TAGHCONIC; OR Letters and Legends about our Summer Home. BY GODFREY GREYLOCK. "Thou shalt look Upon the green and rolling forest tops, And down into the secrets of the glens, And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive Here on white villages and tilth and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes BRYANT. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, BY J. E. A. SMITH, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: No. 11 Milk Street. EPISTLE DEDICATORY To Summer Ramblers on the Berkshire Hills. FRIENDS: From Vermont upon the north to Connecticut upon the south, for fifty miles along the eastern borders of New York, extends Berkshire, the most western county of Massachusetts. It is a region of hills and valleys, of lake and stream, of woodland, farm and field. Its beauty is world renowned; for the pens of Bryant and Miss Sedgwick have made it their favorite theme. Within its limits are Monument Mountain, Icy Glen, the Stockbridge Bowl, Green River, with a thousand other scenes of storied or of unsung loveliness. In the north rise majestically, six thousand feet into the air, the double peaks of Greylock. Along our western borders lie the dome like summit of the Taghconic range. Less graceful in outline, but even more romantic with broken and precipitous ascents, the Hoosacs shut out the world upon the east. Within this mountain walled amphitheatre lies cradled the upland valley of the Housatonic, with all its fertile farms, its mansion homes, and frequent villages. Somebody has called it the Piedmont of America. I do not know iv EPISTLE DEDICATORY. how just the appellation may be, but I do know that if Piedmont can rightly be called the Berkshire of Europe, it must be a very delightful region. What we most admire in Berkshire scenery is its freshness, boldness, and variety. Our hills boast no astounding grandeur; there is nothing about them of an Alpine character; they possess few scenes which can properly rank with the sublime. The highest mountain tops, the most precipitous cliffs, sufficient to claim our admiration, wild enough to be the marvel of tourists from the tame coast country,· cannot, for a moment, compare with similar scenes among the White Mountains, or the Alleghanies-not to mention more unapproachable wonders of Nature. Our deepest ravines, often penetrated by smooth, flower bordered roads, are very different things, indeed, from the earthquake rifted chasms of other lands. If the traveller seek some object for a day's or a week's wonder, some tremendous cataract or "Heaven piercing Cordillera," he must seek it elsewhere. But if he asks for a retreat among wild and picturesque scenery, adorned by much that is pleasant and refined in his city life, but far removed from its heat and turmoil; where he can draw closer the silken cord of social intercourse, and yet throw loose some of its galling chains; where nature ennobles by her greatness but never chills with a frown, he may find it all amid the varied beauty of the Berkshire Hills. The inexhaustible variety of our vistas is wonderful. It is marvellous in what an endless series of combinations, mountain, valley, lake, stream, rock, field and wood, present themselves. Wherever you go, you |