from the Green Mountains of Vermont, or, as the early Dutch
settlers called them because of their wintry aspects, the Snow
Mountains, it is like them also a spur of the great Appala-
chian chain that clasped the original republic. Its character-
istics are those of a mountain country, but with peculiarities
of its own. The hill-ranges, which sometimes reach an ele-
vation of between two and three thousand feet, contain few
single peaks standing out in solitary grandeur, although Gray-
lock, Everett, Mettawampe, Holyoke, and Tom, the highest
points, are objects of imposing magnitude. Nor are they hud-
dled together, as we often see them in mountainous districts,
making the depressions narrow and suffocating. They are

" Wide, wild, and open to the sky,"

and from almost any eminence the eye takes in a circle of broad
and billowy masses that lose themselves in sublime distances.

Within the valleys are found all varieties of natural beauty:
broad and grassy meadows, often gorgeous with flowers; tall
and graceful trees, either single or in clumps or copses or for-
ests ; sheets of water that here nestle in pretty pools and there
spread out in shining lakes; brooks that dimple and poise in
open meads or under overhanging bushes, or noisy, impatient
streams that make their way to the Connecticut River on one
side, and to the Housatonic on the other, by which they are
carried in more majestic currents to the sea.

This beautiful region, now largely covered by busy towns
and thrifty villages, and nearly everywhere intersected by
railroads, was, less than two hundred and fifty years since, an
unbroken wilderness. The bear, the wolf, and the catamount
were its almost exclusive possessors. Indians there were in
plenty, but they affected the river bottoms mainly, and pene-
trated the higher thickets only in pursuit of game. To the
newly come Pilgrims, who were a dot on the seacoasts, these
mountains seemed a dark and terrible barrier, infested by
savage beasts and wilder men, or by evil spirits, who bur-
dened the winds with their howlings. It was thirty years

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