I/OJr THE SOIL CAME. 



47 



It is Ode's Den, so called because one, Theodore Pritch- 

 ard, about scv^enty years ago, made his abode there under 

 a large fragment of rock.* 



The whole group is over eighty feet across and one hun- 

 dred feet long, stretched towards the south. The glacier 

 tugged long at it, but the blocks could not be far separated. 



A really beautiful poising of a bowlder is to be seen 

 farther on in the woods. It is Burbank Bowlder, two 

 hundred yards from Rattlesnake Den, a quarter mile south- 

 east of the Piggery, and a quarter mile north of Doane 

 Street. It was in the old 

 cart track near this bowlder 

 that Ode's corpse was 

 found. One must feel the 

 delicacy of the bowlder's 

 poise as he looks through 

 to daylight underneath it, 

 and sees the two points 

 upon which its sixty or 

 seventy tons are balanced. 



But the glacier did a 

 much larger business in 

 bowlders than we have 

 room to enumerate, es- 

 pecially in the rocky dis- 

 trict to the west of Lily 

 Pond. As many as twenty- 

 five notable ones have been 

 counted by the writer in that very limited district of the 

 town. Elsewhere many are perched, and many more were 

 deposited where the soil now covers them. 



*" Ode " was discouraged with life. He lostiiis home on Sohier Street near the 

 present railroad crossing, and went to this Den, living upon such things as people 

 gave him. In the latter part of the winter he was missed. One day in the spring 

 when the snow was thawing, Isaiah Litchfield, sledding wood about a half mile 

 south of the Den, suddenly came to a stop. The horse shied and would not go on. 

 There lay the dead body of Ode Pritchard, partly exposed, in the icy ruts. 



Photo, M. H. Reamy. 



Ode's Den. 



Southeast of Howe's Road, near Brass 



Kettle Brook, 



