descend the mountain, for while the luncheon we carried had satisfied
our hunger, we were sadly in need of drinking water. We soon found
ourselves at the Coal-Bed, gathering the Wildwood Tiger Lilies (_Lilium
Philadelphicum_), which we had observed as we passed in the morning.
We ate the late wild strawberries along the roadside, and took a long
rest in the shade, pursuing our way later down the Rocky Hollow Road
northward to Blackberry Clearing, on the Dummy Farm. Here we religiously
searched the ravines for Deaf-Man’s Spring. Major, our dog, was the first
to discover it. We found him taking a bath in the deepest pool. However,
a higher basin was overflowing with fresh, clean water, from which we
drank excessively. The reviving effect upon our spirits was immediate.
Deaf-Man’s Fountain is in the ravine of Dry Brook, walled up like a
little well. It is the only water in this immediate vale,—a natural and
everlasting spring-head. Guide-boards should be erected at the four
corners of country roads, directing travellers to the water-supply, the
need of which is often so powerfully felt by pilgrims.
[Illustration: =The Red Wood Lily.= (_Lilium Philadelphicum._)
“_O lilies, upturned lilies,_
_How swift their prisoned rays_
_To smite with fire from Heaven_
_The fainting August days!_”
ELAINE GOODALE.]
We rounded the Domelet, descended to Jepson Farm in Rattlesnake Valley,
and proceeded to Lloyd Spring and the colony of Showy Reginæ. At this
point in our travels, we had completed a great circle.
XVII
The Cascade and Bellows-Pipe, Notch Valley, Berkshire County
Come here where Greylock rolls
Itself toward heaven; in these deep silences
World-worn and fretted souls
Bathe and be clean! Cares drift like mists away.
Author Unknown.
Monday, July 22d, dawned fair, although there were some signs of a storm
in the lowering gray cloud-folds at the horizon. However, we had decided
to explore the Notch Valley and the Bellows-Pipe, between Greylock and
the Ragged Mountains.
We journeyed from Mount Œta to North Adams, leaving State Street about
ten o’clock, and ascended the path to Witt’s Ledge. Soon we rounded
the Ragged Mountains, entering the woods near Crystal Spring, where we
descended the Cascade ravine. Its rocky chasm is beautifully draped with
the Common Polypody Ferns, and delicate tufts of Maiden-Hair Spleenwort,
which clings in the fissured ledges. The bed-rock appears to be a flinty
slate, similar to that of the Tunnel Mountain. It is not so favorable
to the growth of the rarer ferns—such as the Rue-in-the-Wall—as the
lime-rock formation of Gregor Rocks in Pownal. Large boulders lie in
the heart of the brook bed, and the hillsides are clothed with primeval
hemlocks. Just above the brow of the Cascade, I found a few Walking
Ferns. The ravine is accessible to this point, but here I was forced
back and climbed the southern bank to the path leading around to the
waterfalls. High boots supplied with hob-nails are indispensable to
safety in such climbing in the channels of streams.
[Illustration: =The Cascade of Notch Brook, at the Base of Mount
Greylock’s Brotherhood, North Adams, Massachusetts.=
“_The highest lands of Berkshire’s noble hills_
_Shall sweetly ring with song and louder trills;_
_And many a spring within the Bellows dumb_
_Shall swell and flow with swift, yet soothing hum._”
G. G. N.]
From this point we retraced our steps to the Pent Road, leading up
through Snuff Hollow to the City’s reservoir, at the junction of the
South Adams Road. Here we trudged up the hill and entered the Notch
highway at Walden’s farmhouse. Greylock Park Road turns off here through
the pastures, around Mount Williams. We, however, continued straight
ahead toward the source of The Notch Brook,—Hawthorne’s and Thoreau’s
routes, long before roads to Greylock were available. It was steady
climbing, until at last we reached the pasture-land where the streams
from Greylock’s Brotherhood divide; there is a stream beyond the ridge,
flowing southward to South Adams, while those on the north side flow down
Notch Valley to the Hoosac River. Hawthorne often sought the seclusion
of this valley, and in his _American Notes_, under date of September 9,
1838, describes these rugged slopes. He not only followed up the North
Notch, but descended the South Notch in the rocky course of the stream
homeward through South Adams. He speaks of inquiring at a cottage his way
to South Village, which was “across lots,” into the road near the Quaker
Meeting-house, surrounded by grave-stones. He also drank of the region’s
spring water,—the “most delicious” he ever tasted,—“pure, fresh, almost
sparkling, exhilarating,—such water as Adam and Eve drank.”[51]
The people of this region looked upon his journeys through their valley
with curiosity in those early days. The houses were more numerous then
than now in the extreme southern portion of the valley. This region has
been purchased by the North Adams Water Company, which has removed all
dwellings above the reservoir. The last house in The Notch to-day is on
the Walden Farm, at Greylock Park Gate.
