



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive









THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

By Arthur Colton

Charles Scribner's Sons

1901



DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

MY SISTER, MABEL COLTON



|So they went up to the Mountains, to behold the Gardens, and Orchards,
the Vineyards, and Fountains of water.... Now there was on the tops of
these Mountains, Shepherds feeding their flocks, and they stood by the
high-way side. The Pilgrims therefore went to them, and leaning upon
their staves, (as is common with weary Pilgrims, when they stand to
talk with any by the way,) they asked, Whose delectable Mountains are
these?... When the Shepherds perceived that they were way-faring men,
they also put questions to them, as, Whence came you? and, How got you
into the way? and, By what means have you so persevered therein?... Then
said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here shew to the Pilgrims the
Gates of the Coelestial City, if they have skill to look through our
Perspective Glass.... Then they essayed to look, but... they could not
look steadily through the Glass; yet they thought they saw something
like the Gate.

_The Pilgrim's Progress_.



CONTENTS:

     1. The Place of Abandoned Gods
     2. The Leather Hermit
     3. Black Pond Clearing
     4. Joppa
     5. The Elders' Seat
     6. The Romance of the Institute
     7. Nausicaa
     8. Sanderson of Back Meadows
     9. Two Roads that meet in Salem
     10. A Visible Judgment
     11. The Emigrant East
     12. Tobin's Monument




THE PLACE OF THE ABANDONED GODS

|The hut was built two sides and the roof of sodded poles; the roof
had new clapboards of birch bark, but the rest had once belonged to a
charcoal burner; the front side was partly poled and partly open, the
back was the under-<DW72> of a rock. For it stood by a cliff, one of the
many that show their lonely faces all over the Cattle Ridge, except that
this was more tumultuous than most, and full of caves made by the clumsy
leaning bowlders; and all about were slim young birch trees in white and
green, like the demoiselles at Camelot. Old pines stood above the cliff,
making a soft, sad noise in the wind. In one of the caves above the
leafage of the birches we kept the idols, especially Baal, whom we
thought the most energetic; and in front of the cave was the altar-stone
that served them all, a great flat rock and thick with moss, where ears
of com were sacrificed, or peas or turnips, the first-fruits of the
field; or of course, if you shot a chipmunk or a rabbit, you could
have a burnt offering of that kind. Also the altar-stone was a council
chamber and an outlook.

It was all a secret place on the north side of the Cattle Ridge, with
cliffs above and cliffs below. Eastward half a mile lay the Cattle Ridge
Road, and beyond that the Ridge ran on indefinitely; southward, three
miles down, the road took you into Hagar; westward the Ridge, after all
its leagues of length and rigor of form, broke down hurriedly to the
Wyantenaug River, at a place called the Haunted Water, where stood
the Leather Hermit's hut and beyond which were Bazilloa Armitage's
bottom-lands and the Preston Plains railroad station. The road from
the station across the bridge came through Sanderson Hollow, where the
fields were all over cattle and lively horses, and met the Cattle Ridge
Road to Hagar. And last, if you looked north from the altar-stone, you
saw a long, downward sweep of woodland, and on and on miles and miles to
the meadows and ploughed lands toward Wimberton, with a glimpse of the
Wyantenaug far away to the left. Such were the surroundings of the place
of abandoned gods. No one but ourselves came there, unless possibly the
Hermit. If any one had come it was thought that Baal would pitch him
over the cliffs in some manner, mystically. We got down on our hands and
knees, and said, “O Baal!” He was painted green, on a shingle; but
his eyes were red. The place was reached from the Cattle Ridge Road by
trail, for the old wood-road below was grown up to blackberry brambles,
which made one scratched and bloody and out of patience, unless it were
blackberry time.

And on the bank, where the trail drops into the climbing highway, there
Aaron and Silvia were sitting in the June afternoon, hand in hand, with
the filtered green light of the woods about them. We came up from Hagar,
the three of us, and found them. They were strangers, so far as we knew.
Strangers or townsmen, we never took the trail with any one in sight;
it was an item in the Vows. But we ranged up before them and stared
candidly. There was nothing against that. Her eyes were nice and blue,
and at the time they contained tears. Her cheeks were dimpled and pink,
her brown dress dusty, and her round straw hat cocked a bit over one
tearful blue eye. He seemed like one who had been growing fast of late.
His arms swung loosely as if fastened to his shoulders with strings. The
hand that held her small hand was too large for its wrist, the wrist too
large for the arm, the arm too long for the shoulder. He had the first
growth of a downy mustache, a feeble chin, a humorous eye, and wore a
broad-brimmed straw hat and a faded black coat, loose and flopping to
his knees. A carpet bag lay at