Volume IV Part 1 (1/2)

America.

Volume IV.

by Joel Cook.

BERKs.h.i.+RE MAGNIFICENCE.

IN ascending the Hudson River, its eastern hill-border for many miles was the blue and distant Taghkanic range, which encloses the attractive region of Berks.h.i.+re. When the Indians from the Hudson Valley climbed over those hills they found to the eastward a beautiful stream, which they called the Housatonic, the ”River beyond the Mountains.” This picturesque river rises in the Berks.h.i.+re hills, and flowing for one hundred and fifty miles southward by a winding course through Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut, finally empties into Long Island Sound. Berks.h.i.+re is the western county of Ma.s.sachusetts, a region of exquisite loveliness that has no peer in New England, covering a surface about fifty miles long, extending entirely across the State, and about twenty miles wide. Two mountain ranges bound the intermediate valley, and these, with their outcroppings, make the noted Berks.h.i.+re hills that have drawn the warmest praises from the greatest American poets and authors. Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Hawthorne, Beecher and many others have written their song and story, which are interwoven with our best literature. It is a region of mountain peaks and lakes, of lovely vales and delicious views, and the exhilarating air and pure waters, combined with the exquisite scenery, have made it constantly attractive. Beecher early wrote that it ”is yet to be as celebrated as the Lake District of England, or the hill-country of Palestine.” One writer tells of the ”holiday-hills lifting their wreathed and crowned heads in the resplendent days of autumn;” another describes it as ”a region of hill and valley, mountain and lake, beautiful rivers and laughing brooks.” Miss Sedgwick, who journeyed thither on the railroad up the Westfield Valley from the Connecticut River, wrote, ”We have entered Berks.h.i.+re by a road far superior to the Appian Way. On every side are rich valleys and smiling hillsides, and, deep-set in their hollows, lovely lakes sparkle like gems.” f.a.n.n.y Kemble long lived at Lenox, in one of the most beautiful parts of the district, and she wished to be buried in its churchyard on the hill, saying, ”I will not rise to trouble anyone 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.”

To these Berks.h.i.+re hills the visitors go to see the brilliant autumnal tints of the American forests in their greatest perfection. When copious autumn rains have made the foliage luxuriant, much will remain vigorous after parts have been turned by frosts. This puts green into the Berks.h.i.+re panorama 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. When in such a combination, these make a magnificent contrast of brilliant leaf-coloring, and while it lasts, the mantle of purple and gold, of bright flame and resplendent green, with the almost dazzling yellows that cover the autumnal mountain slopes, give one of the richest feasts of color ever seen. This magnificence of the Berks.h.i.+re autumn coloring inspired Beecher to write, ”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!” From Williamstown to Salisbury the region stretches, the Taghkanic range bounding it on the west, and the Hoosac Mountain on the east. The northern guardian is double-peaked Old Graylock, the monarch of the Berks.h.i.+re hills, in the Taghkanic range, the scarred surfaces, exposed in huge bare places far up their sides, showing the white marble formation of these hills.

WILLIAMSTOWN TO PITTSFIELD.

The Fitchburg railroad, coming from Troy on the Hudson to Boston, crosses the northern part of the district and pierces the Hoosac Mountain by a famous tunnel, nearly five miles long, which cost Ma.s.sachusetts $16,000,000, the greatest railway tunnel in the United States. This railroad follows the charming Deerfield River Valley up to the mountain, from the east, and it seeks the Hudson northwestward down the Hoosac River, the ”place of stones,” pa.s.sing under the shadow of Old Graylock, rising in solid grandeur over thirty-five hundred feet, the highest Ma.s.sachusetts mountain, at the northwest corner of the State. A tower on the top gives a view all around the horizon, with attractive glimpses of the winding Hoosac and Housatonic Valleys. Nearby is Williamstown, the seat of Williams College, with four hundred students, its buildings being the chief feature of the village. President Garfield was a graduate of this College, and William Cullen Bryant for some time a student, writing much of his early poetry here. Five miles eastward is the manufacturing town of North Adams, with twenty thousand people, in the narrow valley of the Hoosac, whose current turns its mill-wheels. A short distance down the Hoosac, at a road crossing, was the site of old Fort Ma.s.sachusetts, the ”Thermopylae of New England” in the early French and Indian War, where, in 1746, its garrison of twenty-two men held the fort two days against an attacking force of nine hundred, of whom they killed forty-seven and wounded many more, only yielding when every grain of powder was gone.

