CHAPTER X.

THE HOOSAC TUNNEL-DEERFIELD-HOLYOKE.

THE city of Boston, lying upon the eastern edge of the Atlantic slope, is separated from all the States westward of Massachusetts by the successive ridges of the Alleghany chain. This, in colonial days, was a matter of very little consequence, for, at that time, settled America consisted of only a narrow strip of land bordering the Atlantic, but, with the growth of the country and of commerce, Boston found itself placed at increasing disadvantage from its want of east and west communication.

New York, on the other hand, situated upon the Hudson river, enjoys a scarcely interrupted waterway from the ocean to the Canada line, and a not less easy road to the west. The Hudson is a tidal estuary as far as Albany, and the railroads on its banks are level throughout that distance. Westward of Albany, the highest station on the New York Central Railway is not quite nine hundred feet above sea-level, and there are no heavy grades all the way to the great lakes. This results from the fact that, while the trend of the

Alleghanies is north and south, the outcrops of its geological formations in New York State run east and west, and the softer of these, having weathered into low valleys, form easy routes whether for the railway or canal which connects New York with Lake Erie.

About seventy years ago, the Massachusetts people conceived the idea of constructing a canal from the Hudson over the Berkshire Hills to Boston, in the hope of diverting some of the ever-increasing western traffic from New York. This was to carry a waterway over both the important ranges with which we are now familiar, besides climbing many minor hills resting against their flanks. The Taconics, indeed, offered some convenient gaps in their ramparts to the canal-maker, but the Hoosacs reared a barrier two thousand five hundred feet high directly in his path, while nowhere in the Green Mountain range, of which the Hoosacs are but a spur, from the Sound to the Canada line, could he find a pass lower than fifteen hundred feet above tide water.

The Massachusetts men were, however, very keen on their canal, and a State Commission, appointed in 1825, was courageous enough to report, even in those early days, in favour of a scheme which included tunnelling the Hoosac mountain near North Adams, and a grand system of locks having a total rise of more than three thousand feet. Bold as it was, the plan would have been attempted but for the timely introduction of steam as a locomotive agent. This, while it cured Massachu

setts of tunnel fever, set the engineers looking for the easiest grades over the Green Mountain range. In the result, the Boston and Albany Railroad was built, about 1836, and this excellent, if hilly and winding track, served the wants of the commonwealth until 1848, when the desire for an easier east and west route induced a second attack of tunnel fever in Massachusetts. Six years later, the State raised a loan of two million dollars for the prosecution of the work, a sum which was more than doubled before the locomotive first threaded the Green Mountains, in 1875.

A steep grade carried us up from Adams to the ragged, schistose mouth of the tunnel, nine hundred feet above sea-level, and, after fifteen minutes of darkness, our train issued into the valley of the Deerfield at a point whence the bed of this stream offers an easy descent to the Connecticut River. This spot is so obviously the best in the whole range for the tunnel to enter the mountain, that, when the great undertaking was still under debate in the Massachusetts Legislature, General Hoyt, one of the canal commissioners of 1825, won the hearty cheers of the house by declaring that the finger of Providence had itself pointed out exactly where the Hoosac mountain should be pierced. "It would have saved the State considerable money," said a member, continuing the discussion, "if Providence had pushed His finger through."

The Deerfield River occupies one of the most beauti

ful mountain valleys in New England, its bright brown waters leaping rapidly down through the earlier part of their course between steep, rocky walls, which are densely clothed with birch and maple forests. After a few miles, its flanks become less precipitous, but the stream remains swift, while scattered houses and patches of cultivation begin to appear as the valley widens. At Shelburn Falls, the river throws itself headlong over a high limestone ledge, and here, for a time, takes on the peculiar and romantic character which frequently distinguishes the passage of mountain streams through crystalline calcareous rocks. The scenery at this point is extremely beautiful. The clear, rushing water is closely bordered by a dense and varied foliage, just now painted with the tenderest of spring tints. Through occasional gaps in this greenery, the traveller, flying down the steep grades, catches momentary glimpses of the Deerfield, now pouring in gathered volume through narrow channels of limestone, then spreading widely and smilingly over broad, bouldery reaches, bordered by fields and isolated farmhouses. Arrived at the town of Deerfield, the valley opens widely, its now gentle slopes being thickly covered with fertile drift soils, where the plough is busy as we pass. Flatter and more extensive grow the rich river-bottoms, until these merge at length into the vast alluvial plains of the Connecticut River itself.

The position of Deerfield made it, oftener than any

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other New England village, a scene, in colonial times, of those bloody tragedies which characterized the terrible French-Indian wars of the last century. This long series of encounters which, beginning towards the close of the seventeenth century, only ended with the capture of Quebec in 1759, were far worse in their effect upon the colonists than any of the earlier and more desultory struggles, in which they were engaged with the red man. They were in reality fought against the French, who had succeeded in obtaining the help of the native warriors in the contest then in progress between England and France, for supremacy in the New World. No open battles took place during this hundred years' war, the Indians trusting chiefly to surprises and night attacks. A lonely family, or the inhabitants of a remote village were always liable to be awakened from sleep by the war whoop, or, if the redskins attacked by day, they waited until the men were a-field, and then fell upon the defenceless women and children.

It was in the winter of 1704, that a party of three hundred French and Indians, under the command of the infamous De Rouville, marching down from Canada for the purpose, fell upon Deerfield one February morning, a little before daybreak. Colonel Schuyler, of Albany, had warned the people, some months before, that an expedition was being planned against them, and they had accordingly built a barricade around their houses and kept a nightly watch. But, on the morning in question,