maturity, exhibited their thick ears and tasselled stalks, bleached by
the frost and sunshine; and, here and there a spot of yellow stubble,
still lingering among the rough incumbrances of the soil, told where a
scanty crop of common English grain had been recently gathered. Traces
of some of the earlier vegetables were perceptible, the melon, the pea,
and the bean. The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny
side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out
its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season. Everything around
realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who:

"Hewed the dark old woods away,
And gave the virgin fields to the day
And the pea and the bean beside the door
Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before;
And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye
Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."

Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose
venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm,
the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy
silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white
adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up
foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn.
The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had
fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. It was like some vivid
picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a
natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors. The oak upon the hillside
stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz-
colored walnut. The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming,
with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple