There is a grand view from the summit of Mount Holyoke, spreading almost from Long Island Sound to the White Mountains, and from the Berkshire Hills in the west to the cloud-capped mountains Monadnock and Wachusett, fifty miles to the eastward. This is regarded as the finest view in New England, for the wide and highly cultivated valley of the Connecticut, with its wayward, winding stream flowing apparently in all directions over the rich bottom-lands cut up into diminutive farms and fields like so many "plaided meadows," gives a charm that is lacking in most other mountain views. The grand panorama displays parts of four New England States. Off to the northeast several miles is seen the town of Amherst, with four thousand people, the seat of another noted educational institution, Amherst College, having over four hundred students and a fine archæological museum.
The Hoosac Mountain range in the Berkshires sends down various streams on its eastern slopes through wild and romantic gorges into the Connecticut Valley, and one of these is Deerfield River, coming into the main stream some distance north of Mount Holyoke. Here is the village of "Old Deerfield," settled in 1670, on the Indian domain of Pocomtuck, and named from the abundance of deer found in the forests. Its streets often ran with blood in King Philip's and the later Indian Wars, and its young men were then described by the quaint Puritan chronicler as "the very flower of Essex County, none of whom were ashamed to speak with the enemy in the gate." Its guardian peaks are the Sugar Loaf, rising seven hundred and ten feet, and on the opposite eastern side of the river Mount Toby, nearly thirteen hundred feet high. King Philip, in his attack upon the settlers here in 1675, made the tall and isolated Sugar Loaf his lookout station, whence he directed the movements of his forces, and a crag on the top is yet called "King Philip's Chair." Nearby, a monument marks the battlefield of Bloody Brook in 1675, where the Indians killed Captain Lathrop and eighty young men of Essex County. The Fitchburg Railroad from Boston through Fitchburg comes across the Connecticut Valley, and passing the village of Greenfield, takes advantage of the winding canyon of Deerfield River to ascend westward to the wall of Hoosac Mountain, where the great tunnel is pierced. The route is in a wild and picturesque defile, in the heart of which is the pleasant village of Shelburne Falls, where the stream glides down a series of cataracts and rapids having one hundred and fifty feet descent. Here are mills making cutlery, hooks, gimlets and other things, and there are sheep-pastures on the mountain sides, and the people also tap the maple trees for sugar. There are more villages among these mountains farther up the gorge, where it may broaden to give a little arable land, and at one of these, under the shadow of the great Pocomtuck Mountain, was born in 1797 Mary Lyon, the devout and noted teacher who founded Mount Holyoke College for girls. Finally the railway reaches the Hoosac wall, and leaving the little Deerfield River which comes down from the north, disappears westward in the tunnel.
The Connecticut River beyond the Massachusetts northern boundary divides the States of New Hampshire and Vermont, and its scenery, as ascended, becomes more romantic and mountainous. At Northfield, near the boundary, lived Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist. Above the boundary, the Massachusetts colony, as a protection to the river settlements, in 1724 built Fort Dummer, which was often attacked by the French and Indians in their forays from Canada, but never captured, and near it was made the first settlement in Vermont, a village named in 1753 Brattleborough, in honor of Colonel Brattle of Boston, one of the landowners. The Whetstone Brook flows in, making a fine water-power, and the town, now having six thousand people, is charmingly situated on an elevated plateau, surrounded by lofty hills. Brattleboro' is the centre of the Vermont maple-sugar industry, and it has the largest organ-works existing, those of the Estey Company. Just south of the town rises Cemetery Hill, overlooking it with a fine view, and here is the grand monument erected in memory of the notorious James Fisk, Jr., who was a native of the place. It bears emblematic female statues representing Railroads, Commerce, Navigation and the Drama, and was executed by Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, also a native of the town. It is recorded that when a lad, Mead worked one long winter night on a snow figure at the head of the Main Street, and next morning, the people were surprised to see there a beautiful figure of the Recording Angel, modeled in the purest snow. Southwest of Brattleboro' is Sadawga Lake, in the town of Whitingham, near which, in a poor log hut, Brigham Young was born in 1801. He was a farmer's son, educated in the Baptist Church, and afterwards emigrating to Ohio, joined the Mormons there when about thirty years old. When Rudyard Kipling had his home in Vermont, it was about three miles north of Brattleboro'.
From the eastern highlands of New Hampshire the Ashuelot River flows into the Connecticut below Brattleboro', and to the northeast in its alluvial valley is Keene, the centre of an agricultural district, and having about eight thousand people, some of whom make leather goods, furniture and wooden ware. The Ashuelot means a "collection of many waters," and the place was named before the Revolution in honor of Sir Benjamin Keene, a British friend of Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire, in consequence of which the colonial historian recorded that "Keene is a proud little spot." To the southeast boldly rises Mount Monadnock, its high and rugged top elevated nearly thirty-two hundred feet, and having a hotel half-way up its side. This mountain is about eighty miles from Boston, and the town of Jaffrey, at its southeastern base, has an old church, the frame of which was raised on the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, the workmen claiming that they heard the cannonading. The Williams River, coming from the slopes of the Green Mountains, flows into the Connecticut on the Vermont side, at Bellows Falls, a picturesque summer resort located at the river rapids, where there is a descent of forty-two feet in about a half-mile, the power being availed of for various factories. Above, at Claremont, the Sugar River flows in from New Hampshire, and to the eastward is the charming Lake Sunapee, nine miles long, and surrounded by wooded highlands, which has been often called the American Loch Katrine. Over on the Vermont side, north of Claremont, is Windsor, where it is recorded that during a fearful thunder-storm, and with the appalling news of the loss of Fort Ticonderoga ringing in their ears, the deputies of Vermont adopted the State Constitution, July 2, 1777. Southwest of the village rises Ascutney Mountain, its Indian name meaning the "Three Brothers," being supposed to refer to three singular valleys running down the western slope. Its summit is elevated thirty-three hundred and twenty feet. William M. Evarts, who was a native of Boston, has his summer home Runnymede near Windsor, and at Cornish, nearby, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase was born in 1808, emigrating to Ohio in 1830.
