OLD BOATS 217 



takes us back to the days when the pioneer's axe rang 

 in this clearing, hewing the timbers for beam and rafter, 

 and the smoke of the first fire went up that ample flue. 

 How many a time have I paused in my tramping to 

 poke around such a ruin, reconstructing the vanished 

 life of a day when the cities had not sucked our hill 

 towns dry and this scrubby wilderness was a productive 

 farm! 



The motor cars go through the Berkshires in steady 

 procession by the valley highways, past great estates 

 betokening our changed civilization. But the back 

 roads of Berkshire are known to few, and you may 

 tramp all the morning over the Beartown Mountain 

 plateau, by a road where the green grass grows between 

 the ruts, without meeting a motor, or, indeed, a vehicle 

 of any sort. A century ago Beartown was a thriving 

 community, producing many thousand dollars' worth of 

 grain, maple sugar, wool, and mutton. To-day there are 

 less than half a dozen families left, and they survive by 

 cutting cord wood from the sheep pastures! We must 

 haul our wool from the Argentine, and our mutton from 

 Montana, while our own land goes back to unproductive 

 wilderness. As the road draws near the long hill down 

 into Monterey, there stands a ruined house beside it, 

 one of linany ruins you will have passed, the plaster 

 in heaps on the floor, the windows gone, the door half 

 fallen from its long, hand-wrought hinges. It is a house 

 built around a huge central chimney, which seems still 



