every side, the eye ranged over successive circles of towns, rising one
above another, like the terraces of a vineyard, till they were lost in
the horizon. Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There
lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like
a map. There was the level horizon, which told of the sea on the east
and south, the well-known hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the
misty summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains, first made visible to
us the evening before, blue and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds
which the morning wind would dissipate, on the northwest and west.
These last distant ranges, on which the eye rests unwearied, commence
with an abrupt boulder in the north, beyond the Connecticut, and travel
southward, with three or four peaks dimly seen. But Monadnock, rearing
its masculine front in the northwest, is the grandest feature. As we
beheld it, we knew that it was the height of land between the two
rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimack, or that of the
Connecticut, fluctuating with their blue seas of air,—these rival
vales, already teeming with Yankee men along their respective streams,
born to what destiny who shall tell? Watatic, and the neighboring hills
in this State and in New Hampshire, are a continuation of the same
elevated range on which we were standing. But that New Hampshire
bluff,—that promontory of a State,—lowering day and night on this our
State of Massachusetts, will longest haunt our dreams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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