often filled with all that can please the eyee-follow each other in infinitely multiplied combinations of mountain and valley, lake and stream, rock, tree, and shrub, mossy hillock and crystal spring.

"The delicious surprises of Berkshire" was one of the happiest phrases in the poetic rhetoric of Gov. Andrew, who knew well the scenes he praised; and the traveller along its winding roads recognizes at every turn how truthful and appropriate was the expression.

But we must not linger, where all love to linger, amid the exceeding loveliness of Berkshire scenery; but turn to those facts regarding the geographical structure of the county, which, although not devoid of scenographic interest, affect also its internal economy, and its relations to its county-seat and central market-town.

Pittsfield Park, which lies very near the centre of the town, and of the county as well, has an elevation above the level of the sea of one thousand and forty-one feet; and, omitting the small uninhabited mountain-districts, that is not far from the average altitude of the township.

Of the neighboring mountains, isolated Greylock, the highest point of Massachusetts (3,505 feet above the level of the sea), rises 2,464 above Pittsfield, from which it is about fourteen miles distant as the crow flies. Of the Hoosacs, some of the peaks near Vermont attain an altitude of two thousand feet above the valley at their bases; or perhaps fourteen hundred above Pittsfield. Among the Taconics, Berlin Mountain in Williamstown exceeds the latter level by 1,773 feet; Perry's Peak in Richmond,- famed for its superb over-view, - by 1,576; and, near the extreme southwest, Mount Everett, the dome of the Taconics, by 1,583.

Excluding from the computation these heights, which disproportionately excel their neighbors, the average elevation of the mountain-summits of Berkshire above Pittsfield Park may be about eight hundred feet; which is considerably less than their altitude above the level of the Berkshire Valley. How slight is the depression of the transverse valleys between the several peaks, massive knobs, and table-lands of the Hoosacs, may be inferred from the fact, that, upon the eastern declivity of the range, the Western Railroad is

1 Prof. Chester Dewey estimated the general average of the Hoosac Range above the bottom of the valley at sixteen hundred feet; that of the Taconics, at twelve or fourteen hundred.

compelled to almost double upon its track in order to find a gap through which it may enter the county by a valley-summit whose original elevation was 1,478 feet above tide-water at Albany, or 452 above Unkamet's Crossing. The domelike summits of the Taconics are more sharply divided; but even between these the depressions are so slight, that, although the locomotive finds a passage at an elevation of only a hundred and twenty feet above the road-bed at Pittsfield, it is the only one that is practicable south of that through which the Hoosac River escapes.

Concisely to outline the geography of the Berkshire Hills, the grand uplifted table-land described by Dr. Palfrey must be considered as here cleft above its solid substructure of a thousand feet for a length of forty-eight miles, and to an average depth of fifteen hundred feet; while the longitudinal ridges thus formed are serrated by transverse valleys of less than one-third that average, supplemented by water-courses furrowed by the mountain

torrents.

Between the longitudinal ridges known as the Hoosac and Taconic Mountains lies the Berkshire Valley, having an average breadth of about six miles; although, except in Pittsfield and Sheffield, it is made to appear much more narrow by the spurs which protrude into it, and the isolated ranges with which it is thickly studded. In the basin formed by this valley and the declivities which incline toward it is concentrated the mass of population and wealth which lend character to the county.

The natural outlines which give unity to the region are sufficiently well defined; but practically it is divided into minor compartments, so arranged, however, as to form a homogeneous whole, with a common centre. In the northern section, the chief barrier which governs this division is the Greylock Range, which, beginning near the Vermont line, extends southward through Lanesborough. In the south, the less continuous Tom Ball Spur, thrown off by the Taconics at Alford, after being broken through by the Williams River at West Stockbridge, extends to Pittsfield, where it terminates abruptly in the Cliffwood terraces of South Mountain. Between these intersections and the exterior walls of the county extend four valley-reaches, marked respectively by the east branches of the Hoosac and the Housatonic, by the west branches of

1 Where the track crosses the cast branch of the Housatonic in Pittsfield.

the same rivers, by the Housatonic after the junction, and by the track of the Western Railroad south-westward. Into these grand subdivisions of the Berkshire Valley open a multitude of others of minor importance.

Midway between the northern and southern boundaries of the county, the intersecting barriers disappear; and the confluent valleys merge in the six miles square occupied by the township of Pittsfield, the greater part of which is of moderately uneven surface, with large spaces approaching the character of plains. Only rarely do the highways have to climb greater heights than afford an agreeable relief to the traveller; and few sections of the town oppose more obstacles to level streets than are found in many cities and towns in those portions of New England not accounted mountainous. The Taconics impinge but slightly upon its western border; the Hoosacs still more slightly upon its eastern. The only formidable elevations are Oceola and South Mountain, which cover a small territory in the south.

