To the southward farther, the widening Housatonic circles about the
valley, bordered with willows and alders, and hidden frequently by
cliffs and forests. Hills terrace the horizon, with mountain peaks
among them. Through the gorges the road follows down the circling
river, which constantly turns more mill-wheels, its waters pouring
over frequent white marble dams and bubbling upon rapids, with steep
tree-clad slopes adorning the banks and making attractive views.
Monument Mountain's long ridge gradually falls off, and the intervale
broadens as the Housatonic winds in wider channel to Great Barrington.
This is another typical New England village, embowered by the
stateliest of elms, spreading along its broad green-bordered street,
with a galaxy of hills encircling the intervale in which it stands,
and lofty Mount Everett rising grandly over its southwestern verge. To
the eastward is the special hill of Great Barrington, giving the town
its name. Beecher described it as "one of those places which one never
enters without wishing never to leave." William Cullen Bryant for
several years, ending with 1825, was the town clerk of Great
Barrington, and the records of that time are in his handwriting; his
house is still preserved. For a quarter of a century Dr. Samuel
Hopkins lived here, the hero of Mrs. Stowe's novel, the _Minister's
Wooing_. On the lowlands by the river is the costliest country-house
in the Berkshires, Kellogg Terrace, built by Mrs. Hopkins-Searles, a
magnificent structure of blue and white marbles, with red-tiled roofs,
and most elaborately fitted up, upon which $1,500,000 was expended.
It is carefully concealed from view from the village street by a
massive stone wall and well-arranged trees. This mansion principally
illustrates the affection the New England emigrant always bears for
the home of youth. Mark Hopkins went away from the Berkshires to
California to make a fortune and die. His childless widow, a native of
Great Barrington, had $30,000,000, and came back to live on the farm
where she had spent her childhood. She determined to rear a memorial,
and built this French-Gothic palace of the native Berkshire marbles,
exceeding at the time, in costliness and magnificence, any other
private dwelling outside of New York City. As the building gradually
grew, she became so enamored of it and its designer that she took the
architect, Mr. Searles, for a second husband. Then she died, and he
became its possessor. Yet it cannot be seen, except by climbing up a
high hill to the eastward, where one can look down upon its red-tiled
roofs on the low-lying meadow almost by the river side. The
Congregational Church of Great Barrington has the Hopkins Memorial
Manse, regarded as the finest parsonage in the United States, which
cost $100,000 to build.
Following farther down the Housatonic, the village of Sheffield,
another domain of marble quarries, is reached, with the same broad,
quiet, green-bordered and elm-shaded village street, and famed for
having furnished the marble to build Girard College and its
magnificent colonnade at Philadelphia. The "Sheffield Elm" in the
southern part of the town, a noble tree of great age, was given fame
by the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." To the westward is the broad
and solid mass of Mount Everett, often called Mount Washington, the
southern outpost of the Taghkanic range, and the sentinel guarding the
southwestern corner of Massachusetts, as Old Graylock guards the
northwest corner. This mountain rises over twenty-six hundred feet,
the "Dome of the Taghkanics." From its summit can be surveyed to the
westward the valley of the Hudson, while beyond, at the horizon, the
distant Catskills hang, in the words of Dr. Hitchcock, "like the
curtains of the sky." The Connecticut boundary is not far away, and
beyond it, southward, are successive ranges of hills. The Housatonic
winds through productive valleys, with herds quietly grazing, and
tobacco and other crops growing. This is in the town of Mount
Washington, which was part of the great Livingston Manor that
stretched in front of the mountain over to the Hudson, and the first
settlers were Dutch, who came up from that valley. This region was the
scene of the close of Shays' Rebellion in 1787, the insurgents who had
convulsed western Massachusetts, and attacked and plundered
Stockbridge, being chased down here by the troops, and a considerable
number killed and wounded before they were dispersed.