180 GREEN TRAILS AND, UPLAND PASTURES 



But to-day Beartown, as a separate community, is a 

 memory. There are but five families left on the entire 

 plateau, and one or two of them live by squatter sov- 

 ereignty. Recently there was an outbreak of small- 

 pox among them which remained unknown to the 

 county health authorities for more than a month. You 

 climb the steep, winding road from South Lee, above the 

 ravine where a trout brook babbles, and you meet no- 

 body. You pass a cabin poorer than that of a Southern 

 mountaineer and come to the fork where of old the road 

 split to reach both sides of the plateau, finding one fork 

 hardly more than a trail through the woods, while the 

 other shows grass between the ruts. Mile after mile you 

 tramp past fields unploughed, uncared for, or actually 

 overrun by the new forest, with here and there the old 

 stone walls cropping out amid the golden-rod and mul- 

 leins and raspberry vines, or striding off through the 

 woods to show where once the open ranges lay. You 

 pass houses sometimes with a shy-faced child at the 

 door, staring as children stare who are unaccustomed to 

 strangers; sometimes with only the blank countenance 

 of dwellings vacant and abandoned. And finally, be- 

 fore the road plunges down the hill again to Monterey, 

 you come upon the ruin of a genuine Colonial dwelling, 

 with fanlight and panelled walls, and all the chaste 

 luxury of our grandfathers' homes, settling slowly into a 

 heap of bricks and rotten lumber. The forest stares 

 hungrily at it from across the narrow road this forest 



