Chapter 1

THE BIRTHPLACE OF ISRAEL.

The traveller who at the present day is content to travel in the good

old Asiatic style, neither rushed along by a locomotive, nor dragged by

a stage-coach; who is willing to enjoy hospitalities at far-scattered

farmhouses, instead of paying his bill at an inn; who is not to be

frightened by any amount of loneliness, or to be deterred by the

roughest roads or the highest hills; such a traveller in the eastern

part of Berkshire, Massachusetts, will find ample food for poetic

reflection in the singular scenery of a country, which, owing to the

ruggedness of the soil and its lying out of the track of all public

conveyances, remains almost as unknown to the general tourist as the

interior of Bohemia.

Travelling northward from the township of Otis, the road leads for

twenty or thirty miles towards Windsor, lengthwise upon that long broken

spur of heights which the Green Mountains of Vermont send into

Massachusetts. For nearly the whole of the distance, you have the

continual sensation of being upon some terrace in the moon. The feeling

of the plain or the valley is never yours; scarcely the feeling of the

earth. Unless by a sudden precipitation of the road you find yourself

plunging into some gorge, you pass on, and on, and on, upon the crests

or slopes of pastoral mountains, while far below, mapped out in its

beauty, the valley of the Housatonie lies endlessly along at your feet.

Often, as your horse gaining some lofty level tract, flat as a table,

trots gayly over the almost deserted and sodded road, and your admiring

eye sweeps the broad landscape beneath, you seem to be Bootes driving in

heaven. Save a potato field here and there, at long intervals, the whole

country is either in wood or pasture. Horses, cattle and sheep are the

principal inhabitants of these mountains. But all through the year lazy

columns of smoke, rising from the depths of the forest, proclaim the

presence of that half-outlaw, the charcoal-burner; while in early spring

added curls of vapor show that the maple sugar-boiler is also at work.

But as for farming as a regular vocation, there is not much of it here.

At any rate, no man by that means accumulates a fortune from this thin

and rocky soil, all whose arable parts have long since been nearly

exhausted.

Yet during the first settlement of the country, the region was not

unproductive. Here it was that the original settlers came, acting upon

the principle well known to have regulated their choice of site, namely,

the high land in preference to the low, as less subject to the

unwholesome miasmas generated by breaking into the rich valleys and

alluvial bottoms of primeval regions. By degrees, however, they quitted

the safety of this sterile elevation, to brave the dangers of richer

though lower fields. So that, at the present day, some of those mountain

townships present an aspect of singular abandonment. Though they have

never known aught but peace and health, they, in one lesser aspect at

least, look like countries depopulated by plague and war. Every mile or

two a house is passed untenanted. The strength of the frame-work of

these ancient buildings enables them long to resist the encroachments of

decay. Spotted gray and green with the weather-stain, their timbers seem

to have lapsed back into their woodland original, forming part now of

the general picturesqueness of the natural scene. They are of

extraordinary size, compared with modern farmhouses. One peculiar

feature is the immense chimney, of light gray stone, perforating the

middle of the roof like a tower.

On all sides are seen the tokens of ancient industry. As stone abounds

throughout these mountains, that material was, for fences, as ready to

the hand as wood, besides being much more durable. Consequently the

landscape is intersected in all directions with walls of uncommon

neatness and strength.

The number and length of these walls is not more surprising than the

size of some of the blocks comprising them. The very Titans seemed to

have been at work. That so small an army as the first settlers must

needs have been, should have taken such wonderful pains to enclose so

ungrateful a soil; that they should have accomplished such herculean

undertakings with so slight prospect of reward; this is a consideration

which gives us a significant hint of the temper of the men of the

Revolutionary era.

Nor could a fitter country be found for the birthplace of the devoted

patriot, Israel Potter.