Hawthorne found, in the Highlands-of-the-Hoosac, the originals of many
characters described in his works. “Eustace Bright,” of _Wonder-Book_,
was a student of Williams; and the _Tanglewood Tales_ have made the whole
world familiar with “rough, broken, rugged, headlong Berkshire.” Here,
in the seclusion of The Bellows-Pipe, “where it slopes upward to the
skies,” Hawthorne loved best to come. There he could look southward over
the vast fields of Berkshire’s valleys to the distant crags of Bryant’s
“Monument Mountain,” immortalized as the “headless sphinx” of his own
_Wonder-Book_. And from the northern Notch, he looked away to the blue
Domes of the White Mountains, a distance of sixty miles or more.
The Limekilns along the Ashuilticook—the south branch of the
Hoosac—still are smoking, as when Hawthorne and Mr. Leach visited them in
1838. The tale of _Ethan Brand_ was suggested by the legend of an insane
creature who threw himself in at the open gate of the burning kiln. Their
open iron doors in the mountainside at night seem like yawning mouths
of Tartarus. Hawthorne met here also his “Bertram,” who figures in the
story; while “the boy Joe,” son of “Bertram, the lime-burner,” was a
bar-room lad observed at the “Whig Tavern” in North Adams. Daniel Haines,
then living in a desolate hut in “Willow Dell,” was formerly nicknamed in
the village as “Black Hawk,” and is described in _Ethan Brand_ as “Lawyer
Giles,” the “elderly ragmuffin,” who—with the rest of the lazy regiment
from the town tavern—came in response to the summons of “boy Joe” to see
poor Brand returned from his long “search after the Unpardonable Sin.”
The title of this story was the name of one of the prose master’s Salem
acquaintances.
Among other characters which Hawthorne drew from this region, were the
“seven doctors of the place.” In the “Whig Tavern boarder” Hawthorne
saw and delineated himself. He describes the Saddleback Mountain and
Greylock in all their different phases,—when enshrouded with dark masses
of storm clouds and when: “Old Greylock was glorified with a golden cloud
upon his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding
mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some of
them far down into the valley, others high up toward the summits, and
still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold
radiance of the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of the
clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood
that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend
into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky, that it was a
day dream to look at it. To supply that charm of the familiar and homely,
which Nature so readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach
was rattling down the mountain-road, and the driver sounded his horn,
while Echo caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and
varied and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay
claim to little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves,
each contributing a strain of airy sweetness.”[52]
As we neared the head of The Bellows-Pipe, and passed the Wilbur and Eddy
farms, where Thoreau was entertained, I tried to trace the paths which
he had followed in his ascent to Greylock some years after Hawthorne
sojourned here. He stopped that July afternoon in North Adams Village,
purchased a tin cup, a little rice and sugar, and, placing them in his
knapsack, started up The Bellows toward the mountains, followed closely
by a thunderstorm. “The thunder had rumbled at my heels all the way,” he
said, “but the shower passed off in another direction, though if it had
not, I half believed that I should get above it.” He “reached the last
house but one, where the path to the summit diverged to the right, while
the summit itself rose directly in front.” But it seems he “determined
to follow up the valley to its head,” and there find his “own route up
the steep as the shorter and more adventurous way.” He believed this
“occupied much less time than it would have taken to follow the path—for
what’s the hurry? If a person lost would conclude that after all he is
not lost, ... but the places that have known him, _they_ are lost,—how
much anxiety and danger would vanish. I am not alone if I stand by
myself.”[53]
We followed up the eastern sides of Notch Valley to the head of The
Bellows where the Saw Mill had stood in Thoreau’s day. We regaled
ourselves upon the red raspberries along the pasture, and found the
Deadly Nightshade in bloom amid the bushes. These fields furnish
pasturage for yearlings and calves. The sides of Greylock are clothed
with a heavy forest—“all beshaggled,”—and adorned with “headlong
precipices” and innumerable rivulets. Finally we crossed to the west side
of the valley, in the shadow of the great hill, and entered a ravine
which we christened Æolian Glen.
