one sees them in the open parts of the Berkshire Valley, at Lanesborough,
for instance, or in the many-hued mountain chalice at the bottom of which
the Shaker houses of Lebanon have shaped themselves like a sediment of
cubical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, and the land ploughed for
a new crop. There was Indian corn standing, but I saw no pumpkins
warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many turtles; only
in a single instance did I notice some wretched little miniature
specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of our
cornfields. The rail fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders of
extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied. The
houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the garden
fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely of trim
aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very
generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious
and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar
to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental
President, was frequently met with. The women were still more
distinguishable from our New England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent,
delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin,
dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a land
of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of
muliebrity. I fancied there was something more of the duck and less of
the chicken about them, as compared with the daughters of our leaner
soil; but these are mere impressions caught from stray glances, and if
there is any offence in them, my fair readers may consider them all
retracted.

At intervals, a dead horse lay by the roadside, or in the fields,
unburied, not grateful to gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no
ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place