who was my deputy, was obliged to keep them off by stretching ropes
around me, for they smelt so of garlic, from eating nothing but the
wild onion, that the fumes put me out often in my measurement. You
were a child then, Bess, and knew nothing of the matter, for great
care was observed to keep both you and your mother from suffering.
That year put me back dreadfully, both in the breed of my hogs and of
my turkeys.”

“No, Bess,” cried the Judge, in a more cheerful tone, disregarding the
interruption of his cousin, “he who hears of the settlement of a
country knows but little of the toil and suffering by which it is
accomplished. Unimproved and wild as this district now seems to your
eyes, what was it when I first entered the hills? I left my party, the
morning of my arrival, near the farms of the Cherry Valley, and,
following a deer-path, rode to the summit of the mountain that I have
since called Mount Vision; for the sight that there met my eyes seemed
to me as the deceptions of a dream. The fire had run over the
pinnacle, and in a great measure laid open the view. The leaves were
fallen, and I mounted a tree and sat for an hour looking on the silent
wilderness. Not an opening was to be seen in the boundless forest
except where the lake lay, like a mirror of glass. The water was
covered by myriads of the wild-fowl that migrate with the changes in
the season; and while in my situation on the branch of the beech, I
saw a bear, with her cubs, descend to the shore to drink. I had met
many deer, gliding through the woods, in my journey ; but not the
vestige of a man could I trace during my progress, nor from my
elevated observatory. No clearing, no hut, none of the winding roads
that are now to be seen, were there; nothing but mountains rising
behind mountains ; and the valley, with its surface of branches
enlivened here and there with the faded foliage of some tree that