Our county lies in a northern State, in the midst of one of those districts known geographically as “regions of innumerable lakes.” It is in good part wooded—hilly, irregular country, not mountainous, but often bold and marked in outline. Save for its lakes, strangers might pass through it without especial notice; but its broken hills have a peculiar intimacy and lovableness, and to us it is so beautiful that new wonder falls on us year after year as we dwell in it. There is a marked trend of

  Our river is one of the pair of kingly streams which traverse almost our entire State from north to south. The first twenty-five miles of its course, after leaving the great lake which it drains, is a tearing rapid between rocky walls: then follows perhaps a hundred miles of alternating falls and “dead water,” the falls being now fast taken up as water powers. It has eleven hundred feet to fall to reach the sea, and it does most of this in its first thirty miles. The river’s course through par

  The river-bank boys pick up, as easily as they breathe, knowledge as miscellaneous as the drift piled on the shores. They know all the shoals and principal eddies, without the aid of buoys. They know the ways and seasons of the different fish. They learn to recognize the owner’s marks on the logs, and they know the times and ways of all the humbler as well as the larger river craft, the scows and smacks, and the “gundalows” which spend mysterious month after month hauled up among the sedges at

  You would never think now that tall Indiamen were once built here in our town, but they were, and sailed hence round the world away, and we too boasted our wharves, with the once-familiar notice: “All ships required to cock-a-bill their yards before lying at this dock.” The last ship built in the town was the Valley Forge , launched about 1860; the last built at Bowman’s Point, two miles above, was the Two Brothers . The Valley Forge for ten whole years was never out of Eastern waters, plying

  A smaller river, the Acushticook, tumbles and foams down through the midst of our town, and brings us the wonderfully soft pure water of a chain of over twenty lakes and ponds. It flung the hills apart to join the larger stream which it meets at right angles at the Town Bridge, and the last mile of its course is through a beautiful small gorge, in a succession of falls, now compacted into the eight dams which turn our mills. Above the falls, though it breaks into occasional rapids, its course

  April 3. Last night the river “went out.” We were so used, all winter, to its sleeping whiteness, that it seemed as unlikely to change as the outlines of the hills; then came a tumultuous week, and now it is a brown, strong, full-running stream, with swirls and whirlpools of hastening current all over its wide surface. These are indescribable days. The air is sweet with wet bark and melting snow and newly-uncovered earth. The lesser streams are rushing and roaring through the woods. There are

  The cross-road under the great leafy ridge of Eastman Hill has pretty farms along it, and half-way across there is a country burying ground, where wild plums blossom, and the grave-stones are half hidden all summer in a green thicket. One name in the graveyard we all hold in special honor, that of Serena Eastman. I never knew her myself, and it is only from her granddaughter and from the neighbors that I learned of her beautiful life. She was a mother in Israel; one of     “All-Saints—the unkn

  The two adjoining districts of Ridgefield and Weir’s Mills lie about ten miles to the east of us, in level and fertile farm country, between two ridges of hills. Ridgefield is an old Roman Catholic settlement. Twenty-five years ago it still had a prosperous convent, and children educated in the convent school have gone out all over the country; but the centre of the farming population shifted, and at last the convent was closed. The cheerful-faced, black-gowned sisters are all gone. The bell h

  The sun had come out bright after a rain, and every leaf was shining, the June day when we drove over to Ridgefield to fetch Mary Guilfoyle. We started early in the morning, but it was already like noon in that midsummer season. Daisies were powdering the fields, as white as snow, and yellow and orange hawkweeds were growing in among them, so that whole fields showed yellow, orange, and white. The orange hawkweed is very fragrant, and its sweetness mixed with the spicy bitterness of the daisie

  Tresumpscott Pond lies three miles eastward from our river, set deep between the folds of wooded and rocky hills, and the woods frame it close. You climb the rise of a long slow-mounting hill which at its southern extremity breaks sharply down in granite ledges, mostly pine-covered, and there right below you lies this little lonely, perfectly guarded lake. There is only one opening in the woods, a farm which slopes down to the shore in two wide fields, with a low rambling farmhouse. There is n

  The population of a district can never be classified. Once again, “folks are folks,” and the smallest hamlet shows infinite variety. Yet here and there the individual quality of a neighborhood seems as marked as that of the different belts and communities of trees which clothe the land about it. Watson’s Hill, Ridgefield, and Weir’s Mills are fine up-standing neighborhoods, with good houses, big barns, fresh paint, and bright milk cans catching the sun; but in near-by folds of the hills, where

  In late September an errand took us out to Sam Marston’s again. We wanted a quantity of early farm things, sweet cider, Porter apples, and honey. The woods were in a flame of fiery color as we drove out through the intricacies of the river hills. They glowed like beds of tulips, with only the dark evergreens to set them off, and turned our whole country into a huge flower garden. The crops had all been very good this season. Hay and grain were both heavy, and the apple trees had to be propped,

  By October of this year the fires of September had sunk to a rich smouldering glow. The rolling woods, as far as the eye could see, were masses of dusky gold and wine-color. There was actual smoke, too, pale blue in the hollows, from many forest fires. Nearly all of October was Indian Summer. Every day there was a soft golden haze, just veiling the yellow of the woods, and the days were warm and still, like midsummer, but with a kind of mellow peacefulness. We spent a whole day out on Watson’s

  Like the inside of a pearl; like the inside of a star-sapphire; like a rainbow at twilight. We are in a white world, and save for the rich warmth of the pines and hemlocks there is no color stronger than the delicate penciling of the woods; but the whiteness is softened all day by a frost-haze which the sunlight turns into silver. The horizon is veiled with smoke-color and tender opal. It is as if the world retired for a little to a space of softened sunrise colors, never hard or sharp; lovely

  Assimasqua Mountain rises abruptly to the west of the four ponds, a noble hill or range, five miles in length. The west shore of the Assimasqua lakes sweeps abruptly up to the high crest of the ridge, which is very irregular. It is partly wooded, partly half-grown-up pasture, partly ledge, and along the high grassy summit small chasms open and lead away into deep woods of hemlock. The steep east side is covered for most of its length with an amazing growth of juniper, hundreds and hundreds of