The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish | Page 9

a bright unshrouded orb, fell towards the tree-tops which bounded the
western horizon, the old man began to grow weary with his own
well-doing. He therefore finished his discourse with a wholesome
admonition to the youths to complete their tasks before they quitted the
field; and, turning the head of his horse, he rode slowly, and with a
musing air, towards the dwellings. It is probable that for some time the
thoughts of Mark were occupied with the intellectual matter he had just
been handling with so much power; but when his little nag stopped of
itself on a small eminence, which the crooked cow-path he was
following crossed, his mind yielded to the impression of more worldly
and more sensible objects. As the scene, that drew his contemplations
from so many abstract theories to the realities of life, was peculiar to
the country, and is more or less connected with the subject of our tale,
we shall endeavor briefly to describe it.
A small tributary of the Connecticut divided the view into two nearly
equal parts. The fertile flats that extended on each of its banks for more
than a mile, had been early stripped of their burthen of forest, and they
now lay in placid meadows, or in fields from which the grain of the

season had lately disappeared, and over which the plow had already left
the marks of recent tillage. The whole of the plain, which ascended
gently from the rivulet towards the forest, was subdivided in inclosures,
by numberless fences, constructed in the rude but substantial manner of
the country. Rails, in which lightness and economy of wood had been
but little consulted, lying in zigzag lines, like the approaches which the
besieger makes in his cautious advance to the hostile fortress, were
piled on each other, until barriers seven or eight feet in height, were
interposed to the inroads of vicious cattle. In one spot, a large square
vacancy had been cut into the forest, and, though numberless stumps of
trees darkened its surface, as indeed they did many of the fields on the
flats themselves, bright, green grain was sprouting forth, luxuriantly,
from the rich and virgin soil. High against the side of an adjacent hill,
that might aspire to be called a low rocky mountain, a similar invasion
had been made on the dominion of the trees; but caprice or convenience
had induced an abandonment of the clearing, after it had ill requited the
toil of felling the timber by a single crop. In this spot, straggling,
girdled, and consequently dead trees, piles of logs, and black and
charred stubs, were seen deforming the beauty of a field, that would,
otherwise, have been striking from its deep setting in the woods. Much
of the surface of this opening, too, was now concealed by bushes of
what is termed the second growth; though, here and there, places
appeared, in which the luxuriant white clover, natural to the country,
had followed the close grazing of the flocks. The eyes of Mark were
bent, inquiringly, on this clearing, which, by an air line, might have
been half a mile from the place where his horse had stopped, for the
sounds of a dozen differently toned cow-bells were brought, on the still
air of the evening, to his ears; from among its bushes.
The evidences of civilization were the least equivocal, however, on and
around a natural elevation in the land, which arose so suddenly on the
very bank of the stream, as to give to it the appearance of a work of art.
Whether these mounds once existed everywhere on the face of the earth,
and have disappeared before long tillage and labor, we shall not
presume to conjecture; but we have reason to think that they occur
much more frequently in certain parts of our own country, than in any
other familiarly known to ordinary travellers; unless perhaps it may be
in some of the valleys of Switzerland. The practised veteran had chosen

the summit of this flattened cone, for the establishment of that species
of military defence, which the situation of the country, and the
character of the enemy he had to guard against, rendered advisable, as
well as customary.
The dwelling was of wood, and constructed of the ordinary frame-work,
with its thin covering of boards. It was long, low, and irregular; bearing
marks of having been reared at different periods, as the wants of an
increasing family had required additional accommodation. It stood near
the verge of the natural declivity, and on that side of the hill where its
base was washed by the rivulet, a rude piazza stretching along the
whole of its front and overhanging the stream. Several large, irregular,
and clumsy chimneys, rose out of different parts of the roofs,