INTRODUCTION 



r MHE eight essays in this volume all deal with the 

 _l_ home region of their author ; for not only did 

 Mr. Burroughs begin life in the Catskills, and dwell 

 among them until early manhood, but, as he himself 

 declares, he has never taken root anywhere else. 

 Their delectable heights and valleys have engaged 

 his deepest affections as far as locality is concerned, 

 and however widely he journeys and whatever 

 charms he discovers in nature elsewhere, still the 

 loveliness of those pastoral boyhood uplands is un- 

 surpassed. 



The ancestral farm is in Roxbury among the 

 western Catskills, where the mountains are com- 

 paratively gentle in type and always graceful in 

 contour. Cultivated fields and sunny pastures cling 

 to their mighty slopes far up toward the summits, 

 there are patches of woodland including frequent 

 groves of sugar maples, and there are apple orchards 

 and winding roadways, and endless lines of rude 

 stone fences, and scattered dwellings. In every hol- 

 low runs a clear trout brook, with its pools and 

 swift shallows and silvery falls. Birds and other 

 wild creatures abound ; for the stony earth and the 

 ledges that crop out along the hillsides, the thickets 



