The Fitchburg railroad, coming from Troy on the Hudson to Boston,
crosses the northern part of the district and pierces the Hoosac
Mountain by a famous tunnel, nearly five miles long, which cost
Massachusetts $16,000,000, the greatest railway tunnel in the United
States. This railroad follows the charming Deerfield River Valley up
to the mountain, from the east, and it seeks the Hudson northwestward
down the Hoosac River, the "place of stones," passing under the shadow
of Old Graylock, rising in solid grandeur over thirty-five hundred
feet, the highest Massachusetts mountain, at the northwest corner of
the State. A tower on the top gives a view all around the horizon,
with attractive glimpses of the winding Hoosac and Housatonic
Valleys. Nearby is Williamstown, the seat of Williams College, with
four hundred students, its buildings being the chief feature of the
village. President Garfield was a graduate of this College, and
William Cullen Bryant for some time a student, writing much of his
early poetry here. Five miles eastward is the manufacturing town of
North Adams, with twenty thousand people, in the narrow valley of the
Hoosac, whose current turns its mill-wheels. A short distance down the
Hoosac, at a road crossing, was the site of old Fort Massachusetts,
the "Thermopylæ of New England" in the early French and Indian War,
where, in 1746, its garrison of twenty-two men held the fort two days
against an attacking force of nine hundred, of whom they killed
forty-seven and wounded many more, only yielding when every grain of
powder was gone.
Journeying southward up the Hoosac through its picturesque valley, the
narrow, winding stream turns many mills, while "Old Greylock,
cloud-girdled on his purple throne," stands guardian at its northern
verge. There are various villages, mostly in decadence, many of their
people having migrated, and the mills have to supplement water-power
with steam, the drouths being frequent. Of the little town of Adams on
the Hoosac, Susan B. Anthony was the most famous inhabitant, and in
Lanesboro "Josh Billings," then named H. W. Shaw, was born in 1818,
before he wandered away to become an auctioneer and humorist. The
head of the Hoosac is a reservoir lake, made to store its waters that
they may better serve the mills below, and almost embracing its
sources are the branching head-streams of the Housatonic, which flows
to the southward. This part of the intervale, being the most elevated,
is a region of sloughs and lakes, from which the watershed tapers in
both directions. Upon this high plateau, more than a thousand feet
above the tidal level, is located the county-seat of Berkshire,
Pittsfield, named in honor of William Pitt, the elder, in 1761. The
Boston and Albany Railroad crosses the Berkshires through the town,
and then climbing around the Hoosac range goes off down Westfield
River to the Connecticut at Springfield. The Public Green of
Pittsfield, located, as in all New England towns, in its centre, is
called the "Heart of Berkshire." Upon it stands Launt Thompson's noted
bronze statue of the "Color-Bearer," cast from cannon given by
Congress,--a spirited young soldier in fatigue uniform, holding aloft
the flag. This statue is reproduced on the Gettysburg battlefield, and
it is the monument of five officers and ninety men of Pittsfield
killed in the Civil War. At the dedication of this statue was read
Whittier's eloquent lyric, "Massachusetts to Virginia," which was
inspired by the "Latimer fugitive slave case" in 1842. An owner from
Norfolk claimed the fugitive in Boston, and was awarded him by the
courts, but the decision caused so much excitement that the slave's
emancipation was purchased for $400, the owner gladly taking the money
rather than pursue the case further. Thus said Whittier:
"A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been
Thrilled as but yesterday the breasts of Berkshire's mountain men;
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
"And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea-spray;
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay;
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill:
"'No slave-hunt in our borders--no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State--no slave upon our land!'"
Bordering this famous Green are the churches and public buildings of
Pittsfield, while not far away a spacious and comfortable mansion is
pointed out which for many years was the summer home of Longfellow,
and the place where he found "The Old Clock on the Stairs"--the clock
is said to still remain in the house. The Pittsfield streets lead out
in every direction to lovely scenes on mountain slopes or the banks of
lakes. The Agassiz Association for the study of natural history has
its headquarters in Pittsfield, there being a thousand local chapters
in various parts of the world. This pleasant region was the Indian
domain of Pontoosuc, "the haunt of the winter deer," and this is the
name of one of the prettiest adjacent lakes just north of the town on
the Williamstown road. Ononta is another of exquisite contour, west of
the town, a romantic lakelet elevated eighteen hundred feet, which
gives Pittsfield its water supply, and has an attractive park upon its
shores. On the mountain to the northwest is Berry Pond, its margin of
silvery sand strewn with delicate fibrous mica and snowy quartz. Here,
in various directions, are the "Opes," as the beautiful vista views
are called, along the vales opening through and among the hills. One
of these, to the southward, overlooks the lakelet of the "Lily Bowl."
Here lived Herman Melville, the rover of the seas, when he wrote his
sea-novels. The chief of these vales is to the northwest of
Pittsfield, the "Ope of Promise," giving a view over the "Promised
Land." We are told that this tract was named with grim Yankee humor,
because the original grant of the title to the land was "long
promised, long delayed."