The birthplace and early home of Whittier is a lonely farm-house situated at a distance of three miles northeast of the city of Haverhill, Mass. The winding road leading to it is the one described in "Snow-Bound." A drive or a walk of one mile brings you to sweet Kenoza Lake, with the castellated stone residence of Dr. J. R. Nichols crowning the summit of the high hill that overlooks it. From the hill the eye sweeps the horizon in every direction to a distance of fifty or a hundred miles. Far to the northwest rise bluely the three peaks of Monadnock. Nearer at hand, in the same direction, the towns of Atkinson and Strafford whiten the hillsides, while southward, through a clove in the hills, one catches a glimpse of the smoky city of Lawrence.
WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE, NEAR HAVERHILL, MASS.
Two other lakes besides Kenoza lie in the immediate vicinity: namely, Round Lake and Lake Saltonstall. Kenoza is the lake in which Whittier used to fish and boat. It was he who gave to it its present name (meaning pickerel): he wrote a very pretty poem for the day of the rechristening, in 1859. The lake lies in a bowl-shaped depression. The country thereabouts seems entirely made up of huge earth-bowls, here open to the sky, and there turned bottom-upwards to make hills.
No prettier, quieter, lovelier lake than Kenoza exists,—a pure and spotless mirror, reflecting in its cool, translucent depths the rosy clouds of morning and of evening, the silver-azure tent of day, the gliding boat, the green meadow-grasses, and the massy foliage of the terraced pines and cedars that sweep upward from its waters in stately pomp, rank over rank, to meet the sky. Here, in one quarter of the lake, the surface is only wrinkled by the tiniest wavelets or crinkles; yonder, near another portion of its irregularly picturesque shore, a thousand white sun-butterflies seem dancing on the surface, and the loveliest wind-dapples curve and gleam. Along the shore are sweet wild roses interpleached, and flower-de-luce, and yellow water-lilies. In such a circular earth-bowl the faintest sounds are easily heard across the water. Far off you hear the cheery cackle of a hen; in the meadows the singing of insects, the chattering of blackbirds, and the cry of the peewee; and the ring of the woodman's axe floats in rippling echoes over the water.