ld sing.

C. E. T.

WHORTLEBERRYING.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

About the middle of August, the village was honored by repeated visits
from the little ragged population of "Barlow's Settlement," on the
"Barrens," with quantities of whortleberries for sale. "Want any
huckleberries to-day?" was heard all over. You couldn't stir abroad
without some urchin with a smirched face--a tattered coat, whose
skirts swept the dust, showing, evidently, its paternal descent, and
pantaloons patched in the most conspicuous places, more picturesque
than decent--thrusting a basket of the rich fruit into your very face,
with an impudent yell of "huckleberries, sir?" or some little girl,
the edges of whose scanty frock were irregularly scalloped, making a
timid courtesy, saying meekly, "Don't you want some berries to-day,
sir? nice berries, sir, just picked!"

At length Bill Brattle, who is a resident of the settlement, came into
the village, and said in Wilson's bar-room, "that he'd lived on the
Barrens nigh on six years, and he'd _never_ in all that 'ere time seed
sich an allfired grist of huckleberries. Why there was acres on acres
on 'em, and he didn't tell no lie when he said that the airth was
parfectly blue with 'em."

This soon got about, and the consequence was a whortleberry party the
very next day. A number of the young people, of both sexes, started in
several conveyances, and about noon found themselves, after rumbling
through the covered bridge on the Neversink River, climbing slowly up
the steep winding hill that ascends from the east bank of the stream,
and whence was a beautiful view of the valley below.

Now there are many fine views in Sullivan. It is an exceedingly
picturesque county. It has all the charms of precipitous hills,
winding valleys, dark wooded gorges, lovely river-flats, and
meandering streams. It is sufficiently cultivated to have the beauty
of rural landscape softening the forest scenery, without disturbing to
any great degree its wildness and grandeur.

This Neversink valley river, although not among the finest, is
nevertheless a very lovely one--

Beneath--the clear placid stream comes coursing from the north,
through narrow but beautiful flats, in all the pomp of rural wealth,
wrinkled with corn-fields, bearded with rye, and whitened with
buckwheat, imaging old age rejoicing amongst its blessings. Opposite,
rise steep hills in all the s