"'No slave-hunt in our borders—no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon our land!'"
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 its shores. On the mountain to the northwest is Berry Pond, its margin of silvery sand strewn with delicate fibrous mica and snowy quartz. Here, in various directions, are the "Opes," as the beautiful vista views are called, along the vales opening through and among the hills. One of these, to the southward, overlooks the lakelet of the "Lily Bowl." Here lived Herman Melville, the rover of the seas, when he wrote his sea-novels. The chief of these vales is to the northwest of Pittsfield, the "Ope of Promise," giving a view over the "Promised Land." We are told that this tract was named with grim Yankee humor, because the original grant of the title to the land was "long promised, long delayed."
LENOX.
A fine road, with exquisite views, leads a few miles southward to Lenox, the "gem among the mountains," as Professor Silliman called it, standing upon a high ridge at twelve hundred feet elevation, and rising far above the general floor of the valley, the mountain ridges bounding it upon either hand, being about five miles apart, and having pleasant intervales between. There is a population of about three thousand, but summer and autumn sojourners greatly enlarge this, when throngs of happy pilgrims from the large cities come here, most of them having their own villas. The crests and slopes of the hills round about Lenox are crowned by mansions, many of them costly and imposing, adding to the charms of the landscape. At the head of the main street, the highest point of the village, stands the old Puritan Congregational Church, with its little white wooden belfry and a view all around the compass. This primitive church recalls many memories of the good old times, before fashion sought out Lenox and worshipped at its shrine:
"They had rigid manners and homespun breeches
In the good old times;
They hunted Indians and hung up witches
In the good old times;
They toiled and moiled from sun to sun,