Here, too, you meet with the interrupted fern, whose graceful, sterile fronds fall away in every direction, holding you captive with its charm. It is fair enough to interrupt Satan himself.
An old English legend relates that near Loch Tyne dwelt an Englishman, Osmund, who saved his wife and child from imminent danger by hiding them upon an island among masses of flowered fern, and the child in later years named the plant for her father.
Wordsworth was familiar with these ferns, for he writes:
Often, trifling with a privilege
Alike indulged to all, we paused, one now,
And now the other, to point out, perchance
To pluck some flower or water weed, too fair,
Either to be divided from the place
On which it grew, or to be left alone
To its own beauty. Many such there are,
Fair ferns and flowers and chiefly that tall fern,
So stately, of the Queen Osmunda named:
Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode
On Grasmere's beach, than Naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook or Lady of the Mere,
Sole sitting by the shores of old romance.
The mngled beauty and majesty of the landscape near Deerfield was so simple, yet so charming, that thoughts of serious questions were out of the question. The sky was partly overcast with clouds offering lovely breadths of light and shade. Every ledge of rocks along the brown, foaming water of the Deerfield river was draped with weld clematis, ferns, vines, and moss. As the stream dashed along at our left it broke the rich mass of verdure with its silvery gleam.
By the side of the road a woman was selling honey made from mountain flowers. We bought several pounds and found it most excellent. The comb was so thin that it seemed to melt in one's mouth, and the flavor had in it a "subtle deliciousness" clearly indicating its source.
We halted here not so much, because we wanted the honey, but to have more time in which to take a last look at the valley. What a picture it made! The few scattered houses reposing in the valley or nestling along the edge of the towering hills made a frame for the rich green and gold of the fields whenever the sun peeped out from behind the clouds. Higher up we caught the outlines of the hills whose light, gray sides of purest aspect, peeping froth their rich verdure, made a picture which we can never forget. The rustic homes scattered about had always some noble elms to shelter them. Soon we beheld clusters of wooded heights with here and there a single pointed summit rising above the rest. Each spot possessed a beauty, differing only in its type and not in quantity.
Again we were traveling along a trout stream that sang its songs of freedom as cheerily as the cardinal or vireo nearby. A glow of color permeated its banks where it was more open. A host of blue mints, fragrant burgamot, and glowing masses of cardinal flowers attracted the eye. Over these hovered, like larger flowers, the black and yellow tiger swallowtail, argynnis, painted lady, and mourning-cloak butterflies. Earlier in the season laurel and honeysuckle shed their fragrance into it. Blackberries, redbud and dogwood enliven its banks in the spring, and we saw where hepatica, bloodroot, and anemone grew in abundance.
At Deerfield amid so much repose, who could think that here was committed one of the most terrible of Indian massacres. Men, women and children were put to death in the most horrible manner. A company of ninety, with eighteen wagons, went to Deerfield to get a quantity of grain, which had been left behind by the fleeing citizens. After securing the grain, they forded a little stream, throwing their fire-arms into the wagons. In an instant hundreds of bullets and arrows came whizzing from the surrounding thickets. Only seven out of the number were not killed, and this stream where they fell bears the significant name of Bloody Brook to this day.
"Captain Mosley, (the pale-face-with-two-heads) arrived with seventy militia before the Indians could escape. He hung his wig on a bush while he fought. "Come, paleface-with-two-heads," they shouted, "you seek Indians? You want Indians? Here are Indians enough for you!" And they brandished aloft the scalp-locks they had taken. Mosley stationed his men under a shower of arrows, and began the struggle with over a thousand savages. He was beaten back, but was re-enforced by one hundred and sixty Mohican and English troops, and beat the enemy back with great loss."