Journeying southward up the Hoosac through its picturesque valley, the narrow, winding stream turns many mills, while ”Old Greylock, cloud-girdled on his purple throne,” stands guardian at its northern verge. There are various villages, mostly in decadence, many of their people having migrated, and the mills have to supplement water-power with steam, the drouths being frequent. Of the little town of Adams on the Hoosac, Susan B. Anthony was the most famous inhabitant, and in Lanesboro ”Josh Billings,” then named H. W. Shaw, was born in 1818, before he wandered away to become an auctioneer and humorist. The head of the Hoosac is a reservoir lake, made to store its waters that they may better serve the mills below, and almost embracing its sources are the branching head-streams of the Housatonic, which flows to the southward. This part of the intervale, being the most elevated, is a region of sloughs and lakes, from which the watershed tapers in both directions. Upon this high plateau, more than a thousand feet above the tidal level, is located the county-seat of Berks.h.i.+re, Pittsfield, named in honor of William Pitt, the elder, in 1761. The Boston and Albany Railroad crosses the Berks.h.i.+res through the town, and then climbing around the Hoosac range goes off down Westfield River to the Connecticut at Springfield. The Public Green of Pittsfield, located, as in all New England towns, in its centre, is called the ”Heart of Berks.h.i.+re.” Upon it stands Launt Thompson's noted 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 is reproduced on the Gettysburg battlefield, and it is the monument of five officers and ninety men of Pittsfield killed in the Civil War. At the dedication of this statue was read Whittier's eloquent lyric, ”Ma.s.sachusetts to Virginia,” which was inspired by the ”Latimer fugitive slave case” in 1842. An owner from Norfolk claimed the fugitive in Boston, and was awarded him by the courts, but the decision caused so much excitement that the slave's emanc.i.p.ation was purchased for $400, the owner gladly taking the money rather than pursue the case further. Thus said Whittier:

”A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been Thrilled as but yesterday the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Berks.h.i.+re's mountain men; The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.

”And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea-spray; And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay; Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill, And the cheer of Hamps.h.i.+re's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill:

”'No slave-hunt in our borders--no pirate on our strand!

No fetters in the Bay State--no slave upon our land!'”

Bordering this famous Green are the churches and public buildings of Pittsfield, while not far away a s.p.a.cious and comfortable mansion is pointed out which for many years was the summer home of Longfellow, and the place where he found ”The Old Clock on the Stairs”--the clock is said to still remain in the house. The Pittsfield streets lead out in every direction to lovely scenes on mountain slopes or the banks of lakes. The Aga.s.siz a.s.sociation for the study of natural history has its headquarters in Pittsfield, there being a thousand local chapters in various parts of the world. This pleasant region was the Indian domain of Pontoosuc, ”the haunt of the winter deer,” and this is the name of one of the prettiest adjacent lakes just north of the town on the Williamstown road. Ononta is another of exquisite contour, west of the town, a romantic lakelet elevated eighteen hundred feet, which gives Pittsfield its water supply, and has an attractive park upon its sh.o.r.es. On the mountain to the northwest is Berry Pond, its margin of silvery sand strewn with delicate fibrous mica and snowy quartz. Here, in various directions, are the ”Opes,” as the beautiful vista views are called, along the vales opening through and among the hills. One of these, to the southward, overlooks the lakelet of the ”Lily Bowl.”

Here lived Herman Melville, the rover of the seas, when he wrote his sea-novels. The chief of these vales is to the northwest of Pittsfield, the ”Ope of Promise,” giving a view over the ”Promised Land.” We are told that this tract was named with grim Yankee humor, because the original grant of the t.i.tle to the land was ”long promised, long delayed.”

LENOX.

A fine road, with exquisite views, leads a few miles southward to Lenox, the ”gem among the mountains,” as Professor 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, being about five miles apart, and having pleasant intervales between. There is a population of about three thousand, but summer and autumn sojourners greatly enlarge this, when throngs of happy pilgrims from the large cities come here, most of them having their own villas. The crests and slopes of the hills round about Lenox are crowned by mansions, many of them costly and imposing, adding to the charms of the landscape. At the head of the main street, the highest point of the village, stands the old Puritan Congregational Church, with its little white wooden belfry and a view all around the compa.s.s. This primitive church recalls many memories of the good old times, before fas.h.i.+on sought out Lenox and wors.h.i.+pped at its shrine:

”They had rigid manners and homespun breeches In the good old times; 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, And they went to meeting armed with a gun, In the good old times.”

Far to the northward, seen from this old church, beyond many swelling knolls and ridges, rises Old Graylock, looking like a rec.u.mbent elephant, as the clouds overhang its twin rounded peaks, thirty miles away. From the church door, facing the south and looking over and beyond the village, there is such a panorama that even without the devotion of the inspired Psalmist, one might prefer to stand in the door of the Lord's house rather than dwell in tent, tabernacle or mansion. This glorious view is over two valleys, one on either hand, their bordering ridges covered with the fairest foliage. To the distant southwest, where the Housatonic Valley stretches away in winding courses, the stream flowing in wayward fas.h.i.+on across the view, there are many ridgy hills, finally fading into the horizon beyond the Connecticut boundary. The immediate hillside is covered with the churchyard graves, and then slopes down into the village, with its surrounding galaxy of villas, among which little lakes glint in the sunlight. It is no wonder that f.a.n.n.y Kemble, who lived here at intervals for many years, desired to be buried at this church door, for she could not have found a fairer resting-place, though Henry Ward Beecher, another summer sojourner, in his enthusiasm expressed the hope that in her life to come she would ”behold one so much fairer that this scenic beauty shall fade to a shadow.”

The earliest settlements in this part of the Berks.h.i.+res, then a dangerous Indian frontier, were in 1750; and a few years later, when peace was restored, lands were bought and two towns started, one called Mount Ephraim and the other Yokun-town, after an Indian chief.

