214 Dog-Trotting for Orchids 



Village, which was *' across lots, " into the road near 

 the Quaker Meeting-house, surrounded by grave-stones. 

 He also drank of the region's spring water, — the ** most 

 delicious " he ever tasted, — " pure, fresh, almost spark- 

 ling, exhilarating, — such water as Adam and Eve 

 drank." ' 



The people of this region looked upon his journeys 

 through their valley with curiosity in those early days. 

 The houses were more numerous then than now in the 

 extreme southern portion of the valley. This region 

 has been purchased by the North Adams Water Com- 

 pany, which has removed all dwellings above the 

 reservoir. The last house in The Notch to-day is on 

 the Walden Farm, at Grey lock Park Gate. 



Hawthorne found, in the Highlands-of-the-Hoosac, 

 the originals of many characters described in his works. 

 ** Eustace Bright," of Wo7ider-Book, was a student of 

 Williams; and the Tanglewood Tales have made the 

 whole world familiar with "rough, broken, rugged, 

 headlong Berkshire." Here, in the seclusion of The 

 Bellows-Pipe, " where it slopes upward to the skies," 

 Hawthorne loved best to come. There he could look 

 southward over the vast fields of Berkshire's valleys 

 to the distant crags of Bryant's ** Monument Moun- 

 tain," immortalized as the ** headless sphinx" of his 

 own Wonder- Book. And from the northern Notch, he 

 looked away to the blue Domes of the White Moun- 

 tains, a distance of sixty miles or more. 



The Limekilns along the Ashuilticook— the south 

 ' Hawthorne, Afnerican Notes, September 9, 1838. 



