horse gaining some lofty level tract, flat as a table,
trots gayly over the almost deserted and sodded road, and your admiring
eye sweeps the broad landscape beneath, you seem to be Bootes driving in
heaven. Save a potato field here and there, at long intervals, the whole
country is either in wood or pasture. Horses, cattle and sheep are the
principal inhabitants of these mountains. But all through the year lazy
columns of smoke, rising from the depths of the forest, proclaim the
presence of that half-outlaw, the charcoal-burner; while in early spring
added curls of vapor show that the maple sugar-boiler is also at work.
But as for farming as a regular vocation, there is not much of it here.
At any rate, no man by that means accumulates a fortune from this thin
and rocky soil, all whose arable parts have long since been nearly
exhausted.

Yet during the first settlement of the country, the region was not
unproductive. Here it was that the original settlers came, acting upon
the principle well known to have regulated their choice of site, namely,
the high land in preference to the low, as less subject to the
unwholesome miasmas generated by breaking into the rich valleys and
alluvial bottoms of primeval regions. By degrees, however, they quitted
the safety of this sterile elevation, to brave the dangers of richer
though lower fields. So that, at the present day, some of those mountain
townships present an aspect of singular abandonment. Though they have
never known aught but peace and health, they, in one lesser aspect at
least, look like countries depopulated by plague and war. Every mile or
two a house is passed untenanted. The strength of the frame-work of
these ancient buildings enables them long to resist the encroachments of
decay. Spotted gray and green with the weather-stain, their timbers seem
to have lapsed back into their woodland original, forming part now of
the general picturesqueness of the natural scene. They are of
extraordinary size, compared with modern farmhouses. One peculiar
feature is the immense chimney, of light gray stone, perforating the
middle of the roof like a tower.

On all sides are seen the tokens of ancient industry. As stone abounds
throughout these mountains, that material was, for fences, as ready to
the hand as wood, besides being much more durable. Consequently the
landscape is intersected in all directions with walls of uncommon
neatness and strength.

The number and length of