'The prospect repays the ascent'

"View of the Connecticut River Oxbow from Mount Holyoke summit,'' painted by Thomas Cole in 1836.

"How high the hill might be. I l know not; for, different accounts make it 8, 12 & 16 hundred feet from the {Connecticut} river. The prospect repays the ascent and although the day was hot and hazy so as to preclude a distant prospect, yet all the broad meadows in the immediate vicinity of the mountain through which the Connecticut winds, make a beautiful picture seldom rivaled.''

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson on Mount Holyoke, in western Massachusetts, in 1823. Editor's note: The summit of the hill (or mountain) is 935 feet above sea level.

The current Mount Holyoke Summit House.