The old gray toll-bridge soon nears to view, with its two long spans and fantastic beams. Farther on, peering from its willows, stands the ruined cider-mill, with its long moss-grown lever jutting through the trees--an old-time haunt, now crumbling in decay. But we only catch a glimpse of it, for in a moment more we are shut in beneath another bower of beeches and white birches, where the road takes a steep ascent, and the rippling river sends up its sunny reflections among the leaves and tree-trunks. When once more upon a level, it is to look ahead through a long avenue of shade--a leafy canopy two miles in length--with only an occasional break to open up some charming bit of landscape across the water. In these two miles of umbrage you may see types of almost every tree that grows within the boundaries of New England. Old veteran beeches are here, their trunks disfigured with scars that once were names cut in the bark. Here are spots that look like half obliterated figures; and here are spreading hieroglyphs that tell, perhaps, of old-time vows plighted at the trysting-tree; and here’s a semblance of a heart, a broken heart indeed, if its present form be taken as a prophetic symbol. [Illustration: ALONG THE HOUSATONIC.] There are magnificent rock-maples too, and silver-maples that shake down their little swarms of winged seeds. Tulip-trees and spotted buttonwoods grow side by side, and quivering aspens and white poplars are seen at every clearing. There are yellow birch-trunks frayed out with the wind, and great snake-like stems of grape-vine, that twist and writhe among the branches of the trees. There are hop hornbeams, and chestnuts, and--But there is no need to enumerate them all. Just think of every New England tree you ever knew, and add a score besides, and you will form a slight idea of the varied verdure that hems in this charming Housatonic drive, with its rocky roadside embroidered in trickling moss and fumitory; and rose-flowered mountain-raspberry growing so close upon the road that your pony takes a wayward nip, and plucks its blossomed tip as he passes. Now comes an open level, with wide, expansive views, where every turn upon the road brings its fresh surprise, as some new combination of hazy mountain landscape towers above the distant river bend; and the flitting cloud shadows lead their capricious, undulating chase across the wooded slopes. The roadsides here are full of everchanging beauties too, with their trimmings of ornamental sunflowers, their picturesque old fences, and their clumps of purple-berried poke-weed, with here and there a yellow patch of toad-flax, and aromatic tufts of tansy hugging close against the fence. Even that clambering screen of clematis that trails over the shrubbery yonder cannot hide the scattered tips of crimson that already have appeared among the sumach leaves.