Weekly Caledonian. (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1919-1920, 1919-04-30
| VERMONT BEAUTIFUL
No Place in America Holds Any More
Cham OF Gives More Joy To
Summer Visitors


| fine pen picture Of Vermont scenery
j., reproduced from Windcr'S Travc
Magazine:
Everyone has seen, or at least
heard about the "old m0Ss-tuverco
bucket that hung in the wcll,' an
sure. But how about the "old moss
covered" bridges that span the little
streams of billy Vermont? They are
the quaintest, dearest old things inn
aginable, and are always set in the
most picturesque places.
l can honestly say that no place in
all America holds any more charm,
or gives more joy, or comfort, or
shows and more surprises for the
summer visitor than does Vermont,
which derives its name from the
French for Green Mountains-"Verd
Mont while the English translation
is applied to the hills. A recent COM
pilaton gives the state $50 lakes,
ponds and streams; it is literally a
band of "little rivers" There is no
other region in the United States with
an area of less than 10000 square
miles that contains so many streams
and lakes; these with its mountains
make Vermont land of wonderfully
varied scenery.
The lovely Green Mountains cast
the spell Of their compelling charm,
while the incomparatively attractive
towns and quiet hamlets speak of
"the cool sequestered vale of life"
The mountains are verdure-clad to
their cloudwreathed SUBMITS, which
the valleys spread away in wide
sweeping meadows, threaded by a
silvery brook or a quiet river, and
down the New Hampshire borderline
flows the stately Connecticut, now in
broad and gentle course through
green pastures, now narrowing into
blutf-lined gorgcs where the waters |
tumble down a boulder-lincd bed and |
break into ripping rapids over rocky |
lodges.
1t is told up in that state, with all
due reverence, that when God had
finished making America he gathered
the waste and leftover material and
dumped it all in heap up near the
Canadian line. To prove this The
Vermont people say that it was an
easy matter for the Almighty to
spread out the broad prairies, and to
pile the mountains one on top of an
other; to build a rugged coast line
and to smooth out the sandy beaches,
but that it required Master Hand
to draw from the best of all and so
place and prepare them in
so small a space as they are in Yer
mont.
There are no grand canons, but
there are multitude of miniatures;
there are no boundlcss expansc of
praries, but there are fertile fields
and meadows; there is no mighty Nj
agala but there are many hundreds
of rivals in beauty and genius of crea-
ton, where all around stand noun
tains yelled in mists; there are no sky
piercing, ever snow covered peaks,
but there are myriads of accessible
and ever-verdant mountain tops
very few, if any, reach beyond the
timber line.
The landscape holds the attention
by reason OF its merit as a thing of
because of its magni-
tude or awful grandeur, as do some
of Americas natural wonders.
Everything is so different from
every other place. The quaint old
houses, the queer old wagons, the
funny fences, the greenest grass and
verdure you ever saw, the hills-and
do believe there is not an acre of
actually level ground in the state.
Truly, many of the farms of northern
Vermont are of the upright type;
that is, the hills are so steep that
is done under trying condi-
lions. There is well-authenticated
story Of Vermonter who fell out of i
MS corn field and broke his arm.
In fact, the whole state possesses
natural beauty. There the
skies are swept by cloud effects which
are magnificent, and the blue noun
ain peaks form incompatible dis !
The hillsidcs, strcwn with
ooulders, and notified with granite
edges, interspersed with juniper and s
the pine groves and birch
lnolls, the little spots of fertile clear
ngs and the numerous pretty villag-
IS, more often in strings than other I
wise, with central town and a I
north and south annex, or maybe {
east and west, as for instance, Shell
Ion, Sheldon Station, Sheldon l
Springs, East Sheldon, and North i
Sheldon. The villages are so close !
ogether that it keeps an automobilist i;
,obbing like step-ladder in a whirl- t
Wind to avoid running over some ,
own.
As the mountains are small it is
easier to build the roads j
around instead of over them, and ]
wing to this fact up at the very top !
If the state one has to step over v
INTO Canada to get around a b2by +
Doing this, I one time /
stopped over night at the town of /
Cast Richford, which is built right ,
'ver the international boundary line. {
The postoffice is so feet from the I
.dUa. tho hotel ic hI,ilt EO-50 T ota