America, Volume 4 (of 6) — Themes and Context

hey were dispersed in later days, some going to Western New York and others to the far West; but on the slope of a hill adjoining the river remains their old graveyard, a rugged weather-worn shaft surmounting a stone pile to mark it.

Upon the green village main street is Edwards' little old wooden house, having three small windows above the ponderous door. It is now called "Edwards Hall," and a granite obelisk out in front, erected by his descendants in 1871, preserves the memory of the great divine. Over opposite is the venerable Sedgwick Mansion, the home of the famous Sedgwick family. Farther up the street is the Cemetery, where the most interesting feature is the enclosure set apart for their tombs, the graves being arranged in circles around the central tomb of Judge Theodore Sedgwick, the founder. He was a native of Hartford, born in 1746, migrated to Sheffield in Berkshire, and finally settled at Stockbridge after the Revolution, becoming one of the leading statesmen of New England, prominent in the old Federal party, Member of Congress and Senator from Massachusetts, and Speaker of the House. He was subsequently made Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, dying in office in 1813. His children and descendants surround his grave, among them his daughter, the distinguished authoress, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, born at Stockbridge in 1789, who died in 1867.

A few miles to the southeast is Monument Mountain, the Indian "Fisher's Nest," one of the most curious and attractive of the Berkshire hills on account of its position and form, although the summit is not very high, less than thirteen hundred feet. Its rock formations are fine, being of white quartz, and on the eastern side is a detached cliff with a huge pinnacle nearly a hundred feet high, known as the "Pulpit." Hawthorne greatly admired this mountain, at which he looked from his boudoir window across the lake, and in its autumn hues he said it appeared like "a headless sphinx wrapped in a rich Persian shawl," seen across a valley that was "a vast basin filled with sunshine as with wine." The mountain received its modern name from a cairn found on the summit, the tradition telling of a mythical Indian maiden who got crossed in love, and as a consequence jumped off the topmost cliff, being dashed to pieces. Her tribe, when they passed that way, each added a stone to the pile, thus building the cairn. There are many stones thrown all around this peculiarly rugged mountain, which is piled up with white marble crags in a region where abrupt peaks are seen almost everywhere. In among these cliffs is the Ice Glen, a cold and narrow cleft where ice may be found in midsummer, it is so secluded from sunshine. The appearance of Monument Mountain made a strong impression on William Cullen Bryant, who thus described it:

"To the north, a path Conducts you up the narrow battlements. Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild, With many trees and pinnacles of flint, And many a haughty crag. But to the east Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs, Huge pillars that in middle heaven uprear Their weather-beaten capitals--here dark With the thick moss of centuries, and there Of chalky whiteness, where the thunderbolt Hath smitten them."

To the southward farther, the widening Housatonic circles about the valley, bordered with willows and alders, and hidden frequently by cliffs and forests. Hills terrace the horizon, with mountain peaks among them. Through the gorges the road follows down the circling river, which constantly turns more mill-wheels, its waters pouring over frequent white marble dams and bubbling upon rapids, with steep tree-clad slopes adorning the banks and making attractive views. Monument Mountain's long ridge gradually falls off, and the intervale broadens as the Housatonic winds in wider channel to Great Barrington. This is another typical New England village, embowered by the stateliest of elms, spreading along its broad green-bordered street, with a galaxy of hills encircling the intervale in which it stands, and lofty Mount Everett rising grandly over its southwestern verge. To the eastward is the special hill of Great Barrington, giving the town its name. Beecher described it as "one of those places which one never enters without wishing never to leave." William Cullen Bryant for several years, ending with 1825, was the town clerk of Great Barrington, and the records of that time are in his handwriting; his house is still preserved. For a quarter of a century Dr. Samuel Hopkins lived here, the hero of Mrs. Stowe's novel, the _Minister's Wooing_. On the lowlands by the river is the costliest country-house in the Berkshires, Kellogg Terrace, built by Mrs. Hopkins-Searles, a magnificent structure of blue and white marbles, with red-tiled roofs, and most elaborately fitted up, upon which $1,500,000 was expended. It is carefully concealed from view from the village street by a massive stone wall and well-arranged trees. This mansion principally illustrates the affection the New England emigrant always bears for the home of youth. Mark Hopkins went away from the Berkshires to California to make a fortune and die. His childless widow, a native of Great Barrington, had $30,000,000, and came back to live on the farm where she had spent her childhood. She determined to rear a memorial, and built this French-Gothic palace of the native Berkshire marbles, exceeding at the time, in costliness and magnificence, any other private dwelling outside of New York City. As the building gradually grew, she became so enamored of it and its designer that she took the architect, Mr. Searles, for a second husband. Then she died, and he became its possessor. Yet it cannot be seen, except by climbing up a high hill to the eastward, where one can look down upon its red-tiled roofs on the low-lying meadow almost by the river side. The Congregational Church of Great Barrington has the Hopkins Memorial Manse, regarded as the finest parsonage in the United States, which cost $100,000 to build.