The Duke of Richmond, whose family name was Lenox, had taken strong ground in favor of the American colonists, and in grat.i.tude these towns, when subsequently incorporated, were called, the former Richmond, and the latter Lenox. The duke's coat-of-arms hangs upon the wall in the village Library of Lenox. In 1787 Lenox was made the county-seat of Berks.h.i.+re, so continuing for eighty-one years, and its present church was built in 1806, replacing an older one. It began to be a summer resort at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and became fas.h.i.+onable after f.a.n.n.y Kemble, then the great celebrity, visited it about 1838, and stopped at the ”Berks.h.i.+re Coffee House,”

setting the fas.h.i.+on of early rising by requiring her horse to be saddled and bridled and promptly at the door at seven o'clock in the morning, for a daily gallop of ten or twelve miles before breakfast.

Lenox has now developed into so much wealth, fas.h.i.+on and luxury, that it is known as ”the Newport of the Berks.h.i.+res.” Its one long village main street contains the Library and hotels, and in all directions pleasant roads lead out to the hills and vales around, which are developed in every way that wealth and art can master. The broad and charming gra.s.s-bordered main street, under its rows of stately overarching elms, leads southward down the hill among the villas. The deep adjacent valleys, with their many and varied knolls and slopes, give such grand outlooks that dwellings can be placed almost anywhere to advantage, most of them being s.p.a.cious and impressive, their elaborate architecture adding to the attractions.

THE STOCKBRIDGE BOWL.

Southward from Lenox is the outer elevated rim of the ”Stockbridge Bowl,” a deep basin among the hills, and one can look down within this grand amphitheatre upon Lake Mahkeenac nestling there, with the rocky and chaotic top of the distant Monument Mountain closing the view beyond. There are attractive villas perched upon all the knolls and terraces surrounding this famous ”Bowl,” and one modest older mansion overlooks it among so much modern magnificence--Nathaniel Hawthorne's ”House of the Seven Gables,” the remains of which are still shown.

Here he lived for a few years in a quaint little red wooden house, looking as if built in bits, and having a glorious view for miles away across the lake. Mrs. Hawthorne once described this house in a letter to her mother as ”the reddest little thing, which looks like the smallest of ten-foot houses.” Nearby is the farm where he got milk, the route to which he called the ”milky-way.” They have named the road leading out from Lenox to this house, in his honor, ”Hawthorne Street.” The view over the lake from its back windows was so enchanting that he was very proud of it, and Mrs. Hawthorne records that one day Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who then lived near Pittsfield, rode down to make a call. They insisted on his coming in ”to get a peep at the lake through the boudoir window,” while Hawthorne himself held the doctor's horse at the door. The humorist, on returning, acknowledged the kindness with a pleasantry, saying, ”Is there another man in all America that ever had such honor as to have the author of 'The Scarlet Letter' hold his horse?”

The rides around the ”Stockbridge Bowl” are delicious. Over the hills they go, up and down the terraces widely encircling the grand basin, now under arching canopies of elms, then through the forest, past little lakelets, with fascinating views in all directions, and always having the placid lake for a central gem down in the ”Bowl.” There are villas on all the points of vantage--red-topped and white-topped--the princely palaces of wealthy bankers and merchants. One of the most noted of these villas on Lanier Hill, high above the ”Bowl” and the surrounding vales, gives opportunity to overlook several lakes, and study the rock-ribbed structure of the charming region, thrust up in crags and layers of white marble. The walls and stonework of the buildings are chiefly white, contrasting prettily with the foliage and greensward. Here is seen the Laurel Lake, and beyond is the village of Lee, nestling in the deep valley along the winding Housatonic, its tall white church spire rising among the trees, yet far down among the surrounding hills. All the adjacent slopes are covered with villas, and the marble-quarries and paper-mills have made the town's fortune.

There are about four thousand people, and the Lee quarries are among the most noted in America. The pure white marble, cut out of deep fissures alongside the Housatonic, has built many famous structures, including the two largest buildings in the country, the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton and the Philadelphia City Hall, and also St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Lee was named in the Revolution, after ”Light Horse Harry” of Virginia.

STOCKBRIDGE AND ITS INDIANS.

Across an intervening ridge beyond the ”Bowl” is the village of Stockbridge. The wayward Housatonic encircles Lee, and flows athwart the valley towards the west, thus making a meadow on which this pleasant settlement stands. In the autumn, turkeys strut about, and pumpkins lie profusely in the fields, preparing for the annual New England feast of roast turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day--the great Puritan holiday that has spread over the country. Monument Mountain and Bear Mountain to the southward guard the smaller glen into which the highway leads, with Stockbridge scattered through it upon the winding river banks. This region was settled earlier than Lenox, the first colonists from the Connecticut Valley venturing out upon the Indian trail across the Hoosac range in 1725 to take up a grant in the Southern Berks.h.i.+res. They found here, on the river bank, the Mohican Indian village of Housatonnuc, and established relations of the greatest friendliness. Field's Hill overlooks the town, where Cyrus W. Field, of Atlantic cable memory, and his brothers were born.