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with Nature; others again, in groups and villages, with gardens, fruit trees, and patches of maize, among which the great red gourds lie ripening in the sun. At times the hills roll back, giving up margin and meadow to the grazier.
Here you have herds of cattle, there droves of horses, feeding on the hillsides, or sauntering to the stream.
Yet the main charm of this valley is the water-first of the Connecticut River, then of the Passumpsic River; each of these water-courses having the beauty common to flowing rivers and mountain streams.
A pause.
We mount a slope, and we are in the leaf-strewn avenue known as St. Johnsbury; the proper crown and citadel of that river-bed.
A ridge of hills divides Passumspic River from Sleeper's Creek.
Uplands start from the farther bank of these two streams, and shut us in with green and purple heights, on which the sunrise and the sunset play with wondrous harmonies of light and shade.
When George the Third was king, the countries lying about Sleeper's Creek and Passumpsic River, were the unhappy hunting-grounds of Indian braves; unhappy, since they lay between the lodges of two
1875.
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