Following farther down the Housatonic, the village of Sheffield, another domain of marble quarries, is reached, with the same broad, quiet, green-bordered and elm-shaded village street, and famed for having furnished the marble to build Girard College and its magnificent colonnade at Philadelphia. The "Sheffield Elm" in the southern part of the town, a noble tree of great age, was given fame by the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." To the westward is the broad and solid mass of Mount Everett, often called Mount Washington, the southern outpost of the Taghkanic range, and the sentinel guarding the southwestern corner of Massachusetts, as Old Graylock guards the northwest corner. This mountain rises over twenty-six hundred feet, the "Dome of the Taghkanics." From its summit can be surveyed to the westward the valley of the Hudson, while beyond, at the horizon, the distant Catskills hang, in the words of Dr. Hitchcock, "like the curtains of the sky." The Connecticut boundary is not far away, and beyond it, southward, are successive ranges of hills. The Housatonic winds through productive valleys, with herds quietly grazing, and tobacco and other crops growing. This is in the town of Mount Washington, which was part of the great Livingston Manor that stretched in front of the mountain over to the Hudson, and the first settlers were Dutch, who came up from that valley. This region was the scene of the close of Shays' Rebellion in 1787, the insurgents who had convulsed western Massachusetts, and attacked and plundered Stockbridge, being chased down here by the troops, and a considerable number killed and wounded before they were dispersed.

TO SALISBURY AND BEYOND.

The southwestern corner of Massachusetts, projecting westward into New York outside the Connecticut boundary, is known as Boston Corner. To the southward, in the northwestern corner of Connecticut, is Salisbury, where the Taghkanic range falls away into lower hills. Beecher described this country as a constant succession of hills swelling into mountains, and of mountains flowing down into hills. This is a quiet region, formerly a producer of iron ores, and it was early settled by the Dutch, who came over from the Hudson in 1720. They were a timid race, however, fearing the rigors of climate, and, coming thus to the edge of what looked like an Alpine land of dreariness beyond, they would not venture farther into the forbidding hills. The mountainous region to the north and east they inscribed on their maps as a large white vacant space, which they coolly named "Winterberg." The township has two noted ravines, solitary, rugged and attractive, and both containing cascades. In one to the westward is the celebrated Bash-Bish Falls, and the other to the northward is Sage's Ravine, just beyond it being Norton's Falls. The Bash-Bish is said to have got its name in imitation of running, falling waters. It descends nearly five hundred feet in cataracts and rapids, the finest cascades in the Berkshires, and then flows out westward to the Hudson. The Housatonic, going southward through Salisbury, plunges down its Great Falls over rocky ledges for sixty feet descent, making a tremendous noise and a fine display. To the eastward of the Housatonic Valley, at an elevation of eleven hundred feet, on a broad plateau, is Litchfield, consisting chiefly of two broad, tree-shaded streets crossing at right angles, the chief buildings fronting on the central village Green. On the southwestern outskirts is Bantam Lake, the largest in Connecticut, covering a little over a square mile of surface. The most famous house in Litchfield, which has been moved, however, from its original location, is unpretentious, the old-time wooden mansion in which Rev. Lyman Beecher lived when pastor here, from 1810 to 1826, and where was born the famous authoress, Harriet Beecher, in 1812, who married Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, and the famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, in 1813. In the Wolcott House at Litchfield was born Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, he and his father both having been Connecticut Governors. To this house was brought, in the Revolution, the leaden statue of King George III., which stood on the Bowling Green of New York, to be melted into bullets. These were the favorite Indian hunting-grounds of Bantam around the lake, and when Litchfield was first settled, about 1720, the village was surrounded by a palisade, lest the savages should return to their coveted region to take forcible possession. Litchfield for a half-century after the Revolution had the most noted law school in America. To the northward, at Wolcottville, where there are now large factories, lived Captain John Brown, a noted Revolutionary soldier, and here was born in 1800 his grandson, "Old John Brown of Osawatomie."

