White Oaks 185 



The wildness of Broad Brook Valley is delightful. 

 The stream rises in luxuriant swamps on the eastern 

 summit of the Dome, between Stamford and Haystack 

 Mountains. The Forks along the stream are formed 

 by this one and others flowing down from Mount 

 Hazen, which lies to the southeast of the Dome. The 

 valley is comparatively wide, and the stream, as its 

 name implies, is broad. The chasm bears scars of days 

 when the heights to the northeast were capped with 

 glaciers, towering thousands of feet above the present 

 mutton-backed summits, which were formed into their 

 dome-like shapes by the erosions of this ice sheet. The 

 channel of the stream is full of tumbling boulders, and 

 during April, when the snows are melting, a wilder 

 brook is unknown in the Hoosac Valley. Three 

 seasons it has become so rough and swollen that it 

 has carried bridges and all else in its course before it, 

 threatening the houses and little chapel, as it rushed 

 downward to the Hoosac. 



Bears inhabit these dark ravines, and wander close 

 to the habitation of man in the Hollow. Not far from 

 where we collected our flowers, a bear had been killed 

 last season by two lads fishing in the stream. As I 

 left the glen, and drove out over the moss-grown hills, 

 and through the hollows, I found the ground red with 

 wild strawberries. Needless to say, I paused until I 

 had my fill of this luscious fruit, and I carried a birch- 

 bark cornucopia of it away with me. 



On June i8th I visited my great colony of Showy 

 Reginae in Rattlesnake Swamp. As they were not yet 