I have always believed that this Notch Valley was in Thoreau’s thoughts
when he wrote “Rumors from an Æolian Harp.” The name “Bellows-Pipe”
originated with the early settlers for the extreme portion of Notch
Valley, on account of the subtle roaring of the southeast winds,
breathing like a bellows through the narrow vale. The Indians recognized
in the roar of winds the anger of the Great Spirit. The Hoosac Highlands
near the “Forbidden Mountain” were their hunting grounds, to which they
journeyed from their Indian village farther westward near Schaghticoke,
not far from Troy-on-the-Hudson.
Thoreau says of this vale’s “glen-like seclusion overlooking the country
at a great elevation between these two mountain walls,” that it reminded
him of the homesteads of the Huguenots, on the interior hills of Staten
Island.
As Thoreau passed the last house in The Bellows, on his ascent to
Greylock, “Rice” called out and told him that it was still four or five
miles to the summit by the path which he had left, though not more than
two in a straight line from where he was, but that nobody ever went this
way; there was no path and it would be found as “steep as the roof of a
house.” But Thoreau took the short cut, notwithstanding Wilbur’s warning
that he would not reach the summit of Greylock that night. Thoreau says,
however: “I made my way steadily upward in a straight line, through a
dense undergrowth of mountain laurel, until the trees began to have a
scraggy and infernal look, as if contending with frost goblins, and at
length I reached the summit, just as the sun was setting.” After taking
“one fair view of the country before the sun went down,” Thoreau “set out
directly to find water.” It proved to be labor, too. Following down the
path for half a mile he came to a muddy place in the road “where the
water stood in the tracks of the horses which had carried travellers up.”
He drank these dry, one after the other, by lying flat on the earth. He
was not able to fill his dipper, and in a place above dug a well about
two feet deep, using his hands and sharp stones as spade and hoe. It soon
filled with pure cold water, from which he filled his tin cup; and he
says: “The birds, too, came and drank at it.” He then proceeded to the
rude wooden observatory originally erected by Williams College, for the
construction of which Platt—“a friend of mine,” writes Hawthorne in the
_Diary_—hauled the material by ox-team. Platt, the stage-driver, boasted
of the fact that he was the _first_ man to drive a team to the summit
of the then pathless Greylock, led by President Griffin of Williams on
horseback, who directed the building of that first observatory. This
tower is now replaced by a modern iron structure fifty feet high.
[Illustration: =Notch Valley and the Bellows-Pipe, North Adams,
Massachusetts. Mount Greylock towers up on the right, and the Ragged
Mountains on the left hand.=
“_There is a vale which none hath seen,_
_Where foot of man has never been,_
_Such as here lives with toil and strife,_
_An anxious and a sinful life._”
THOREAU.]
Thoreau collected some “dry sticks, and made a fire on some flat stones”
placed on the floor of the observatory for the purpose, and cooked the
rice which he had bought in the village, eating it with a wooden spoon
whittled out for the occasion. He was up at daybreak the next morning,
and he has left a glorious description of sunrise on Greylock, as seen
from the tower in the mists.[54]
The nights are very chill on these summits, even in July. There are now
several log-cabins erected on Greylock for travellers to occupy, with
stables for horses and keepers in attendance. The Catskills can be seen
to the southwestward from this height.
Thoreau set his compass for a lake in the valley to the southwest, and
descended the mountain by his own route, on the opposite side to that of
his ascent.
My companions and I had climbed the slippery glen to where Thoreau
commenced his ascent, and a tiny rivulet slipped over the rocks, which
had formerly been dimpled with miniature pot-holes. Along the moss-grown
banks, above the brook-bed, grew the familiar leaves of the Wild Ginger,
while at the very entrance I discovered the Wild Black Currants (_Ribes
floridum_), similar in taste and appearance to the cultivated species.
The fruit was covered with bristles, and produced a disagreeable odor
like that of the Wild Red Currants on the Dome—reminding one of a skunk.