Yet farther southward, but still among the hills, west of the Housatonic Valley and near the New York boundary, is Danbury, famous for its hat-factories, a town of about twenty thousand people. The first hat-factory in America was opened at Danbury in 1780 by Zadoc Benedict, three men making three hats a day. The factories now turn out several thousand a day. In May, 1777, the Hessians attacked Danbury and destroyed a large amount of the Revolutionary army supplies, and it is recorded of the tragic event that Danbury was "ankle-deep in pork-fat." On that memorable occasion it is said that when the raiders were advancing up a hill a bold and reckless Yankee farmer rode to its crest and shouted loudly, "Halt, the whole universe; break off by kingdoms!" This demonstration alarmed the Hessians, who thought a formidable force coming, and they halted to defend themselves, deploying skirmishers and getting up their cannon to the front. It was in an attack upon these raiders near Danbury that General Wooster was mortally wounded, and the Danbury Cemetery contains his monument. The constantly broadening Housatonic River winds among the Connecticut hills in its steady course southeastward to its confluence with the Naugatuck, a smaller stream coming down through a pretty valley from the north, its Indian name meaning "one tree," referring to an ancient tree on its banks which was a landmark for the aborigines. The Naugatuck tumbles over a waterfall in the Indian domain of Paugussett, furnishing power for the mills of Ansonia, noted for its clocks. Near the confluence of the rivers is the great Housatonic dam, six hundred feet long and twenty-three feet high, constructed at a cost of $500,000 for the manufacturers of Derby, who make pins, tacks, stockings, pianos and many other articles. Commodore Isaac Hull, born in 1773, was the most distinguished native of Derby, the commander of the frigate "Constitution" when she captured the "Guerriere" in 1812. Then in stately course the broad Housatonic flows southward, to finally empty into Long Island Sound. The beauties of the Berkshire hills, so much of which are made by the Housatonic's wayward course, have been the theme of universal admiration, and their praises abound in our best American literature. It was after a visit there that Robert G. Ingersoll made his happy phrases in contrasting country and city life:

"It is no advantage to live in a great city, where poverty degrades and failure brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets, and the great forests than walls of brick. Oaks and elms are more poetic than steeples and chimneys. In the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and setting sun; you become acquainted with the stars and clouds. The constellations are your friends. You hear the rain on the roof and listen to the rhythmic sighing of the winds. You are thrilled by the resurrection called Spring, touched and saddened by Autumn, the grace and poetry of death. Every field is a picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought; and every forest a fairy-land. In the country you preserve your identity, your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation."

The historian of the Berkshires, Clark W. Bryan of Great Barrington, thus poetically describes the Berkshire hills and homes:

"Between where Hudson's waters flow Adown from gathering streams, And where the clear Connecticut, In lengthened beauty gleams-- Where run bright rills, and stand high rocks,-- Where health and beauty comes, And peace and happiness abides, Rest Berkshire's Hills and Homes.

"The Hoosac winds its tortuous course, The Housatonic sweeps Through fields of living loveliness, As on its course it keeps. Old Saddleback stands proudly by, Among Taconic's peaks, And rugged mountain Monument Of Indian legend speaks.

"Mount Washington with polished brow, Green in the summer days, Or white with winter's driving storms, Or with autumn's flame ablaze, Looms up across the southern sky, In native beauty dressed-- The home of Bash-Bish, weird and old, Anear the mountain's crest.

"And still each streamlet runs its course, And still each mountain stands, While Berkshire's sons and daughters roam Through home and foreign lands; But though they roam, or though they rest, A thought spontaneous comes, Of love and veneration for Our Berkshire Hills and Homes."

THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES.

THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES.

