Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Upon the green village main street is Edwards' little old wooden
house, having three small windows above the ponderous door. It is now
called "Edwards Hall," and a granite obelisk out in front, erected by
his descendants in 1871, preserves the memory of the great divine.
Over opposite is the venerable Sedgwick Mansion, the home of the
famous Sedgwick family. Farther up the street is the Cemetery, where
the most interesting feature is the enclosure set apart for their
tombs, the graves being arranged in circles around the central tomb of
Judge Theodore Sedgwick, the founder. He was a native of Hartford,
born in 1746, migrated to Sheffield in Berkshire, and finally settled
at Stockbridge after the Revolution, becoming one of the leading
statesmen of New England, prominent in the old Federal party, Member
of Congress and Senator from Massachusetts, and Speaker of the House.
He was subsequently made Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court,
dying in office in 1813. His children and descendants surround his
grave, among them his daughter, the distinguished authoress, Catherine
Maria Sedgwick, born at Stockbridge in 1789, who died in 1867.
A few miles to the southeast is Monument Mountain, the Indian
"Fisher's Nest," one of the most curious and attractive of the
Berkshire hills on account of its position and form, although the
summit is not very high, less than thirteen hundred feet. Its rock
formations are fine, being of white quartz, and on the eastern side is
a detached cliff with a huge pinnacle nearly a hundred feet high,
known as the "Pulpit." Hawthorne greatly admired this mountain, at
which he looked from his boudoir window across the lake, and in its
autumn hues he said it appeared like "a headless sphinx wrapped in a
rich Persian shawl," seen across a valley that was "a vast basin
filled with sunshine as with wine." The mountain received its modern
name from a cairn found on the summit, the tradition telling of a
mythical Indian maiden who got crossed in love, and as a consequence
jumped off the topmost cliff, being dashed to pieces. Her tribe, when
they passed that way, each added a stone to the pile, thus building
the cairn. There are many stones thrown all around this peculiarly
rugged mountain, which is piled up with white marble crags in a region
where abrupt peaks are seen almost everywhere. In among these cliffs
is the Ice Glen, a cold and narrow cleft where ice may be found in
midsummer, it is so secluded from sunshine. The appearance of Monument
Mountain made a strong impression on William Cullen Bryant, who thus
described it:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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