A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES 169 



mountains, one crowding another on the 

 horizon ; some nearer, some farther away, 

 with one lofty and massive peak in the north- 

 east lording' it over the rest. Close at hand 

 in the valley, at my left, lay the city of Pu- 

 laski, with its furnaces, — a mile or two 

 apart, having a stretch of open country be- 

 tween, — its lazy creek, and its multitudi- 

 nous churches. A Pulaskian would find it 

 hard to miss of heaven, it seemed to me. 

 Everywhere else the foreground was a grassy, 

 pastoral country, broken by occasional 

 patches of leafless woods, and showing here 

 and there a solitary house, — a scene widely 

 unlike that from any Massachusetts moun- 

 tain of anything near the same altitude. 

 Hereabout (and one reads the same story in 

 traveling over the State) men do not huddle 

 together in towns, and get their bread by 

 making things in factories, but are still 

 mostly tillers of the soil, planters and gra- 

 ziers, with elbow-room and breathing-space. 

 The more cities and villages, the more woods, 

 — such appears to be the law. In Massa- 

 chusetts there are six or seven times as many 

 inhabitants to the square mile as there are 

 in Virginia ; yet Massachusetts seen from 



