The hills send down a buttress to the north; against it the Susquehanna flows swift and straight for a little space, vainly chafing.

Just where the high ridge breaks sharp and steep to the river's edge there is a grassy level, lulled by the sound of pleasant waters; there sleep the dead of Abingdon.
Here is a fair and noble prospect, which in Italy or in California had been world-famed; a beauty generous and gracious--valley, upland and hill and curving river.

The hills are checkered to squares, cleared fields and green-black woods; inevitably the mind goes out to those who wrought here when the forest was unbroken, and so comes back to read on the headstones the names of the quiet dead: Hill, Barton, Clark, Green, Camp, Hunt, Catlin, Giles, Sherwood, Tracy, Jewett, Lane, Gibson, Holmes, Yates, Hopkins, Goodenow, Griswold, Steele.

Something stirs at your hair-roots--these are the names of the English.

A few sturdy Dutch names--Boyce, Steenburg, Van Lear--and a lonely French Mercereau; the rest are unmixed English.
Not unnaturally you look next for an Episcopalian Church, finding none in Abingdon; Abingdon is given over to fiery Dissenters--the Old-World word comes unbidden into your mouth.