74 ON THE BIRDS' HIGHWAY 



sheep browsed on the hillside, and a few 

 white-bellied swallows circled over the 

 farm buildings. From here to Mount 

 Hope stretches lot after lot of farming 

 land, dotted here and there with a house 

 or barn. 



In a few acres of bottom land I found a 

 pair of vesper sparrows, and " red-wingers " 

 as the farmers' boys call them, " quonk-a- 

 reed " from every bush-top. Here in 

 September and October fringed gentian is 

 abundant, and in June blue flag and blue- 

 eyed grass grow in profusion. 



The osprey's nest is a decided character- 

 istic of the Mount Hope lands, every 

 farm having a pair of the birds either nest- 

 ing in some decayed tree or on a pole on 

 which the farmer has placed an old cart- 

 wheel for their convenience. The ospreys 

 return year after year in the first week in 

 April and leave for the South when the 

 gulls return. 



It was not until the day after I arrived 

 that I walked to Mount Hope and sought 

 out King Philip's spring. Once having 

 found the spring and seated myself near 

 by, my thoughts pass back two hundred 

 years and every stump becomes an Indian 