The Great North Woods -- Mount Marcy or Tahawus -- Schroon Lake -- Raquette River -- View from Mount Marcy -- Door of the Country -- Lake George -- Horicon, the Silvery Water -- Isaac Jogues -- Sir William Johnson -- Lake George Scenery and Islands -- Sabbath Day Point -- Lake George Battles and Massacres -- The Bloody Morning Scout -- Colonel Ephraim Williams -- Baron Dieskau Defeated and Captured -- Fort William Henry -- Fort Carillon -- General Montcalm -- Massacre at Fort William Henry -- Alexandria -- Ticonderoga -- Abercrombie's Expedition -- General Lord Howe -- Rogers' Slide -- Howe Killed and Abercrombie Defeated -- Amherst's Expedition -- Carillon Captured -- Fort Ticonderoga -- Conquest of Canada -- Ethan Allen Captures Ticonderoga -- Lake Champlain -- Samuel de Champlain Explores It -- Defeats the Iroquois -- Crown Point -- Port Henry -- Bulwagga Mountain and Bay -- Fort St. Frederic -- Westport -- Split Rock -- Rock Reggio -- Port Kent -- Vermont -- The Green Mountains -- Bennington -- John Stark -- Rutland -- Killington Peak -- Mount Mansfield -- Forehead, Nose and Chin -- Camel's Hump -- Maple Sugar -- Burlington -- University of Vermont -- Ethan Allen's Grave -- Winooski River -- Smuggler's Notch -- Montpelier -- Hessian Cannon -- St. Albans -- Ausable Chasm -- Alice Falls -- Birmingham Falls -- Grand Flume -- Bluff Point -- Lower Saranac River -- Plattsburg -- Fredenburgh's Ghost -- McDonough's Victory -- Chateaugay Forest -- Clinton Prison -- Rouse's Point -- Richelieu River -- Chambly Rapids -- Entering the Adirondacks -- Raven Pass -- Bouquet River -- Elizabethtown -- Mount Hurricane -- Giant of the Valley -- Ausable River -- Flats of Keene -- Mount Dix -- Noon Mark Mountain -- Ausable Lakes -- Adirondack Mountain Reserve -- Mount Colvin -- Verplanck Colvin -- Long Pond Mountain -- Pitch-Off Mountain -- Cascade Lakes -- Mount Mclntyre -- Wallface -- Western Ausable River -- Plains of Abraham -- North Elba -- Whiteface -- Old John Brown's Farm and Grave -- Lake Placid -- Mirror Lake -- Eye of the Adirondacks -- Upper Saranac River -- Harrietstown -- Lower Saranac Lake -- Ampersand -- Canoeing and Carrying -- Round Lake -- Upper Saranac Lake -- Big Clear Pond -- St. Regis Mountain and River -- St. Germain Carry -- St. Regis Lakes -- Paul Smith's -- Raquette River and Lake -- Camp Pine Knot -- Blue Mountain and Lake -- Eagle Lake -- Fulton Lakes -- Forked Lakes -- Long Lake -- Tupper Lakes -- Mountains, Woods and Waters -- The Forest Hymn.

THE GREAT NORTH WOODS.

The Adirondack wilderness covers almost the whole of Northern New York. This region is an elevated plateau of about fifteen thousand square miles, crossed by mountain ranges. It stretches from Canada down almost to the Mohawk Valley, and from Lake Champlain northwest to the St. Lawrence, in rugged surface, the plateau from which its peaks arise being elevated about two thousand feet above the sea. Five nearly parallel mountain ranges cross it from southwest to northeast, terminating in great promontories upon the shores of Lake Champlain. The most westerly is the Clinton or Adirondack range, beginning at the pass of Little Falls upon the Mohawk River and crossing the wilderness to the bold Trembleau Point upon the lake at Port Kent. This range contains the highest peaks, the loftiest of them, Mount Marcy or Tahawus, rising fifty-three hundred and forty-five feet, while Mounts McIntyre, Whiteface, Seward and several others nearby approximate five thousand feet. A multitude of peaks of various heights are scattered through the region, over five hundred being enumerated. They are all wild and savage, and were covered by the primeval forests until the ruthless wood-chopper began his destructive incursions. The stony summits of the higher mountains rise above all vegetation, excepting mosses and dwarf Alpine plants. The geological formation is mainly granitic and other primary rocks. In the valleys are more than a thousand beautiful lakes of varying sizes, generally at fifteen hundred to two thousand feet elevation, Schroon Lake, the largest, being the lowest, elevated eight hundred and seven feet, while the highest is "The Tear of the Clouds," at forty-three hundred and twenty feet elevation, one of the Hudson River sources. Some of these lakes are quite large, while others cover only a few acres, and most of them are lovely and romantic in everything but their prosaic names; and their scenery, with the surrounding mountains and overspreading forests, is unsurpassed. The labyrinth of lakes is connected by intricate systems of rivulets which go plunging down myriads of cascades, their outlets discharging into several well-known rivers, the chief being the Hudson. The largest and finest stream within the district is the Raquette River, rising in Raquette Lake and flowing westward and northward to the St. Lawrence. Around it, in the olden time, the Indians gathered on snowshoes to hunt the moose--the snowshoe being the French Canadian's "raquette," and hence the name. The Ausable and Saranac pass through romantic gorges and flow northeastward to Lake Champlain. This "Great North Woods," as it was called by our ancestors, is being so greatly despoiled of its forests, that to preserve the water supply of the Hudson, as well as to protect its scenic attractions, New York is making a State Park to include four thousand square miles, of which nearly one-half is now secured, having cost about $1,000,000. Railways are gradually extending into the district; it is becoming dotted with summer hotels and camping-grounds; and is one of the most popular American pleasure resorts.