HANOVER TO MEMPHRAMAGOG.
The White River, coming out from the Green Mountains, flows into the Connecticut at a noted railway junction, while a short distance above is the Olcott Falls, a cataract amid picturesque surroundings which provides power for large paper-mills at Wilder, Vermont. To the northward is Hanover, in New Hampshire, the seat of the most famous educational foundation of northern New England, Dartmouth College, having some seven hundred students. Rev. Eleazer Wheelock began it in 1770, and his name is preserved in the chief hotel. He started a school in the forest to educate missionaries for the Indians, having twenty-four students domiciled in rude log huts. He also educated several Indians, giving them Master's degrees; but after some of them had returned to savage life he changed his plan, and this object was subordinated to the purposes of general and higher education, the College, which was named for the Earl of Dartmouth, entering upon a successful career subsequently to the Revolution. Among the graduates have been Daniel Webster, Amos Kendall, Levi Woodbury, Benjamin Greenleaf, George P. Marsh, George Ticknor, Rufus Choate, Thaddeus Stevens and Salmon P. Chase. There are numerous buildings surrounding an extensive elm-shaded campus, and also a spacious college park. The Connecticut River above Hanover winds about the level fertile intervale, making numerous "ox-bow" bends, and there appear numerous mountain peaks which are outlying sentinels of the Franconia Mountains to the eastward. The best known of these is Moosilauke, rising forty-eight hundred feet, which formerly was the "Moose Hillock" of the colonists. On the western river bank is the Vermont town of Newbury, founded by General Bailey of Massachusetts. It is related that during the Revolution a detachment of British troops came there to capture him, but a friend who learned their object went out where he was ploughing and dropped in the furrow a note, saying, "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!" Bailey, returning down the long furrow, saw the note, took the hint and escaped. The crooked little Wells River flows out of the Green Mountains and falls into the Connecticut at the village of Wells River, nestling in a deep basin among the high hills; and here is another important railway junction, with routes going westward to Lake Champlain, northward to Canada, and eastward to the White Mountains. The latter route is up the Ammonoosuc River valley, past Littleton, with its glove factories and summer boarding-houses, on the edge of the mountain district, and thence to Bethlehem and into the heart of the White Mountain region.
The Passumpsic River flows from Vermont into the Connecticut a few miles above, and about ten miles up that winding and hill-environed stream is the picturesque town of St. Johnsbury, with about seven thousand people, noted as the location of the extensive Fairbanks Scale Works. St. John de Crevecœur, the French Consul at New York, was very popular in the Revolutionary times and a benefactor of Vermont, and this town, settled in 1786, was named in his honor. It is related that in 1830, when there was a good deal of excitement about hemp-culture in the United States, the Fairbanks Brothers established a hemp-dressing factory here, and one of them conceived the idea of a platform-scale to weigh the hemp, which construction was the origin of their extensive business, the works sending scales all over the world. The railroad route to Montreal and Quebec ascends the Passumpsic, crosses the watershed, passing Lake Memphramagog at Newport, and then enters Canada. This noted lake is on the national boundary, more than two-thirds of it being in Canada, and is thirty miles long. Memphramagog means the "beautiful water," and the mountain ranges enclosing it with their wooded slopes present fine views. The national boundary is marked by clearings in the forests on either side of the lake. The massive rounded summit of the Owl's Head rises thirty-three hundred feet on the western shore in imposing magnificence, and many other peaks are sentinelled all around. Steamboats ply on the lake from Newport to Magog at the foot, where its waters discharge northward into Magog River and thence flow over the vast plain of Canada, which is so conspicuously contrasted with the mountains to the southward, until at Sherbrooke they reach St. Francis River, and finally the St. Lawrence. Lake Memphramagog has its Indian legends of massacre and escape, but its chief modern tradition is of a noted smuggler named Skinner, who in the early nineteenth century performed prodigious feats of skill in eluding the revenue officers. Near the boundary is Skinner's Island, having a spacious cavern on its northwestern side. The smuggler usually disappeared near this island, which came in time to be named for him, and it is related that one night the officers, having had a long chase, found his boat on this island and turned it adrift on the lake. The smuggler never appeared afterwards, but some years later a fisherman, seeking shelter from a squall under the lee of the island, discovered the cave hidden under foliage and explored it.
"And what do you think the fisherman found?
Neither a gold nor a silver prize,
But a skull with sockets where once were eyes;