270 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



was moved to its present site. Pearson's Inn it had 

 been; but now a new name was desired, as well as a 

 sign to swing from the old buttonwood that still is 

 standing. The writer's grandfather agreed to furnish 

 the sign, but found, when he commenced the task, that 

 he had only a single pot of white paint. He sketched 

 a horse at full gallop, used the paint he had to color it, 

 and so gave the name of "White Horse" to the tavern, 

 wliicli it still retains. 



]^ear this place until July, 18G9, stood the largest 

 white-oak in the county, and probably in the State. It 

 was something to stand under the wide-spreading boughs 

 of a tree that was w^ell grown before Columbus pleaded 

 with Isabella for permission to cross the seas. This oak 

 had droi:)ped its acorns over a sod pressed by no human 

 foot, save that of the Indian, before the continent of 

 America was heard of by our European ancestry ; and as 

 one of the few trees of Indian times that remained to 

 us, it very appropriately contained a flint arrow in its 

 heart, and had buried among its deepest roots a grooved 

 stone axe. 



This mighty oak, w^hich measured twenty-seven feet 

 in circumference three feet from the ground, was so in- 

 jured by a violent gale of wind that its removal became 

 necessary. It stood upon a knoll, and from this the im- 

 mense stump was subsequently removed. The excava- 

 tion was seven feet in depth and nearly twelve in diam- 

 eter. Four feet below the bottom of the pit, or eleven 

 feet from the surface of the ground, I found a very rude 

 stone axe entangled in a mass of fibrous roots. The ap- 

 pearances were all such as to indicate that the axe had 



