OLD COLONY BERRY PASTURES 173 



luck have no great difficulty in finding it 

 again. 



That was forty years ago. Now, the 

 huckleberry bushes have followed the grass. 

 Massachusetts land belongs to the woods. 

 Clear it never so thoroughly, and with half 

 a chance the trees will have it back again. 

 If you will climb any Massachusetts hill, 

 not directly upon the seashore, and I am 

 not certain that even that exception need 

 be made, you will see the truth of this at 

 once. Something like it, I remember, was 

 the first thing I thought of when I stood first 

 on Mount Wachusett. There lay the whole 

 State, so to speak, outspread below ; and it 

 was all a forest. 



In this very Old Colony town many acres 

 that were once excellent pasturage are now 

 so perfectly reconverted to woodland that no 

 ordinary walker over them would suspect 

 that they had ever been anything else. If 

 this has happened within twenty miles of 

 Boston, within half the lifetime of a man, 

 there seems to be no great danger that the 

 State will ever be deforested ; and those of 

 us who love wild things, and look upon civ- 



