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The World's Famous Places and Peoples

AMERICA

JOEL COOK

In Six Volumes

Merrill and Baker New York London

THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD'S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS COPY IS NO. 205

VOLUME IV

PAGE

MONUMENT TO JONATHAN EDWARDS, STOCKBRIDGE, MASS. 256

OLD FORT TICONDEROGA 290

WATKINS GLEN 362

IN THE THOUSAND ISLANDS, ST. LAWRENCE 412

CHAUDI?RE FALLS, ST. LAWRENCE 450

MONTCALM'S HEADQUARTERS, QUEBEC 474

A GLIMPSE OF THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.

A GLIMPSE OF THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.

Berkshire Magnificence -- Taghkanic Range -- Housatonic River -- Autumnal Forest Tints -- Old Graylock -- Fitchburg Railroad -- Hoosac Mountain and Tunnel -- Williamstown -- Williams College -- North Adams -- Fort Massachusetts -- Adams -- Lanesboro -- Pittsfield -- Heart of Berkshire -- The Color-Bearer -- Latimer Fugitive Slave Case -- Old Clock on the Stairs -- Pontoosuc Lake -- Ononta Lake -- Berry Pond -- Lily Bowl -- Ope of Promise -- Lenox -- Fanny Kemble -- Henry Ward Beecher -- Mount Ephraim -- Yokun-town -- Stockbridge Bowl -- Lake Mahkeenac -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- House of the Seven Gables -- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Lanier Hill -- Laurel Lake -- Lee -- Stockbridge -- Field Hill -- John Sergeant -- Stockbridge Indians -- Jonathan Edwards -- Edwards Hall -- Sedgwick Family and Tombs -- Theodore Sedgwick -- Catherine Maria Sedgwick -- Monument Mountain -- The Pulpit -- Ice Glen -- Great Barrington -- William Cullen Bryant -- The Minister's Wooing -- Kellogg Terrace -- Mrs. Hopkins-Searles -- Sheffield -- Mount Everett -- Mount Washington -- Shays' Rebellion -- Boston Corner -- Salisbury -- Winterberg -- Bash-Bish Falls -- Housatonic Great Falls -- Litchfield -- Bantam Lake -- Birthplace of the Beechers -- Wolcott House -- Wolcottville -- John Brown -- Danbury -- Hat-making -- General Wooster -- Ansonia -- Derby -- Isaac Hull -- Robert G. Ingersoll's Tribute -- Berkshire Hills and Homes.

BERKSHIRE 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 Berkshire. 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 Berkshire hills, and flowing for one hundred and fifty miles southward by a winding course through Massachusetts and Connecticut, finally empties into Long Island Sound. Berkshire is the western county of Massachusetts, 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 Berkshire 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 Berkshire 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." Fanny 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 Berkshire 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 Berkshire 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 Berkshire 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 Berkshire 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 Massachusetts ,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," passing under the shadow of Old Graylock, rising in solid grandeur over thirty-five hundred feet, the highest Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts, 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 Berkshire, Pittsfield, named in honor of William Pitt, the elder, in 1761. The Boston and Albany Railroad crosses the Berkshires 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 Berkshire." 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, "Massachusetts 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 emancipation was purchased for 0, 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 breasts of Berkshire'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 Hampshire'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 spacious 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 Agassiz Association 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 shores. On the mountain to the northwest is Berry Pond, its margin of silvery sand strewn with deliite of this "certainty," and even the hunters who tried to follow him and discover the sources of his fortune, would turn away laughingly when, at some mountain pass, where one man could keep back a multitude, they would abruptly run up against Williams' trusty rifle, and hear him challenge.

"D'ye h'ar, now, boys! Go 'way from fooling with the old mossback when he has his shooting iron loaded--it may hurt some o' ye; mind that, boys!"

Nevertheless, at last, Bill Williams failed to come to St. Louis or Santa Fe with the well-known pack; and, as year after year passed, the old hunters would sadly shake their frosting brows and feelingly mutter, "Old Billy's gone up, sure! 'Tell 'ee for a true thing, they've rubbed out the old marksman. See! H'yar goes for a sign on my stock; I've a bullet for the nigger that sent him under, mind that!"

At length the mountains yielded up the mystery in part. Bill Williams' squaw, penetrating snow filled gorges where, assuredly, no woman had ever stepped, came into a glade where a skeleton of a horse gleamed yellow like old alabaster in the icy crust. In a snowbank, half fallen open like a split nut, was visible a kind of human figure, mummified by dry cold. It was the veteran trapper. He was in the position of a hunter awaiting a prowling foe ambushed in the shrub, his rifle in advance, his shrunken face still leaning out eagerly. In the leather shirt and breast, almost as tanned with sun and wind, was a bullet's wound: the squaw could even chisel it out of the frozen flesh, where blood had long since ceased to flow. That was the only clue to the tracker and slayer of the trapper, and that was the single token and heritage which altered the entire course of young Williams' life. School and cities saw him no more; he took to the wilds, and lived on the warpath as far as the still unpunished murderer of his father was concerned.

He was rich, like Jim Ridge, for they had penetrated the very "mother pocket" of the Rocky Mountains' gold store; but he, no more than his pure white partner, would renounce the existence of peril, but also of independence.

