Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/141

Rh In entering Massachusetts by the western railroad, you pass the first tributary brooklet to the Housatonic, then the little pond which is called its source, and then crossing and recrossing, follow for some time the beautiful course of its broader waters.

Miss Sedgwick, in her interesting essay on her native Berkshire, says:—"We have entered it by a road far superior to the Appian Way. On every side are rich vallies, and smiling hill-sides, and deep set in their hollows lovely lakes sparkle like gems. From one of these, a modest sheet of water in Lanesborough, flows out the Housatonic, the minister of God's bounty, bringing to the meadows along its course, a yeasty renewal of fertility, and the ever-changing, ever-present beauty, that marks God's choicest works. It is the most judicious of rivers; like a discreet, rural beauty, it bears its burdens and does its work out of sight; its water privileges for mills, furnaces, and factories, are aside from the villages. When it comes near to them, as in Stockbridge, it lingers like a lover, turns and returns, and when fairly off, flies past rolling wheels, and dinning factories, till reaching the lovely meadows of Barrington, it again disports itself at leisure."

In the territory of Connecticut, it assumes more of the character of dignity and power, and especially at Derby, after its junction with the Naugatuck, mingles with and diversifies much bold and romantic scenery.

In approaching the dividing line between the States