Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/142

138 of New York and Massachusetts, the Shaker villages are seen at a distance, with the green hills of Lebanon, cultivated to their very summits. Slatestone, and a kind of gneiss, unusually brilliant with mica, which had prevailed, soon yielded to limestone ranges, enriched with that fine marble which distinguishes Richmond and Stockbridge. Iron, marble, and lime, woods, rocks, and waters, are among the riches of this wildly variegated country.

Pittsfield is a fine town, on a green vale, running between two mountain ranges. In the centre of its public square, which comprises about four acres, is a magnificent elm, which the earliest settlers had the taste and wisdom to spare, when the surrounding forests were, shorn. Its trunk rises ninety feet before the branches strike out, and its head towers upward to the height of one hundred and twenty-six feet. It is evidently of great antiquity, and exhibits symptoms of decay.

Dalton, seated among the hills, looked sweetly pleasant, as if it might extend to the wearv-hearted an invitation to share its quiet retreat, and steal from the bustle of an unsatisfying world. The road, which for some time kept the level of the Housatonic, and then that of the swift, stone-paved Westfield, both of which it had repeatedly crossed, took leave of these quiet companions, and began its ascent of eighty feet in a mile. This continued for about thirteen miles,—Washington, on one of the spurs of the Green Mountains,