AMHERST COLLEGE. 497 



The Connecticut Valley railroad carried us on our 

 way to Amherst from Springfield to Northampton, a dis 

 tance of seventeen miles, from which seven miles by stage 

 brought us to Amherst. This ride must be very beau 

 tiful in summer. The country was barely free from 

 snow as yet : the winter hue still gave a colour to all 

 external objects, and the cold was severe. Still it was 

 easy to see that the soil of the valley was in general too 

 light and sandy for rich cultivation, though here and there 

 spots occurred which were of a more capable character. 



Amherst is beautifully situated on the upland, over 

 looking the whole valley of the Connecticut. I have 

 seldom seen a public institution, the site and view from 

 which I admired more than those of the College at 

 Amherst. The situation of Brown University at New 

 Providence, in Rhode Island, is very commanding, and 

 over the town, and beyond the river, opens out a wide 

 view before the eye of the stranger ; but there is a charm 

 in the deep valley of the Connecticut, and the ranges of 

 trap hills rising on either hand, as seen from the 

 Amherst University buildings, which made me regret 

 that, instead of a summer sun gilding the green hill-sides 

 and fields of golden corn, and inviting to a more detailed 

 examination of the numerous striking points of the land 

 scape, a chilling winter wind froze up external nature, and 

 compelled me to seek shelter from its searching presence. 

 I spent a pleasant evening with President Hitchcock 

 and his amiable family, and had the gratification of 

 leisurely examining, in the College Museum, the long 

 slabs of stone on which the largest footprints of the 

 gigantic birds of the New Red Sandstone period are im 

 pressed. How remarkable it appears that a shower of 

 rain, or the foot of a heedless bird, should impress upon 

 dead matter memorials of themselves, which have lasted, 

 it may be, for a million of years ; while man, with all 

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