TO SALISBURY AND BEYOND.
The southwestern corner of Massachusetts, projecting westward into New York outside the Connecticut boundary, is known as Boston Corner. To the southward, in the northwestern corner of Connecticut, is Salisbury, where the Taghkanic range falls away into lower hills. Beecher described this country as a constant succession of hills swelling into mountains, and of mountains flowing down into hills. This is a quiet region, formerly a producer of iron ores, and it was early settled by the Dutch, who came over from the Hudson in 1720. They were a timid race, however, fearing the rigors of climate, and, coming thus to the edge of what looked like an Alpine land of dreariness beyond, they would not venture farther into the forbidding hills. The mountainous region to the north and east they inscribed on their maps as a large white vacant space, which they coolly named "Winterberg." The township has two noted ravines, solitary, rugged and attractive, and both containing cascades. In one to the westward is the celebrated Bash-Bish Falls, and the other to the northward is Sage's Ravine, just beyond it being Norton's Falls. The Bash-Bish is said to have got its name in imitation of running, falling waters. It descends nearly five hundred feet in cataracts and rapids, the finest cascades in the Berkshires, and then flows out westward to the Hudson. The Housatonic, going southward through Salisbury, plunges down its Great Falls over rocky ledges for sixty feet descent, making a tremendous noise and a fine display. To the eastward of the Housatonic Valley, at an elevation of eleven hundred feet, on a broad plateau, is Litchfield, consisting chiefly of two broad, tree-shaded streets crossing at right angles, the chief buildings fronting on the central village Green. On the southwestern outskirts is Bantam Lake, the largest in Connecticut, covering a little over a square mile of surface. The most famous house in Litchfield, which has been moved, however, from its original location, is unpretentious, the old-time wooden mansion in which Rev. Lyman Beecher lived when pastor here, from 1810 to 1826, and where was born the famous authoress, Harriet Beecher, in 1812, who married Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, and the famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, in 1813. In the Wolcott House at Litchfield was born Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, he and his father both having been Connecticut Governors. To this house was brought, in the Revolution, the leaden statue of King George III., which stood on the Bowling Green of New York, to be melted into bullets. These were the favorite Indian hunting-grounds of Bantam around the lake, and when Litchfield was first settled, about 1720, the village was surrounded by a palisade, lest the savages should return to their coveted region to take forcible possession. Litchfield for a half-century after the Revolution had the most noted law school in America. To the northward, at Wolcottville, where there are now large factories, lived Captain John Brown, a noted Revolutionary soldier, and here was born in 1800 his grandson, "Old John Brown of Osawatomie."
Yet farther southward, but still among the hills, west of the Housatonic Valley and near the New York boundary, is Danbury, famous for its hat-factories, a town of about twenty thousand people. The first hat-factory in America was opened at Danbury in 1780 by Zadoc Benedict, three men making three hats a day. The factories now turn out several thousand a day. In May, 1777, the Hessians attacked Danbury and destroyed a large amount of the Revolutionary army supplies, and it is recorded of the tragic event that Danbury was "ankle-deep in pork-fat." On that memorable occasion it is said that when the raiders were advancing up a hill a bold and reckless Yankee farmer rode to its crest and shouted loudly, "Halt, the whole universe; break off by kingdoms!" This demonstration alarmed the Hessians, who thought a formidable force coming, and they halted to defend themselves, deploying skirmishers and getting up their cannon to the front. It was in an attack upon these raiders near Danbury that General Wooster was mortally wounded, and the Danbury Cemetery contains his monument. The constantly broadening Housatonic River winds among the Connecticut hills in its steady course southeastward to its confluence with the Naugatuck, a smaller stream coming down through a pretty valley from the north, its Indian name meaning "one tree," referring to an ancient tree on its banks which was a landmark for the aborigines. The Naugatuck tumbles over a waterfall in the Indian domain of Paugussett, furnishing power for the mills of Ansonia, noted for its clocks. Near the confluence of the rivers is the great Housatonic dam, six hundred feet long and twenty-three feet high, constructed at a cost of $500,000 for the manufacturers of Derby, who make pins, tacks, stockings, pianos and many other articles. Commodore Isaac Hull, born in 1773, was the most distinguished native of Derby, the commander of the frigate "Constitution" when she captured the "Guerriere" in 1812. Then in stately course the broad Housatonic flows southward, to finally empty into Long Island Sound. The beauties of the Berkshire hills, so much of which are made by the Housatonic's wayward course, have been the theme of universal admiration, and their praises abound in our best American literature. It was after a visit there that Robert G. Ingersoll made his happy phrases in contrasting country and city life:
"It is no advantage to live in a great city, where poverty degrades and failure brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets, and the great forests than walls of brick. Oaks and elms are more poetic than steeples and chimneys. In the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and setting sun; you become acquainted with the stars and clouds. The constellations are your friends. You hear the rain on the roof and listen to the rhythmic sighing of the winds. You are thrilled by the resurrection called Spring, touched and saddened by Autumn, the grace and poetry of death. Every field is a picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought; and every forest a fairy-land. In the country you preserve your identity, your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation."
The historian of the Berkshires, Clark W. Bryan of Great Barrington, thus poetically describes the Berkshire hills and homes:
"Between where Hudson's waters flow
Adown from gathering streams,
And where the clear Connecticut,
In lengthened beauty gleams—