Suddenly a deep "Hugh!" of attention from Cherokee Bill attracted the white man's ear.

"What?" said he, peering around, but seeing nothing to alarm him; nor had the animals, usually acute observers, perceived anything even novel.

"A solitary man," answered Bill, who spoke good English, of course.

Ridge shook his head, not in doubt of his comrade's ability, but in self-blame.

On the highlands, nothing but long habit endows one with the power to calculate distances exactly. Rarefaction gives the atmosphere a clearness which seems to bring the horizon to hand--the sight is extended indefinitely, and masses of shadows in vast valleys look like mere specks in the expanses of light, so that the space between the standpoint and a distant object is usually mistaken. There are also fantastic effects from the vapour being frozen or expanded, and presenting apparently solid forms, where, in fact, unsubstantially reigns.

"I am going for him," proceeded Cherokee Bill; "after all, it's no odds--we are 'to home!'" with a smile at his own imitation of the Yankee twang.

Wrapping his gun in his buffalo robes, taken off his pony, the half-breed slid down the declivity at the side of the "road," so to flatter it, and scrambling along an icy torrent of lovely blue water, suddenly sprang in under the cascade from an arching rock and disappeared.

Ridge did not even glance after him; besides, he had arrived, indeed. He suddenly took the bell mare by the bridle, and swerved her into an apparently impenetrable thicket--a "wind-slash," where the maze of deadwood was increased by the prostration of many tough evergreens, blown down by an irresistible tornado. But there had been traced here a kind of way, through which the pack animals insinuated themselves with the sureness of a cat, brushing off nothing of their loads. As for the two horses, they were more familiar with the strange path, and threaded its sinuosities like dogs tunnelling under the walls of a meat smokehouse. It is probable they scented their stable, and knew rest and food would shortly reward them for terrible toil and tribulation. Having pierced the tunnel of vegetation, there was one of stone, still more curious.

It was an almost regular tube, in black lava stone, four feet wide, seven or eight in height, smooth as glass mostly. Invisible fissures, however, must have supplied sweet air, for it was not hard breathing in all the extent, nearer three quarters of a mile than a half on the straight. No human hand had fashioned it; one must presume that, in the days when Vulcan swayed over Neptune on the earth, a torrent of lava was rushing down the steeps, when, suddenly, an immense snowfall smothered the fiery river and chilled it into a casing of stone around a still molten interior. That inner flow had continued, and left the tubular crust intact.

The ground was a fine sand, heavy with iron, so that it did not rise far. At the end of this channel a star suddenly gleamed, welcome in the complete darkness, into which, assuredly, the bravest of men would have hesitated to follow a foe. It was the outer air again, filling a basin, rock-engirt to a great height. In this lonely spot there was not a scrap of moss, not one blade of grass, and no shrub, however hardy. The calcined "blossom rock" wore a yellow hue, streaked with red and black; but here and there rose separate boulders of quartz, disintegrated by time and rain and whirling winds, which danced these Titanic blocks like thistles, and squeezed out those dull misshapen lumps. Those lumps were gold, however; this was a "mother-source"--one of those nests of Fortune for which the confirmed gold seeker quits home, family, wealth itself in other mines that content the less ravenous. Ridge traversed this placer--no pleasure to him, lonely Man of the Mountain--with a foot as reckless as those of the string of animals. The night was coming. He hurried them on into a second but short subterranean passage, with a couple of turnings, which finally opened into a cavern. At its far end a natural doorway afforded a view of the deep blue sky, where the brilliant stars seemed all of a sudden to be strewn. In those few moments the sun had gone down, and darkness come.

Ridge laid aside his gun, and started a fire, already laid, in a cavity of the grotto. The walls gleamed back the rising firelight; here amber studs in coal, there patches of mica-schist, varied gold and silver in hue.

After unpacking the animals, whose stores he carefully placed in caves, he sent them after the bell mare and the hunting horses, in through a channel to a sort of enclosed pasturage. Returning, he put some jerked meat down to broil, some roots to roast like so many potatoes, and added to the setting-out of a rude but hearty meal several of the delicacies brought in the train from Oregon. He was calmly smoking, reclining at great ease, with the air of one who felt he had earned the repose, lulled by the sweet murmur of underground streams, pouring out of ancient glaciers. The approach of footsteps made him glance round. The steps he knew to be Cherokee Bill's; so it was their being heavier than usual that alone roused him.

The half-breed was carrying a man over his shoulder with no more delicacy than if it had been a deer's carcase.

"Got him, Bill!" remarked Ridge.

"I should smile not to capture such a tenderfoot," was the rejoinder, as he flung his human prize upon the cavern floor.

THE MAN WHO RAN RIGHT INTO TROUBLE.

The prisoner of the Cherokee half-breed was in a forlorn state, more particularly as regarded apparel. Hardly suited for mountaineering at their best, his clothes were sorry rags, which an attempt at mending with bark fibre and rawhide had even rendered more lamentable. A horsehair lasso, of remarkable fineness and strength, was wound round and round him with a care which a Chinese would have envied. A handful of moss was the gag which nearly choked him, but his eyes were more full of rage than supplication, and they seemed to burn with enhanced indignation when he found the Indian was in concert with a white hunter.

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