A TROUT STREAM

THE BEAVERKILL

SOME PEOPLE OF THE CATSKILLS




INTRODUCTION


The eight essays in this volume all deal with the home region of
their author; for not only did Mr. Burroughs begin life in the
Catskills, and dwell among them until early manhood, but, as he
himself declares, he has never taken root anywhere else. Their
delectable heights and valleys have engaged his deepest affections
as far as locality is concerned, and however widely he journeys and
whatever charms he discovers in nature elsewhere, still the
loveliness of those pastoral boyhood uplands is unsurpassed.

The ancestral farm is in Roxbury among the western Catskills, where
the mountains are comparatively gentle in type and always graceful
in contour. Cultivated fields and sunny pastures cling to their
mighty slopes far up toward the summits, there are patches of
woodland including frequent groves of sugar maples, and there are
apple orchards and winding roadways, and endless lines of rude stone
fences, and scattered dwellings. In every hollow runs a clear trout
brook, with its pools and swift shallows and silvery falls. Birds