Some four or five miles from that lovely spot, where the Housatonic and Naugatuc join their waters, stands a large manufacturing village of no inconsiderable importance. Iron foundries, paper-mills, India rubber and silk manufactories cluster around one of the finest waterfalls of New England. That waterfall is picturesque even now, spite of the cottages, boarding houses, hotels, railroad station, and tanneries, that have taken the place of green woods, richly clothed hills, and a valley so fragrant with wild flowers, that it was happiness to breathe its very air.
But it is hardly worth while to describe this town as it is. Every thing, even the name, derived from an old Revolutionary officer, is changed. My object carries me back to a time when it was indeed one of the loveliest spots in the world--a rich, deep valley, with a noble waterfall thundering at its heart. High, curving, and broken banks, almost mountainous in places, looming up or sloping back on either side, and two lovely brooks pouring their bright, fresh waters into the river above the falls.
One came winding around Rock Rimmond, softened and shadowed by its grim heights. The other, pretty, sparkling Bladens Brook, ran laughing and dancing through the Wintergreen woods, on the opposite shore, with a gush of cheerfulness that seemed like sunshine, and leaped into the river just where it began to gather up its waters for a plunge over the great falls, in one broad, rushing cataract of crystal. From the falls downward, the valley was choked up with noble forest trees, through which the river ran slowly and grandly till it swept around the shadowy base of Castle Rock, and disappeared on its way to join the Housatonic. This rock, high, precipitous, and picturesque, terminates all that we have to do with the valley, for its high cliffs cut off the prospect in that direction, and all the level space between it and the falls was one vast grove of white pines, which formed the grandest masses of trees I ever saw in my life.
A few hemlocks, a white poplar or so, with now and then a magnificent oak variegated the woods, but great pines predominated everywhere. The earth was littered with their sharp leaves; the wind sighed among their branches as if it never could win a free passage through their greenness. As for the sunshine, it only reached the forest turf and velvet moss in a golden embroidery--seldom with broad gleams. Never were there such cool, green shadows as hung about those woods. The noises that floated through them were strangely bewildering; there was the roar and dash of the falls--the clatter of machinery--for even in that day one factory, among the first ever established in New England, stood by the falls, and the sound of flying shuttles and the beat of heavy looms, held a cheerful rivalry with the flow of the waters and the rush of the winds. Then came the bird songs, wild, clear, and ringing, lost outside of the woods, but making heavenly music if you but listened under the trees.