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, 

 which it still retains. 



Near this place until July, 1869, 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 well grown before Columbus pleaded 

 with Isabella for permission to cross the seas. This oak 

 had dropped 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, which 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 



