"Are they not sweet, These chimes that come to us on western air?" Evening Chimes, CROWNINSHIELD.

On the border of the Province of Massachusetts Bay there lies a gentle valley indented by low, wooded mountains, each of a contour strikingly unlike its neighbor. The river of this "Happy Valley" hesitates and lingers on the edge of that luminous, green bowl of forest and meadow, mean- while changes her accustomed dancing, vivacious step, and walks serenely in a curved path west and north across the lovely plain of Stockbridge, tracing a double, willow- fringed ox-bow, on which the birch canoe must travel five times as far as the horseman who rides from bridge to bridge.

This Taconic-Hoosac bowl in which Stockbridge lies was a home of the Mohekanew or Muh-he-ka-nuk, the people of the continually flowing waters, who, in past unknown suns, ranged far northwest. Here 'mid the softer hills of the Green Mountain range the tube told the hours of the day by mountain shadows, the sundial of the savage. Wnau-ti-kook is the first to become wrapped in shade as the sun falls below her summit. Above Rattlesnake or Deowkook- Hill of the Wolves- stands the north star, their compass of the night, whilst Orion served as their clock. Captain Konkapot's name for Rattlesnake Mountain was Mau-ska-fee-haunk when he indicated the north boundary of the tribe's lands of "Housatonack [1] -allias Westonhook" - deeded to the whites " in consideration of Four Hundred and Sixty Pounds, Three barrels of Sider and thirty quarts of Rum. " The north line of Westenhook patent probably ran within half a league of the enchanting wild-wood park on Mr. Daniel French's estate at Glendale.

On the banks of Lake Makheenac or the Great Pond (afterwards the Stockbridge Bowl of Mrs. Sigourney's poem) burned the council fires of the River Indians; here treaties were sealed, but a runner's message without belts of wampum was set aside as "an empty word."

Well-beaten trails crisscrossed Stockbridge like the spokes of a wheel. One twisted westward toward the ancient council fire of the tribe at Eswatak or Schodack (now Castleton, N.Y.) where Henry Hudson once visited the Chief of the Mohicans. Another trail ran to the Sugar Bush at Tyringham, another followed the Housatonic south past the " Great Wigwam" and Weatogue village in Salisbury, Conn., to the meadow of the Schaghticoke Indians in Kent. Judge Church says that the first settlers could accurately trace this Indian path by the apple-trees sprung up on its course from the seeds scattered after their repast on our "national fruit," as Emerson calls the apple. The most intimate trail of the Stockbridge tribe mounts the shoulder of Prospect Hill, crossing the garden of the Dr. Henry M. Field place -with its ever bubbling spring, and runs on past " Windymore " (where the Williams garrison stood) to an Indian village on Rattlesnake.