PARADISE IN THE COUNTRY. 



553 



river or lake. The Hudson, for instance, 

 is too broad to bridge, and beautiful as the 

 sites are upon its banks, the residents have 

 but one egress and one drive — the country 

 behind them. If they could cross to the 

 other side, and radiate in every direction in 

 their evening drives, the villason that noble 

 river would be trebled in value. One soon tires 

 of riding up and down one bank of a river, 

 and without taste for boating, the beautiful 

 expanse of water soon becomes an irksome 

 barrier. Very much the same remark is 

 true of the borders of lakes, with the addi- 

 tional objection, that there is no variety to 

 the view. A small bright stream, such as 

 hundreds of nameless ones in these beauti- 

 ful northern states, spanned by bridges, at 

 every half mile, followed always by the 

 roads, which naturally seek the level, and 

 winding into picturesque surprises, appear- 

 ing and disappearing, continually, is in it- 

 self, an ever-renewing poem, crowded with 

 changeable pictures, and every day tempt- 

 ing you to follow or trace back its bright 

 current. Small rivers, again, insure to a 

 degree the other two requisites — shade 

 and inequality of surface — the interval be- 

 ing proportionably narrow, and backed b)^ 

 slopes and alluvial soil, usually producing 

 the various nut and maple trees, which, for 

 their fruit and sap, have been spared by the 

 inexorable axes of the first settlers. If 

 there is any land in the country, the price 

 of which is raised from the supposed desi- 

 rableness of the site, it is upon the lakes 

 and larger rivers, leaving the smaller rivers, 

 fortunately still within the scale of the peo- 

 ple's means. 



One more word as to the selection of a 

 spot. The rivers in the United States, more 

 than those of older countries, are variable 

 in their quantity of water. The baT)ks of 

 many of the most picturesque, present, at 

 the season of the year when we most wish 

 it otherwise (in the sultry heats of August 

 and September), bared rocks or beds of ooze, 

 while the streani runs sluggishly and unin- 

 vitingly between. Those which are fed 

 principally by springs, however, are less lia- 

 ble to the effects of drouth than those 

 which are the outlets of large bodies of 

 water ; and indeed, there is great differ- 

 ence in rivers in this respect, depending on 



70 



the degree in which their courses are sha- 

 ded, and other causes. It will be safest, 

 consequently, to select a site in August, 

 when the water is at the lowest, preferring, 

 of course, a bold and high bank as a pro- 

 tection against freshets and flood-wood. The 

 remotest chance of a war with water, dam- 

 ming against wash and floods, fills an old 

 settler with economical alarm. 



It was doubtless a " small chore " for the 

 deluge to heave up a mound or slope a bank, 

 but with one spade at a dollar a day, the 

 moving of earth is a discouraging job, and 

 in selecting a place to live, it is well to be 

 apprized what diggings may become neces- 

 sary, and how your hay and water, wood, 

 visiters, and lumber generally, are to come 

 and go. A man's first fancy is commonly 

 to build on a hill ; but as he lives on, year 

 after year, he would like his house lower 

 and lower, till, if the fairies had done it 

 for him at each succeeding wish, he would 

 trouble them at last to dig his cellar at the 

 bottom. It is hard mounting a hill dailj-, 

 with tired horses, and it is dangerous driv- 

 ing down with full bellied ones from the 

 stable-door, and your friends deduct from 

 the pleasure of seeing you, the inconve- 

 nience of ascending and descending. The 

 view, for which you build high, you soon 

 discover is not daily bread, but an occasion- 

 al treat, more worth, as well as better liked, 

 for the walk to get it, and (you have select- 

 ed your site, of course, with a southern ex- 

 posure) a good stiff hill at yonr back, nine 

 months in the year, saves several degrees of 

 the thermometer, and sundry chimney-tops, 

 barn roof^, and other furniture, peripatetic 

 in a tempest. Then your hill-road washes 

 with the rains, and needs continual mend- 

 ing, and the dweller on the hill needs one 

 more horse and two more oxen, than the 

 dweller in the valley. One thing more. 

 There rises a night-mist (never unwhole- 

 some from running water), which protects 

 fruit trees from frost to a certain level above 

 the river, at certain critical seasons, and so 

 ends the reasons for building low. 



I am supposing all along, dear reader, 

 that you have had no experience of country 

 life, but that sick of a number in a brick 

 block, or (if a traveller) weary of the "per- 

 petual flow of people," you want a patch of 