At the entrance of Æolian Glen, a long log-like slab of rock lay upon
the ground, strangely suggesting a petrified tree. Slowly we descended
the western side of the vale, counting no less than twenty-two flowing
brooklets, and four sun-dried brook-beds between Æolian Brook, at the
head of the Bellows, and Walden Farm below. As we approached the meadows
where the Wilbur Farm buildings formerly stood, we found a half-dozen
spikes of the Ragged Orchis (_Habenaria lacera_) amid the damp grasses.
This species I collected also later in the pastures of Rattlesnake Swamp,
and found the pure White-Fringed Orchis along the roadside of Ladd Brook
Valley in Pownal.
We now arrived at Crystal Spring, where we freshened up before entering
the City in the “hollow vale” three miles below.
The formation of the Notch Valley was brought about by one of the
successive terminal moraines flowing from the glaciated slopes of the
ice-mountains farther northwestward, in the Adirondack region; while
later the glaciated shoulders of Greylock’s Brotherhood slowly melted,
eroding the slopes with small ravines in which the numerous rivulets
flow to-day. The continental ice rivers from the higher glaciers
northward apparently culminated in tremendous and successive cascades
above Notch Valley, eroding the deep-cut gorges between Greylock and
Ragged Mountains. The general directions of these currents, below these
waterfalls, were various, finally leading down to the ancient Hoosac
Lake, and flowing with it through the natural dam, northwestwardly, to
the Hudson Valley, and thence to the sea. According to Professor T.
Nelson Dale, an ancient lake six hundred feet deep existed in the Hoosac
Valley ten thousand years ago. Perhaps ten times ten thousand years ago,
a greater glacial sea overflowed the Hoosac Tunnel Mountains, leaving the
bald summit of Greylock alone towering above the waves. As the terminal
moraines of the great ice-sheet slowly receded, the various cascades
formed pot-hole erosions, in their descent on the Canaan Hills, above the
Connecticut Valley. Deerfield Arch was similarly formed by the force and
chemical action of the eroding ice rivers, which flowed from glaciers,
and wore through the wall of rock spanning the Deerfield Valley.
Hawthorne compared this arch to “the arched entrance of an ancient
church, which it might be taken to be, though considerably dilapidated
and weather-worn.... It was really like the archway of an enchanted
palace, all of which has vanished except the entrance—now opens only into
nothingness and empty space.... This curiosity occurs in a wild part of
the river’s course, and in a solitude of mountains.”[55] Dr. Wolfe says:
“The summit of the arch and the water-worn pillars upon either side
display ‘pot-holes’ and other evidences of erosion, and in the bed of the
current lie fragments of similar attrite rocks which seem to indicate
that at some period a series of arches spanned the entire space from
mountain to mountain.”[56]
Other erosions known as the “Twin Cascades” are found on the eastern
slopes of Hoosac Mountain, above the eastern portal of the Tunnel, formed
ages before the Hoosac Lake rippled in the “hollow vale” at North Adams.
The Natural Bridge of the Mayunsook Valley is one of the greatest natural
formations in Berkshire Highlands, and was also caused by erosions of the
ice-currents ages ago.
On August 16th, this season, a great landslide occurred on the southern
brow of Greylock, caused by a cloudburst. It began within a few feet of
the summit, widening as the loosened soil slipped off the bed-rock of
the mountain. It swept down with velocity, becoming several rods wide as
it reached the valley. It covered Gould Farm with earth, rocks, and logs
gathered in its descent to South Adams, and the machinery in the mills in
the village, three miles away, was crippled by the sand and water pouring
in about the engines; the streets became canals, and boats were necessary
to move about in. However, no lives were lost. The formation rock, from
the base of Greylock, is laid bare in the path of this landslide. Six
to ten terraced ridges, like stone stairs, are revealed in the ascent
for some distance, indicating many ages in geological history. Here is
evidence of those slowly receding seas and lakes as they drained from the
summits down, stair by stair to the winding Ashuilticook River of to-day.
XVIII
The Natural Bridge of Mayunsook Valley, Northern Berkshire
There’s no music like a little river’s. It plays the same tune
(and that’s the favorite) over and over again, and yet does not
weary of it like men fiddlers.—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, _Prince
Otto_.
