western end of the village than at the center. At this point the main
street intersects with the county road, leading north and south, and
with divers other paths and lanes, leading in crooked, rambling lines
to several points of the compass; sometimes ending at a single dwelling,
sometimes at clusters of several buildings. On the hill, to the north,
somewhat separated from the settlement on the plain, are quite a number
of houses, erected there during the recent French and Indian wars, for
the sake of being near the fort, which is now used as a parsonage by
Reverend Stephen West, the young minister. The streets are all very wide
and grassy, wholly without shade trees, and bordered generally by rail
fences or stone walls. The houses, usually separated by wide intervals
of meadow, are rarely over a story and a half in height. When painted,
the color is usually red, brown, or yellow, the effect of which is a
certain picturesqueness wholly outside any design on the part of the
practical minded inhabitants.

Interspersed among the houses, and occurring more thickly in the south
and west parts of the village, are curious huts, as much like wigwams
as houses. These are the dwellings of the Christianized and civilized
Stockbridge Indians, the original possessors of the soil, who live
intermingled with the whites on terms of the most utter comity, fully
sharing the offices of church and town, and fighting the battles of
the Commonwealth side by side with the white militia.

Around the green stand the public buildings of the place. Here is the
tavern, a low two-story building, without porch or piazza, and entered
by a door in the middle of the longest side. Over the door swings a
sign, on which a former likeness of King George has, by a metamorphosis
common at this period, been transformed into a soldier of the revolution,
in Continental uniform of buff and blue. But just at this time its