It will readily be perceived that the peculiar divergence of the valleys which here find their common terminus make this favored locality the centre of the county in a sense and to a degree unknown in regions where the direction of roads is subject to hardly any other law than that which makes the shortest distance between two points a straight line. Among the hills, on the contrary, every boy who goes to mill knows that the farthest road round is often the shortest way home.

There are several flourishing centres of local traffic more convenient to their respective sections than Pittsfield is; but it needs only an inspection of the map to show how exclusively the disposition of the interior ridges of the county makes that the intersecting, radiating, decussating point of the great highways of Berkshire, -at once the only practical thoroughfare between her northern and southern divisions and the point where they meet each other. The traveller at one of the extreme corners of the county, wishing to reach that longitudinally opposite, will never attempt to do so by the most direct route, — if, indeed, any exist which at all approximate directness, but, at whatever cost of détour, by one of those which intersect at the central town.

And, if this point is thus marked out by Nature as the centre of intercommunication by the highway, still more emphatically is it so for railway travel, which, by the necessities of the country, is

compelled to wind among the mountain-defiles in a course so circuitous, that, of the thirty-one towns which compose the county, seventeen containing 45,374 of its 56,966 people are touched seventeen-containing · by the iron rails which unite at Pittsfield; while chartered roads soon to be built will add the most populous portion of the remainder to the connection.

In its intercourse with the world outside its mountains, Berkshire, before the introduction of railroads, was circumscribed almost as narrowly as in its internal thoroughfares. How formidable a barrier interposed between it and the rest of Massachusetts may be inferred from the fact that the least difficult access was by the Pontoosuck Turnpike. The Western Railroad now follows the general course of this route, sacrificing directness, sometimes, in order to lessen grades; and in a distance of twenty-five miles, between Tekoa Mountain and Washington Summit, — notwithstanding this sacrifice and the aid of the most skilful engineering,—it is compelled to ascend twelve hundred and eleven feet, of which eight hundred and thirty-seven are surmounted in the last half of the distance by a grade whose maximum is more than eighty-two feet to the mile. The Pontoosuck Turnpike in its best estate was considered, as it really was, a marvel of engineering skill, and encountered no such grades as rendered the great parallel highways which ran north and south of it almost impassable at certain seasons of the year. In the last years previous to the building of the railroad, the stage-route over this road was famed also for the luxury of its coaches and the excellence of its horses; but Capt. Marryatt, in his "American Diary," having graphically described the horrors of stage-travel over the Hoosacs, even when mitigated as perfectly as they could be, exclaimed upon the madness of certain crazy spirits who had conceived the idea of constructing a railroad through this savage region." Time soon removed the imputation of madness from the splendid scheme; but the traveller gazing from the car-windows as the locomotive with mighty throes toils up the Valley of the Westfield now beneath overhanging cliffs, and now where the little river gleams far down the deep ravine will sympathize with the admiration of his British predecessor for that daring spirit which conceived the possibility of such an achievement.

1 The Albany and Boston stages, run by several noted contractors, among whom Jason Clapp, Esq., still a venerable citizen of Pittsfield, was prominent.

Upon those sides of the county which border upon other States, the passes were, as has been intimated, less difficult. The banks of the Housatonic opened a convenient avenue along which intercourse with the Connecticut towns was uninterrupted. So intimate was the connection of Berkshire with Hartford at the time of the Revolution that "The Courant "1 was not only the medium through which the political contests of Pittsfield were carried on, but also contained the advertisements of the impounded cattle and runaway slaves of that town and of Great Barrington.

Hartford continued to draw to itself a large portion of Berkshire trade until the railroads opened new avenues in other directions; but even before that era, after the establishment of steamboats upon the Hudson, it was successfully rivalled by the towns upon that river and the tide of traffic flowed through the West-Stockbridge gate of the Taconics to Hudson, Kinderhook, and Albany, and thence to New York. On the north-west, the pass of the Ioosacs, which, to the dismay of all Massachusetts, had long ago been found out by the French and Indian foe, in later times furnished a thoroughfare for more peaceful intercommunication; but, as no great markets then lay in that direction, it less affected the county.

These superior facilities for intercourse with other States than with Massachusetts colored not only the business-relations, but the general character of the people of Berkshire; and, although the traits inherited from "Old-Hampshire" ancestry still formed the groundwork of thought and custom, and were continually reinvigorated by fresh migrations from the old home, they were modified by much which had been spontaneously engendered in the isolation of the hills, or ingrafted from those with whom contact was more frequent than with kindred in the Connecticut Valley.

The Western Railroad has much reduced this disparity in the external communications of the county. The journey to Boston, which in the best times of staging consumed two weary days, now insensibly glides away in a comfortable ride of six hours. Berkshire, pleasantly conscious of the iron bands that bind her to the rest of

1 The files of "The Hartford Courant," of which two sets, nearly or quite complete, are in existence, one in possession of the present publishers of the paper, and the other in that of the Connecticut Historical Society, are full of most precious matter for the historian.