NORTH ADAMS AND PITTSFILD. 139 being the barrier separating from the Hudson Valley in New York, while "Old Graylock, cloud-girdled on his purple throne," stands guardian at the northern entrance. The journey passes many mills, and it seems difficult to imagine how the villages have managed to find room enough to stand amid the encroaching hills. These settlements are picturesque, but seem in a sort of decadence, the migration of their people to the West having curtailed growth. The town of Adams is passed, having a few hundred population, the most famous of its inhabitants being Miss Susan B. Anthony. At times the valley broadens, with the Hoosac meandering among the fields, but the mills have chimneystacks and coal-piles, showing that steam has to supplement the water-power. Sheep and cattle graze and villas abound, and here is Cheshire, noted for its cheeses, while not far away the late lamented humorist " Josh Billings" was born, then named H. W. Shaw before he wandered away to become an auctioneer and lecturer under his popular sobriquet. Soon we lose the narrow, wayward Hoosac in the reservoir made of its head-waters that they may better serve the many mills below. Almost embracing the sources of the diminutive Hoosac, with its branching head-streams coming out of many pretty lakes and springs, originates the Housatonic River, its Indian name meaning the "flowing, winding waters." It flows south, as the other does north, and this part of the valley is an elevated region of sloughs and lakes, from which the watershed tapers off in both directions. Upon this high plateau, more than a thousand feet above the sealevel, is located Pittsfield, the county-seat of Berkshire, thus named in honor of William Pitt the elder in 1761. The centre of the town, as throughout New England, is the public green, here called the "Heart of Berkshire." Upon it stands Launt Thompson's famous bronze statue of the "Color-bearer," cast from cannon given by Congress -a spirited young soldier in fatigue uniform holding aloft the flag. This statue, which is so much admired, has been reproduced upon the Gettysburg battle-field to mark the position of the Massachusetts troops. It is the monument of five officers and ninety men of Pittsfield killed in the war, and at the dedication appropriate to it were read Whittier's eloquent lines: "A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been Thrilled as but yesterday the breasts of Berkshire's mountain-men; "And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea-spray; "No slave-hunt in our borders-no pirate on our strand! No fetters in the Bay State-no slave upon our land !'"* Around this celebrated green are the churches and public buildings of the town, while not far away a spacious and comfortable mansion is pointed out that was for many years the summer home of Longfellow and the place where he found "The Old Clock on the Stairs." Upon one of the buildings near this green a modest, weather-beaten sign bears the well-known name of Henry L. Dawes, the Massachusetts Senator, who lives at Pittsfield in one of its most unpretentious houses, showing that his statesmanship has not produced him great wealth. As everywhere else, mills make much of the trade of Pittsfield, and the trains of the Boston and Albany Railroad roll through * Whittier's lyric "Massachusetts to Virginia," inspired by the Latimer fugitive-slave case in 1842, when an owner from Norfolk claimed the fugitive in Boston, and was awarded him by the courts; but so much excitement was created that the slave's emancipation was purchased for four hundred dollars, the owner gladly taking the money rather than pursue the case. 66 THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. 141 it on their journeys. Its highways in every direction lead out to lovely scenes upon mountain-slopes or the banks of lakes. This region was the Indian domain of Pontoosuc, "the haunt of the winter deer," and this is the name of one of the prettiest of the adjacent lakes. Onota is another of exquisite contour, a romantic lakelet elevated eighteen hundred feet which gives Pittsfield its water-supply. Berry Pond is here with its margin of silvery sand strewn with delicate fibrous mica and snowy quartz. Here are the 'Opes," as the beautiful vista views are called along the vales opening into the adjacent hills. One of these to the southward overlooks the lakelet of the "Lily Bowl.” Herę lived Herman Melville, the rover of the seas, when he wrote his sea-novels. The chief of these vales, however, is northwest of Pittsfield, the "Ope of Promise," giving a view over the "Promised Land." This tract, we are told, was named with grim Yankee humor, because the original grant of the title was "long promised, yet longer delayed." XX. THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. We have come into the "Heart of Berkshire," the region of exquisite loveliness that has no peer in New England. Berkshire is the western county of Massachusetts, covering a surface about fifty miles long, extending entirely across the State and about twenty miles wide. Two mountain-ranges bound its intermediate valley, and these make the noted "Berkshire Hills" that have been the theme of warmest praises from the greatest American poets and authors. Their song and story have been sung and written by Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Hawthorne, Beecher, and many others, and are interwoven with the best American literature. It is a region of myriad lakes and mountain-peaks, of lovely vales and delicious views, and its pure waters and exhilarating air, combined with the exquisite scenery, have made it most attractive to tourists. Beecher wrote that it "is yet to be as celebrated as the Lake District of England or the hill-country of Palestine." One writer described the Berkshire "holiday hills lifting their wreathed and crowned heads in the resplendent days of autumn." Another says it is "a region of hill and valley, mountain and lake, beautiful rivers and laughing brooks." Miss Sedgwick writes of the "rich valleys and smiling hillsides, and deep set in their hollows lovely lakes sparkle like gems." Fanny Kemble long lived at Lenox in the most beautiful part of this region, and she wished to be buried in its churchyard on the hill, saying, "I will not rise to trouble any one if they will let me sleep here. I will only ask to be permitted once in a while to raise my head and look out upon the glorious scene." It is to the Berkshire Hills that visitors go to see the autumnal tints of the forests in their greatest perfection. The abundant rains of last season made the foliage unusually luxuriant, and much of it remained vigorous after parts had turned by ripening rather than by frosts. This placed an unusual proportion of green in the picture to enhance the olives of the birch, the grayish pinks of the ash, the scarlets of the maple, the deep reds of the oak, and the bright yellows of the poplar. These in combination made a magnificent contrast of brilliant leaf-coloring, and while it lasted the mantle of purple and gold, of brilliant flame and resplendent green, with the almost dazzling yellows that covered the mountain-slopes, gave one of the richest feasts of color ever seen. Of this Berkshire magnificence of autumn Beecher writes: "Have the evening clouds, suffused with sunset, dropped down and become fixed into solid forms? Have the rainbows that followed autumn storms faded upon the mountains and left their mantles there? What a mighty chorus of colors do the trees roll down the valleys, up the hillsides, and over the mountains!" 1 LENOX. In the midst of all this natural grandeur is Lenox, eight miles south of Pittsfield-the "gem among the mountains," as Silliman called it-standing upon a high ridge at twelve hundred feet elevation, and rising far above the general floor of the valley, the mountain-ridges bounding it upon either hand, here about five miles apart, having pleasant intervales between. Summer and autumn sojourners greatly enlarge the population when hundreds of happy pilgrims come hither from the large cities, most of them having their own villas. The slopes and crests of all the hills round about Lenox are crowned by mansions, many of them costly and imposing, adding to the charms of the pleasant landscape. At the head of the chief street, the highest point of the village, stands the old Puritan Congregational church, with its white wooden belfry and a view all around the compass. It brings back many memories of the good old times before fashion sought Lenox and worshipped at its shrine: "They had rigid manners and homespun breeches They hunted Indians and hung up witches In the good old times; They toiled and moiled from sun to sun, And they counted sinful all kinds of fun, To the northward, seen from this famous old church beyond many swelling knolls and ridges, rises Old Graylock, looking like a recumbent elephant as the clouds overhang its twin rounded peaks thirty miles away. From the |