The Surrounding Country Is Chiefly Fitted For
The Grazing Of Flocks, Whose Fleeces, However, Just At Present, Hardly Pay
For The Shearing.
Letter XVII.
An Excursion to Vermont and New Hampshire.
Keene, New Hampshire, _July_ 13, 1843.
I resume my journey where I stopped short in my last, namely, on reaching
Benson, in Vermont, among the highlands west of Lake Champlain. We went on
through a pastoral country of the freshest verdure, where we saw large
flocks of sheep grazing. From time to time we had glimpses of the summits
of a long blue ridge of mountains to the east of us, and now and then the
more varied and airy peaks of the mountains which lie to the west of the
lake. They told me that of late years this part of the country had
suffered much from the grasshoppers, and that last summer, in particular,
these insects had made their appearance in immense armies, devouring the
plants of the ground and leaving it bare of herbage. "They passed across
the country," said one person to me, "like hail storms, ravaging it in
broad stripes, with intervals between in which they were less numerous."
At present, however, whether it was the long and severe winter which did
not fairly end till the close of April, or whether it was the uncommonly
showery weather of the season hitherto, that destroyed these insects, in
some early stage of their existence, I was told that there is now scarce a
grasshopper in all these meadows and pastures. Everywhere the herbage was
uncommonly luxuriant, and everywhere I saw the turf thickly sprinkled with
the blossoms of the white clover, on the hill, in the valley, among rocks,
by streams, by the road-side, and whenever the thinner shade of the woods
allowed the plants of the field to take root. We might say of the white
clover, with even more truth than Montgomery says of the daisy: -
"But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen,
Plays on the margin of the rill,
Peeps o'er the fox's den."
All with whom I spoke had taken notice of the uncommon abundance of the
white clover this year, and the idea seemed to prevail that it has its
regular periods of appearing and disappearing, - remaining in the fields
until it has taken up its nutriment in the soil, and then giving place to
other plants, until they likewise had exhausted the qualities of the soil
by which they were nourished. However this may be, its appearance this
season in such profusion, throughout every part of the country which I
have seen, is very remarkable. All over the highlands of Vermont and New
Hampshire, in their valleys, in the gorges of their mountains, on the
sandy banks of the Connecticut, the atmosphere for many a league is
perfumed with the odor of its blossoms.
I passed a few days in the valley of one of those streams of northern
Yermont, which find their way into Champlain.
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