Miss Sedgwick, who journeyed thither on the railroad up the Westfield Valley from the Connecticut River, wrote, "We have entered Berkshire by a road far superior to the Appian Way. On every side are rich valleys and smiling hillsides, and, deep-set in their hollows, lovely lakes sparkle like gems." Fanny Kemble long lived at Lenox, in one of the most beautiful parts of the district, and she wished to be buried in its churchyard on the hill, saying, "I will not rise to trouble anyone if they will let me sleep here. I will only ask to be permitted once in a while to raise my head and look out upon the glorious scene."

To these Berkshire hills the visitors go to see the brilliant autumnal tints of the American forests in their greatest perfection. When copious autumn rains have made the foliage luxuriant, much will remain vigorous after parts have been turned by frosts. This puts green into the Berkshire panorama to enhance the olives of the birch, the grayish pinks of the ash, the scarlets of the maple, the deep reds of the oak and the bright yellows of the poplar. When in such a combination, these make a magnificent contrast of brilliant leaf-coloring, and while it lasts, the mantle of purple and gold, of bright flame and resplendent green, with the almost dazzling yellows that cover the autumnal mountain slopes, give one of the richest feasts of color ever seen. This magnificence of the Berkshire autumn coloring inspired Beecher to write, "Have the evening clouds, suffused with sunset, dropped down and become fixed into solid forms? Have the rainbows that followed autumn storms faded upon the mountains and left their mantles there? What a mighty chorus of colors do the trees roll down the valleys, up the hillsides, and over the mountains!" From Williamstown to Salisbury the region stretches, the Taghkanic range bounding it on the west, and the Hoosac Mountain on the east. The northern guardian is double-peaked Old Graylock, the monarch of the Berkshire hills, in the Taghkanic range, the scarred surfaces, exposed in huge bare places far up their sides, showing the white marble formation of these hills.

WILLIAMSTOWN TO PITTSFIELD.

The Fitchburg railroad, coming from Troy on the Hudson to Boston, crosses the northern part of the district and pierces the Hoosac Mountain by a famous tunnel, nearly five miles long, which cost Massachusetts $16,000,000, the greatest railway tunnel in the United States. This railroad follows the charming Deerfield River Valley up to the mountain, from the east, and it seeks the Hudson northwestward down the Hoosac River, the "place of stones," passing under the shadow of Old Graylock, rising in solid grandeur over thirty-five hundred feet, the highest Massachusetts mountain, at the northwest corner of the State. A tower on the top gives a view all around the horizon, with attractive glimpses of the winding Hoosac and Housatonic Valleys. Nearby is Williamstown, the seat of Williams College, with four hundred students, its buildings being the chief feature of the village. President Garfield was a graduate of this College, and William Cullen Bryant for some time a student, writing much of his early poetry here. Five miles eastward is the manufacturing town of North Adams, with twenty thousand people, in the narrow valley of the Hoosac, whose current turns its mill-wheels. A short distance down the Hoosac, at a road crossing, was the site of old Fort Massachusetts, the "Thermopylæ of New England" in the early French and Indian War, where, in 1746, its garrison of twenty-two men held the fort two days against an attacking force of nine hundred, of whom they killed forty-seven and wounded many more, only yielding when every grain of powder was gone.

Journeying southward up the Hoosac through its picturesque valley, the narrow, winding stream turns many mills, while "Old Greylock, cloud-girdled on his purple throne," stands guardian at its northern verge. There are various villages, mostly in decadence, many of their people having migrated, and the mills have to supplement water-power with steam, the drouths being frequent. Of the little town of Adams on the Hoosac, Susan B. Anthony was the most famous inhabitant, and in Lanesboro "Josh Billings," then named H. W. Shaw, was born in 1818, before he wandered away to become an auctioneer and humorist. The head of the Hoosac is a reservoir lake, made to store its waters that they may better serve the mills below, and almost embracing its sources are the branching head-streams of the Housatonic, which flows to the southward. This part of the intervale, being the most elevated, is a region of sloughs and lakes, from which the watershed tapers in both directions. Upon this high plateau, more than a thousand feet above the tidal level, is located the county-seat of Berkshire, Pittsfield, named in honor of William Pitt, the elder, in 1761. The Boston and Albany Railroad crosses the Berkshires through the town, and then climbing around the Hoosac range goes off down Westfield River to the Connecticut at Springfield. The Public Green of Pittsfield, located, as in all New England towns, in its centre, is called the "Heart of Berkshire." Upon it stands Launt Thompson's noted bronze statue of the "Color-Bearer," cast from cannon given by Congress,—a spirited young soldier in fatigue uniform, holding aloft the flag. This statue is reproduced on the Gettysburg battlefield, and it is the monument of five officers and ninety men of Pittsfield killed in the Civil War. At the dedication of this statue was read Whittier's eloquent lyric, "Massachusetts to Virginia," which was inspired by the "Latimer fugitive slave case" in 1842. An owner from Norfolk claimed the fugitive in Boston, and was awarded him by the courts, but the decision caused so much excitement that the slave's emancipation was purchased for $400, the owner gladly taking the money rather than pursue the case further. Thus said Whittier:

Bordering this famous Green are the churches and public buildings of Pittsfield, while not far away a spacious and comfortable mansion is pointed out which for many years was the summer home of Longfellow, and the place where he found "The Old Clock on the Stairs"—the clock is said to still remain in the house. The Pittsfield streets lead out in every direction to lovely scenes on mountain slopes or the banks of lakes. The Agassiz Association for the study of natural history has its headquarters in Pittsfield, there being a thousand local chapters in various parts of the world. This pleasant region was the Indian domain of Pontoosuc, "the haunt of the winter deer," and this is the name of one of the prettiest adjacent lakes just north of the town on the Williamstown road. Ononta is another of exquisite contour, west of the town, a romantic lakelet elevated eighteen hundred feet, which gives Pittsfield its water supply, and has an attractive park upon