Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/193

 REMINISCENCES.

��185

��BEMINISCENCES.

��BY L. W. DODGE.

��Night came down upon us with all the beauty of a New England summer twi- light ; it was starry, and the moon was coming; the dashing stream clown yonder in the glen made wild music, — sad to- night, but it was the same voice that lulled us to sweet slumber in childhood, and we now listened with a like charmed ear.

I said its tones were sorrowful to- night : not that they were different from usual, for you know there is always a strange connection between the beauti- ful and the sad, and then, too, this was the last of our too brief stay among the hills. On the morrow we should leave for our later and western home, and fare- wells are, you know, seldom ever cheer- ful.

We listened awhile to the wild dashing of the river as it went hurrying clown the valley, on its way to the Connecticut and the sea, and then wandered out into the gathering stillness, toward the miniature lake among the mists upon the hillside.

The moon was coming up the gorge beyond the wilds of " Wambeck Methua," and, outlined against the east, grand and rugged, behold the " Crystal Hills," with the glory of the moonlight resting upon their shaggy brows ; across the river, a silvery pathway goes shimmering from our feet until it hides itself among the lily-pads and wild grasses of the other shore ; half way up the northern slope, see now the receding shadows creeping over the roof and around the corners of the cottage residence of Rev. Dr. W., and far away, on the summit, the " Moun- tain View House," outlined against the distant blue, and, sentinel-like, overlook- ing forest, lake and river.

Below us, in the valley now deep in shade, but bright in its second growth of church and cottage, lies the village of

��Whitefield, abounding in family histories and rich in the monumental works of its sons and daughters of five generations.

Sitting here 'mid dreamy solitudes, with the mountain streams, the wind among the hills and the murmuring pines, filling with music our listening soul, it would be vain to deny that our minds were filled with imaginary histories and time-hallowed legends of rocky cliff, lake and river, above, below and around us. Could the hills but have voices, could we but interpret the ancient inscriptions upon mossy mound and lichened rock, we should hear tales of romance and un- fold hidden mysteries of the past that would keep us listening until the autumn leaves rustled above our covering and the wild winds sang us lasting requiem.

Did I ever disclose to you the bits of unwritten history which I have of this region? I cannot tell you where I be- came possessed or heard of them, but I find them lingering in my memory, like the mist upon yon mountain-side, uncer- tain and dreamy. I think I have given to you some scraps of them before; they floated in legendary form in the " long ago," ere grandam Buzzell trimmed her distaff in the little cottage upon the bank above the lower ravine; in the years when yonder stream, untamed and free, ran over rock and shallow, through sin- uous ways and darkening solitudes, from its source among the glens of " Kah-wan- en-te " to the Connecticut rapids.

1 have told you, ere this, how a band of Indians from the wilds of the West once made this section their home and hunting-grounds, and gave to these hills and mountain-born streams and lovely, lake-like sheets of blue, names in their own musical tongue, expressive of some inherent quality, natural beauty, or real or imaginary peculiarity, such as to yon

�� �