MayunsooK Valley 225 



Hudson Brook. I wore hob-nailed boots, and made 

 a long day's excursion. Hawthorne knew and loved 

 this wonderful natural feature of northern Berkshire, 

 and here gathered many fancies, which he has woven 

 into his tales. The chasm of Hudson Brook is de- 

 scribed as the " Cave" in his Notes. His description 

 of the ravine is the finest ever written. 



Hudson Brook, tradition tells us, took its name from 

 the hunter Hudson, who, one twilight, dragging home- 

 ward a deer he had killed, lost it in this chasm. He 

 narrowly escaped following it himself. 



The region is entered either by walking up the bed 

 of the stream itself, or following around the road 

 above Marble Quarry, just east of the chasm. The 

 former is the more direct, but the latter a longer and 

 safer way. In this instance, I followed the travelled 

 highway. I proceeded up the stream where the ero- 

 sions begin, and readily descended the ravine, follow- 

 ing its course downward until I came to a beautiful 

 marble basin or pot-hole formation, which very few 

 see, since it is hidden under the wooden foot-bridge 

 above the natural bridge of rock. Logs and immense 

 rocks barred my way, and I was forced through dark 

 fissures in my ascent to the sunlight. 



The pot-hole was evidently the same pool of which 

 Hawthorne wrote: " As the deepest pool occurs in the 

 most uneven part of the chasm, where the hollows in 

 the sides of the crag are deepest, so that each hollow is 

 almost a cave by itself, I determined to wade through 

 it . . . there was an accumulation of soft stufi" on 



