draughts of the cold and limpid water which gushed from a thousand springs, and sometimes dripped its coolness luxuriously upon our heated, upturned faces. At the foot of the precipice, a brook brawled its way between banks which afforded a narrow grassy glade in the midst of the dark woods. As we stood in this sunny opening, we gazed above and around us in utter amazement and delight. The chasm into which we had been chance-led, was, in shape, an inverted cone, truncated at its reversed apex by the little plain intersected by the brook. The walls, at least a thousand feet in height, and all over en- amelled with the richest forest green, appeared to us as perfectly circular and their tops presented a line as level against the sky, as though we had looked up from within some unroofed round tower or cas- tle — of the Titans, for instance. Lost in astonish- ment at the strange beauty of the spot, and, still more, that whisper of it had never reached us, we pursued our way down the stream, to be still more amazed when the people who lived near, told us that, so far as they knew, it had neither^name nor renown. Finding afterwards, however, that the persons of 260 TAGUCOXIC. whom we sought information were not very intelli- gent new-comers, I resumed my pursuit of know- ledge, and finally learned from a good old family of the neighborhood — besides some pleasant legends which I have carefully stored away — that the names we sought were " Money Hole " and " Money Brook," which were given in respect of a tradition that, in Kevolutionary times, a gang of counterfeiters used to haunt their obscure recesses. I do not know how well founded the tradition is; but it is strongly for- tihed by the fact that, half a century ago, the little stream gained the soubriquet of " The Specter Brook," because the ghosts of the departed rogues were often seen keeping watch and ward at the en- trance of the glen, while mysterious noises wei;e heard wiihin. I can well believe the phantom part of the story; for, to this day, the banks of all our mountain streams are all alive, if that is not a bull, with sheeted ghosts. In the moonlit mist restoring Vanished forms of long ago. The roguish name assigned to what it seemed should be rather a classic than a criminal haunt, did not altogether please me, and I was glad to discover, a year or two later, that Professor Albert Hopkins — that gentle, but enthusiastic, spirit to whose fine influence Williamstown and Williams College owe so much of their esthetic interest — had christened it " The Heart of Greylock." I was told, too, at the same time, that, had we, on BAU) MOUNTAIN. 261 our chance visit, followed the brook up, instead of down, its course, we should have soon come to the Eremite or Hermit Cascade — a waterfall at the least as picturesque and wild as Bash-Bish, and which I have since heard praised by other admirers in similar exalted terms. As I have not yet seen it, my memories of Mount Washington are not disturbed; but, what with a Specter Brook and a Hermit Cas- cade, the Heart of Greylock certainly offers a fine field for an old-fashioned imagination. If you are now ready to climb the mountain again, I will take you to the summit whose shaven head gives it the name of Bald Mountain, and also enables it to afford a finer view of the Williamstown valley than can be obtained from the higher peaks. Seven or eight years ago a party composed chiefly, it seems, of college professors, clergymen and other gravely-gay characters — such as much affect Williamstown for a summer resort — with a feminine element of the same caste, dwelt for a while in leafy tabernacles in a sheltered nook of this summit, and one of the party sent a spirited account of their joys to the ISTew York Observer, of all papers in the world: dating from "Camp Dew- Dew " as if the reverend writer were wholly oblivious of Don Juan and correct orthography. However, his spectacles were good, and we will take a look through them from the mountain top. "Our camp lies in tliis slieltered spot upon Bald Mountain, 262 TAGHCONIC. SO near the summit of Greylock that sunset and sunrise parties go out daily, and our artists and botanists climb its sides in search of views and botanical treasures * * * Select what point you choose of these commanding hills, and below you lies the wide valley, the faint blue line of the river wind- ing past Williamstown, Blackington, and Adams — the whole framed by the encircling sweep of the blue mountains; while far away is the white shaft of the observatory on Mount Anthony, ani farther in the distance still, overtopping all nearer summits, loom up the dark hills of Vermont. And this landscape is never twice the same : always bold and varied." These views are not all to be witnessed from Bald Mountain, which is over-topped on the north and east by Prospect Mountain and Greylock. I did not bring you here, however, for the sake of the views; but that you might look down from its northern edge into The Abyss, upon which the name of " The Hopper " was early inflicted by that unimaginative imagination whose horrid mission seems to have been from the first to curse this picturesque mountain group with the most common-place nomenclature. I grant that, as you look down into the abyss, it has a striking likeness in form to the hopper of a grist mill; and that this comparison is the readiest mode of conveying to the mind of a stranger some idea of its shape; but mere form is not the most essential element in the de- scription of any natural object; else were the old likeness of the moon to a green cheese felicitous and poetic. It seems to me that the one idea which that THE HOPPER. 