University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
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
Housatonic 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 Boótes 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 Housatonic
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 Housatonic 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-fogs 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.