To this day the best stone-wall builders, as the best wood-choppers,

come from those solitary mountain towns; a tall, athletic, and hardy

race, unerring with the axe as the Indian with the tomahawk; at

stone-rolling, patient as Sisyphus, powerful as Samson.

In fine clear June days, the bloom of these mountains is beyond

expression delightful. Last visiting these heights ere she vanishes,

Spring, like the sunset, flings her sweetest charms upon them. Each tuft

of upland grass is musked like a bouquet with perfume. The balmy breeze

swings to and fro like a censer. On one side the eye follows for the

space of an eagle's flight, the serpentine mountain chains, southwards

from the great purple dome of Taconic--the St. Peter's of these

hills--northwards to the twin summits of Saddleback, which is the

two-steepled natural cathedral of Berkshire; while low down to the west

the Housatonie winds on in her watery labyrinth, through charming

meadows basking in the reflected rays from the hill-sides. At this

season the beauty of every thing around you populates the loneliness of

your way. You would not have the country more settled if you could.

Content to drink in such loveliness at all your senses, the heart

desires no company but Nature.

With what rapture you behold, hovering over some vast hollow of the

hills, or slowly drifting at an immense height over the far sunken

Housatonie valley, some lordly eagle, who in unshared exaltation looks

down equally upon plain and mountain. Or you behold a hawk sallying from

some crag, like a Rhenish baron of old from his pinnacled castle, and

darting down towards the river for his prey. Or perhaps, lazily gliding

about in the zenith, this ruffian fowl is suddenly beset by a crow, who

with stubborn audacity pecks at him, and, spite of all his bravery,

finally persecutes him back to his stronghold. The otherwise dauntless

bandit, soaring at his topmost height, must needs succumb to this sable

image of death. Nor are there wanting many smaller and less famous fowl,

who without contributing to the grandeur, yet greatly add to the beauty

of the scene. The yellow-bird flits like a winged jonquil here and

there; like knots of violets the blue-birds sport in clusters upon the

grass; while hurrying from the pasture to the grove, the red robin seems

an incendiary putting torch to the trees. Meanwhile the air is vocal

with their hymns, and your own soul joys in the general joy. Like a

stranger in an orchestra, you cannot help singing yourself when all

around you raise such hosannas.

But in autumn, those gay northerners, the birds, return to their

southern plantations. The mountains are left bleak and sere. Solitude

settles down upon them in drizzling mists. The traveller is beset, at

perilous turns, by dense masses of fog. He emerges for a moment into

more penetrable air; and passing some gray, abandoned house, sees the

lofty vapors plainly eddy by its desolate door; just as from the plain

you may see it eddy by the pinnacles of distant and lonely heights. Or,

dismounting from his frightened horse, he leads him down some scowling

glen, where the road steeply dips among grim rocks, only to rise as

abruptly again; and as he warily picks his way, uneasy at the menacing

scene, he sees some ghost-like object looming through the mist at the

roadside; and wending towards it, beholds a rude white stone, uncouthly

inscribed, marking the spot where, some fifty or sixty years ago, some

farmer was upset in his wood-sled, and perished beneath the load.

In winter this region is blocked up with snow. Inaccessible and

impassable, those wild, unfrequented roads, which in August are

overgrown with high grass, in December are drifted to the arm-pit with

the white fleece from the sky. As if an ocean rolled between man and

man, intercommunication is often suspended for weeks and weeks.

Such, at this day, is the country which gave birth to our hero:

prophetically styled Israel by the good Puritans, his parents, since,

for more than forty years, poor Potter wandered in the wild wilderness

of the world's extremest hardships and ills.

How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his father's stray

cattle among these New England hills he himself like a beast should be

hunted through half of Old England, as a runaway rebel. Or, how could he

ever have dreamed, when involved in the autumnal vapors of these

mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him three thousand miles

across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal-foes of London. But so it

was destined to be. This little boy of the hills, born in sight of the

sparkling Housatonic, was to linger out the best part of his life a

prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.