263 likeness of the abyss to a hopper ought to have sug- gested was to cast headlong into it, the wretch who first conceived the thought of making use of it in naming this grand work of nature, and let him take his chances of being well gi'ound up on the rough mill-stones at the bottom. You will start back in affright lest some such fate may befall yourself, if you approach unwarned the brink of the chasm on the edge of Bald Mountain. Unless nature has favored you with firmer nerves than she grants to most men, or you have plied some such dreadful trade as the samphire gatherer's, it will cost you some effort; with much probability of failure, to prepare yourself to observe the abyss from above with any calmness, or without absolute danger of fatal dizziness. It is thus, however, that you best comprehend the terrific grandeur of the scene. Having obtained this apprehension, it will be as well if you pursue your study of the place from be- low. To do this, you will enter it from the Williams- town road, passing through a narrow valley and ravine, penetrated by a rocky brook, which, now I think of it, used to furnish capital trouting. Reach- ing the floor of the chasm, you will discover that it does not come to a point, as distance deceived you into, thinking when you looked from above, but affords a level, though rock-cumbered, surface. Hei'e you will find yourselves -surrounded by four precipitous mountain walls over a thousand feet in height, or more than twice as high as the crags of Monument Mountain, although not, like them, abso- 264 TAGHCONIC. luteiy perpendicular and bare. On these rough and shaggy sides you will see here huge and bare cliffs, there ragged trees clinging to steep ascents and scanty soil, and there patches of richer wood, but still of precarious foothold; here the broad path of the land-slide, and there, piled and scattered below, its mighty ruins. Vastness and desolation will be every where about you; and, if you can rid yourself of that disennobling association with a mill-hopper, I think you will feel that this great abyss in Grey- lock is both terrific and sublime. King Greylock's Mountain Height. With jollity, jollity, lio, to-niglit, To scale King Greylock's mountain height 1 While many a wild recess profound Sends, rattling back, the echoing sound. As we startle the sleepy forest glades With the joyous rout of our madcap maids: F.OT never a merrier band than they E'er climbed at eve this mountain way 1 Ohor. — Then, ho, on our rude, steep path, away 1 With the morrow's light on the topmost height. We must hail the coming pomp of day ! Oh, whether the height in sunshine lie, Or glamour moonlight cheat the eye, 'Tis a laughing light on the mountain side. That owl-eyed care can never abide ; And his worldly weight, that worldlings bear, * Is loosed at the magical touch of our air ; Earth's spell is broke — and the heart is free. As childhood's in its frolic glee ! GREYLOCK. 265 Chor. — Then, ho, on our rude, steep path, away 1 With the morrow's light on the topmost height. We must hail the coming pomp of day I Our beacon fire this night shall glow, A gem on the monarch mountain's brow, Or far to our dear home valley gleam — A new found love-star's gentle beam. Then sweeter couch ne'er wooed to rest, Than the springy boucfhs of the green hill's crest. Whose leaves our fragrant bed shall be. With the starry night for canopy ! (Jhor. — Then, ho, on our rude, steep path, away ! With the morrow's light on the topmost height, We must hail the coming pomp of day 1 33 XIX. WAHCONAH FALLS AND A TRADITION ABOUT THEM. How throbbed my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears. To know the color of my future years. — Rogers. A little way off the main road in Windsor, a plea- sant farming town on the highlands, some ten miles from us, are Wahconah Falls. I had heard their praises spoken by one who had an affinity with beauty which sought out its kindred in all hidden nooks; and on a bracing Autumn day I sat out to seek them. There are few drives through a more agreeable region. The villages of Dalton, through which you pass, form a handsome town with a fine old meeting- house on its ample, lawn-like green. You are en- ticed to linger as well by the dark rushing river, where you see the groaning locomotive toiling up the steep ascent above you. And there, too, the quaint- looking paper-mills by the river side, go far to make up a pretty and novel scene. It is said, that as bright glances are sometimes thrown from the win- dows of these oddly shapen manufactories as from any balcony, lattice or verandah whatever The paper manufacture, a great leading interest of WAHCONAH FALLS. 267 Berkshirej was here introduced into the county in 1799, by Zenas Crane, whose sons and grandsons still carry it on, making among other styles the paper upon which the bonds and bank bills of the United States government are printed. One ol them, Hon. Zenas M. Crane, is the proprietor of Wahconah Falls, of whose romantic beauty he is one of the most enthusiastic admirers. Leaving be- hind us the pretty villages of Dalton, and its prettier belles — a production for which it was famed long before it gained renown for paper-making — we soon come to The Falls, a romantic miniature cataract, just far enough from the highway to be sheltered from the too careless eye. Wahconah Brook, one of the larger of the nu- merous eastern branches of the Housatonic, here pours through perpendicular cliffs of dark grey rock, a considerable volume of water, which, in two or three leaps, makes a descent of seventy or eighty feet. The dark, precipitous cliffs form a striking and sombre vista, and the black and glossy surface of the water affords a fine contrast with the silvery white of the foam into which it breaks. But the peculiar charm which wins the place so many and so constant admirers is indefinable. One may be sure of passing a pleasant hour at such a spot. The swift, smooth gliding of water always brings a pleasurable sensation, and there is rare music in the dash of a waterfall free from the discordant clatter of machinery.. Alas, too rare in manufacturing Massachusetts ! I confess to a malicious 268 TAGHCONIC. joy in looking upon the blackened ruins of an old mill which used to stand here, but perished long a