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:
"A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been
Thrilled as but yesterday the breasts of Berkshire's mountain men;
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
"And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea-spray;
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay;
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill: