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often distant, with no male attendant. This day 

 the first part of our journey, alone with femalesj 

 gave an almost instant introduction ; the widow 

 of our old friend at first enlivened the company 

 by talking from the inside to the outside : female 

 volubility soon filling all the space within, and 

 new prospects opening to inquiry, at first directed 

 to the driver, come to be gradually answered by 

 the females who, within the next few mile?, were 

 anticipating a happy reception and meeting with 

 friends at home. 



Passing out of Norwich into Thctford tlirough 

 its whole width, we soon realized the state of 

 things in a Vermont town which has given char- 

 acter to the people of that State. Our season of 

 travel was in that part of summer which exhib- 

 its nature in her most luxuriant attire. The tops 

 of the highest hills alike with the vallies were 

 exuberant in all the cereal grains : the fields of 

 Indian corn especially, at this jjoint full two 

 weeks in advance of the corn upon the seaboard 

 one hundred miles south, were rich beyond any 

 thing we had this summer seen. It was a great 

 treat to mount up the stee|) hills which generally 

 abound in this part of Vermont — better were the 

 farms and more independent seemed to be the 

 livers upon these hills, than even the better farm- 

 ers upon tlic plains below. The land seemed all 

 to partake of the bestalluvian fertility of the river 

 bottoms : drought touched the fields above not 

 until it had been doing its work of a dry sum- 

 mer several weeks upon the plain lands below. 

 Through the suinmer until the latest fall the high 

 Vermont pastures continue green. Better horses, 

 cattle and sheep, cannot be foiuid in the world 

 than those raised and fed upon the highest Ver- 

 mont lands, whose strength of soil gives to near- 

 ly every acre a capacity almost double that of 

 most of the old farms in New-England, eastward 

 of the Connecticut river valley. 



There are three villages and as many post- 

 offices supplied by the mail stage passing later- 

 ally through the fine town of Thetford. Above 

 Hanover, on the Norwich side, comes down the 

 little river PomponusucU : this river runs from 

 the base of the Fairloe mountain, coming close 

 down to Connecticut river: running in the same 

 direction, a high ridge divides the distance be- 

 tween the larger and the smaller stream. There 

 are mill sites at the south, in the centre and upon 

 the north side of Thetford, each of which has its 

 village. Academy hill, will; a s|)lcndi(l view in 

 all directions, is situated eastward of the Pom- 

 ponusuck valley. Over this bill the road di- 

 verges : the mail is supplied to the academy vil- 

 lage upon the hill, as well as to the valley vil- 

 lages. So steep are the hills to he surmounted 

 gaining the more elevated village, that the con- 

 tractors sometimes disjialch a single horse with 

 the mail, while the loaded stage waits to receive 

 it. For our gralilication, the stage this day passed 

 over the hill. Tugging up the steep in an ex- 

 tremely hot day, the driver humming the tunc 

 of the plaintive modern song of " Napoleon's 

 Grave," the young lady on the left, in a voice of 

 much more delicacy, repeated and sung it. This 

 voluntary of course called for an apiieal to the 

 equally beautiful lady on the right, who had in- 

 troduced herself as a farmer's daughter of West 

 Fairlec. She could ^ing, she said, but indiffer- 

 ently ; but she was willing to try one she had 

 learned among the green hills : it was a song of 

 the Revolution, which we had heard many years 

 ago, but had never seen in |)rint — homely verses 

 that for twenty years at least had never once 

 l)asscd in our mind. It was the song of iho 



British " regular," who had received his death | 



wound in battle, beginning as follows: 



'' 'Twaa on that dark and dreadful day 

 When we sal sail for'Ainerica ; 

 The drums did l)eat and the trumpets sound, 

 When on for ijoston we were bound." 



The conclusion of the verses from the mouth 



of the young Miss, more strongly attached to her 



native hills than any other place on earth, and 



who was induced to leave them for a season in 



obedience to the yaiikee )>rinciple and enterprise 



which forces our sons and daughters to every 



part of the world where money can be earned, 



wc was enabled to trace with the pencil while 



the horses were walking with their heavy burden 



up the steep smooth hill: 



" Fight on, fight on, ye American sons — 

 Spread death and slaugliter from your guns — 

 MaintaiQ your rights from year to year ; 

 God's on your side — you need not fear. 



I've now receiv'd my mortal wound — 

 1"11 bid adieu to old England's ground : 

 My wife and children mourn for me, 

 While 1 lay cold in America." 



The Pomponusuck has a never-failing source 

 of supply from the waters of a beautiful lake in 

 Fairlee. Not far to the west of it before enter- 

 ing Norwich, are the extensive Copperas works 

 in Sirafibrd, which, for several years, have fur- 

 nished that useful mineral in great abundance, 

 and the value of which must be increased sev- 

 eral dollars in a ton so soon as the nearapfiroach 

 of railroad transportation shall relieve the horse- 

 teams from their snail-pace over the rocky roads 

 intervening in one hundred and fifty miles of 

 land transport, which that heavy article had for 

 years encountered. Our way, leaving the Fair- 

 lee lakes on the east, was up a brook valley run- 

 ning into the lake through the town of Versliire, 

 veering our course from a northerly to a westerly 

 direction. In Vershire, near its westerly line, 

 was the high point of the hills surmounted. 

 Equally beautiful and fertile were the hills of 

 Vershire with those of Norwich, Thetford and 

 West Fairlee, through which we had just passed. 



Chelsea, the county seat of Orange county, is 

 situated upon the plain of a basin low among 

 the hills, where four streams come down in as 

 many directions, and imite to form the head of 

 the most iiortheily brancli of White river, near 

 the mouth of which is the crossing which unites 

 the New-Hampshire railroads to the Vermont 

 Central road. From the height in Vershire the 

 horses, which had gained it by a slow pace — 

 covered with dust and sweat, panting almost as 

 with exhaustion, suddeidy changed " from grave 

 to gny," pricking up their ears, keeping out of the 

 way of the carriage at a lively pace, with the ex- 

 ercise of only the power necessary to keep them 

 upon their feet. A rcmarkalile feature, after 

 gaining the height which leads down one of the 

 Chelsea valleys, was the change of the exuberant 

 grais and grain crops. A dilVercnt surface and 

 a changed color of the soil were at once jiercop- 

 tible: the plough-fields were less lively — the hay 

 crops were lighter : the growth of the pasturage 

 wos more like that wo have been accustomed to 

 tneet in the deadened clayey surliice of old pas- 

 turage nearer the seaboard, which snITers from 

 the lack of drainage and superficial cultivation 

 upon the surflice. 



Three o'clock in the afternoon brought us to 

 Chelsea, the very last of the lady-passengers, all 

 having been disposed of and set down on the 

 way, leaving the stage hero. The crowds of peo- 

 ple passing over the C^oncord railroad since the 

 prevalence of the diy and hot weather, not only 

 turned a greater portion of the way to the coun- 



try above into night travel, but in some instances 

 made the progress nearly a day later. The 

 change gave us an opportunity of resting over 

 night at Chelsea : the peculiarity of this village 

 is, that there is only one avenue by which it may 

 be left without encountering a steep up-hill road 

 of at least three miles by the shortest way. That 

 avenue is the north branch of White river, run- 

 ning down south through Timbridge, uniting 

 with other branches at Royalton. Heavy teams 

 formerly took this course to avoid the high 

 ridges which must be surmounted through Stiaf- 

 ford and Norwich on the more direct line to 

 Boston. 



The towns of Orange county which wc have 

 seen arc of most excellent soil for dairy and 

 stock farms, as well as for the rearing of sheep. 

 Soon after these towns were opened, the first set- 

 tlers became rich. We had always heard of 

 Randolph, in this county, as one of the most 

 beautiful in New-England. In the cultivation 

 of these mountain towns, inanm-es have not been 

 so indispensable as in the settled region east- 

 ward of Connecticut river valley. We saw, as 

 we were entering the village of Chelsea, n place 

 for making petash backing directly over the 

 brook, the remnant of the sjient ashes of which 

 showing that for years they had been most read- 

 ily got rid of by throwing them where the run- 

 ning water would soonest lake them from harm's 

 way. Invited to a ride about the village, another 

 remnant of these spent ashes, a large pile worth 

 some hundreds of dollars at the price some of 

 the poorest men in Concord would now be will- 

 ing to give for them, met us in a difl'erent part 

 of the town. These spent leached ashos, weaker 

 here because made of poorer wood than in A'^er- 

 niont, three years ago sold in Concord at three 

 cents a bushel : we tried to get them one year 

 at four cents, but this year failed to secure tlicni 

 at the offer as high as five cents the bushel. We 

 first put some of our people into the notion of 

 buying the stable maninesat the " ruinous" price 

 of three dollars the cord : the jjrice, since com- 

 petitors more voracious have taken the best sta- 

 bles from us, has risen to four dollar.s. If leach- 

 ed ashes and refuse salt can be sjiaied to us, 

 witli the aid of our own yard and a peat muck 

 bed, furnishing a more durable anil lasting ma- 

 nure than the best from tho stables, we c;in mann- 

 factnre five hundred large loads of manure in n 

 year : at all events, we can buy Thoinaston lime 

 at double the price for freight that will be 

 charged when the rival railroads can bring it to 

 us freely from Portsmouth or Boston, to make 

 with the free materials laying all about us, the 

 very best manures in ony qinmtity— manures 

 which will give us well filled oats, such as they 

 raise in Vermont, where they have abundance 

 of lime to give strength to the blade which sus- 

 tains the growth of the grain. 



To us it seemed strange that the Vermont 

 farmers did not so well understand the value of 

 spent ashes as to bo induced to use them. Roy. 

 Dr. Channing, in 1610, having a farm upon the 

 island of Rhode-Island which, one hundred years 

 ago, was accounted by way of eminence to be the 

 "garden of America," but much of which in late 

 years had become worn-out, informed us that 

 himself and others were pincha.sing leached or 

 spent ashes brought from the State of Maine, for 

 the renovation of their lands, for which they 

 were paying sixteen cents a bushel ; and that as 

 a matter of gain they were doing the best thing 

 for present crops. 



The Orause county fanners in Vermont are 



