EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 219 
The landscape is very agreeably diversified with 
hill and dale, meadow and cliff. As we look 
southwest how attractive the shores of russet 
capes and peninsulas laved by the flood. In¬ 
deed that large tract east of the bridge is now 
an island. How firm that low, undulating, rus¬ 
set-land ! At this season and under these cir¬ 
cumstances the sun just come out and the flood 
high around it, russet, so reflecting the light of 
the sun, appears to me the most agreeable of 
colors, and I begin to dream of a russet fairy 
land and elysium. How dark and terrene must 
be green, but this smooth russet reflects almost 
all the light. That broad and low, but firm, 
island, with but few trees to conceal the con¬ 
tour of the ground and its outline, with its fine 
russet sward, firm and soft as velvet, reflecting 
so much light; all the undulations of the earth, 
its nerves and muscles revealed by the light 
and shade, and the sharper ridgy edge of steep 
banks where the plow has heaped up the earth 
from year to year, this is a sort of fairy land 
and elysium to my eye. The tawmy, couchant 
island! Dry land for the Indian’s wigwam in 
the spring, and still strewn with his arrow- 
points. The sight of such land reminds me 
of the pleasant spring days in which I have 
walked over such tracts looking for these relics. 
How well, too, the smooth, firm, light-reflecting, 