A narrow vale winds away northeastward from the city of North Adams to
Stamford, Vermont. A short walk from the terminus of the car line in
The Beaver leads to the junction of Hudson Brook with the Mayunsook
River. The Mayunsook is often called the Little Deerfield. It is the
North Branch of the Hoosac, rising near Stamford Ponds, and draining the
southern and western slopes above Stamford Hollow. The Greater Deerfield
River rises also near these lakes, and drains the same mountains from
their northern and eastern slopes, flowing around through Readsboro to
Zoar, where travellers meet it as they pass out of the eastern portal of
the Hoosac Tunnel into the Deerfield Valley. Thus, from their mysterious
sources our turbulent rivers and mountain streams bring restful, cooling
news from out the higher lands, where scarce the foot of man has been.
On August 7th I explored about Natural Bridge on Hudson Brook. I wore
hob-nailed boots, and made a long day’s excursion. Hawthorne knew and
loved this wonderful natural feature of northern Berkshire, and here
gathered many fancies, which he has woven into his tales. The chasm of
Hudson Brook is described as the “Cave” in his _Notes_. His description
of the ravine is the finest ever written.
Hudson Brook, tradition tells us, took its name from the hunter Hudson,
who, one twilight, dragging homeward a deer he had killed, lost it in
this chasm. He narrowly escaped following it himself.
The region is entered either by walking up the bed of the stream itself,
or following around the road above Marble Quarry, just east of the
chasm. The former is the more direct, but the latter a longer and safer
way. In this instance, I followed the travelled highway. I proceeded up
the stream where the erosions begin, and readily descended the ravine,
following its course downward until I came to a beautiful marble basin
or pot-hole formation, which very few see, since it is hidden under the
wooden foot-bridge above the natural bridge of rock. Logs and immense
rocks barred my way, and I was forced through dark fissures in my ascent
to the sunlight.
The pot-hole was evidently the same pool of which Hawthorne wrote: “As
the deepest pool occurs in the most uneven part of the chasm, where the
hollows in the sides of the crag are deepest, so that each hollow is
almost a cave by itself, I determined to wade through it ... there was an
accumulation of soft stuff on the bottom, so that the water did not look
more than knee-deep; but, finding that my feet sunk in it, I took off
my trousers and waded through.”[57] He visited this stream often: “The
cave makes a fresh impression upon me every time I visit it,—so deep,
so irregular, so gloomy, so stern,—part of its walls the pure white of
marble,—others covered with a gray decomposition and with spots of moss,
and with brake growing where there is a handful of earth.”[58]
Hawthorne believed firmly that “a complete arch of marble, forming a
natural bridge over the top of the cave,” must have covered the whole
chasm of the stream at an unknown period. The pot-hole, I am most
certain, has been forded by few lads, and it is hardly probable that any
other poet or prose master ever disrobed and bathed in its waters as
Hawthorne did in 1838. The basin is from six to eight feet deep, with
a beautifully rounded, highly polished brim. I christened this bowl
“Hawthorne’s Bath-Tub,” and, unable to wade it, climbed out of the “Cave”
to the light above. I, however, descended again to see the northern
portal of the arch below the Bath-Tub. I was interested in the names
painted high and low upon the marble rocks. Some visitors had evidently
tried to place their initials as high as possible, while others more
modest sought to write theirs as low, and in more obscure places. I
regretted that I had not brought a pot of red paint and a brush to daub
my own title there, with the ambitious crowd.
The stream, as it approaches the arch of the Bridge, is deep and of a
dark green color. The chasm, from the top of the ledge, is about sixty
feet deep, and the ravine three hundred feet in length. Geologists say
that the ravine was formerly spanned by two ledges of rock, one of which
is now in ruins. The piles of rocks in the chasm south of the southern
portal of the arch are dazzling white, seen in the noonday sunshine. The
fall of water, in its descent through the ravine, is about forty feet to
the three hundred feet, so that the eddies play and whirl rapidly through
the irregular bed. A wooden tile, or raceway, was hung high over the
chasm, across a leaning crag of the original ledge,—conveying water power
thereby to mills below. This old structure leaked, and as I descended the
banks below, I saw some of the most gorgeous miniature rainbows spanning
the depths, as the sunshine fell upon the mist near the arch.