BELOW THE RIVER BANK 233 



parallel roads down the valley, the West Road and the 

 East Road, studded with small gray farmhouses and 

 large gray barns. From either road you see the 

 meadows, now soft and rippling with oats, now golden 

 brown where the hay has been cut, now green with 

 pastures, or just gone wild and tinted with the white of 

 Queen Anne's lace, the primrose yellow of our Berkshire 

 shrubby cinquefoil (which the farmers here wrongly 

 call hardhack), the pretty pink of Bouncing Bet, and 

 at rare intervals the flame of Devil's paint brush. Al- 

 ways, through the meadows, you are aware of the river, 

 its water seldom seen, but its course clearly marked by 

 the winding procession of stately elms and shimmering 

 willows. Strike off through the meadows now, and 

 presently, as you draw nearer the stream, you see the 

 grayish brown half circle of the exposed bank, where the 

 current has devoured a hundred yards of trees and eaten 

 on into the cultivated fields. Across from this exposed 

 bank is a tongue of beach, almost its exact convex, 

 though a little sharper, and rapidly growing up with 

 verdure. But it is characteristic of our river that al- 

 most all such acute bends are followed by one, two, or 

 three more. The current, thrown sharply off at an 

 angle, eats into the shore at the point to which it is de- 

 flected as well as at the point of deflection, and then 

 repeats the operation till it has sometimes almost 

 doubled on its tracks. From the point where we 

 stand a second exposed bank is visible beyond that 



