United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Leslie cried out in joyousness, catching the first, preparatory glimpse of grandeur, when their road, that wound for a time through the low, wet valley-lands, began to ascend a rugged hillside, whence opened vistas that hinted something of the glory that was to come.

He was the product of a freak of heredity. In the fat-soiled valley-lands, some fifteen miles back of Ringwaak Hill, the farmers had a heavy, long-wooled, hornless strain of sheep, mainly of the Leicester breed, which had been crossed, years back, by an imported Scotch ram of one of the horned, courageous, upland, black-faced varieties.

Down the steep mountains, over bridged torrents, past the hill-towns and valley-lands, they came to the City of the Lily, fair Florence of the Arno. "As early as 1829," Cooper thought, "the unification of Italy was irresistible." In Florence a home was soon found in the Palazzo Ricasoli, Via del Cocomero.

The Stetsons had a good strain of Anglo-Saxon blood, and owned valley-lands; the Lewallens kept store and made "moonshine"; so kindred and debtors and kindred and tenants were arrayed with one or the other leader, and gradually the retainers of both settled on one or the other side of the river.

Here one may have struck a river-course, and there one may have looked down into a valley-depth, and all may have brought away their golden grain; but the one has not followed the river to its source, nor the other wandered bewilderingly through the valley-lands, and none have traversed the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

There were many white-painted, green-blinded houses, with neat court-yards, of the kind always to be found in New England villages; but among these appeared, here and there, a quaint, old-fashioned mansion; and the elm-shaded streets gave glimpses of pretty country beyond, woodlands, cultivated valley-lands, and an encircling line of hills with softly rounded outlines.