'The very heart'

“View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow {of the Connecticut River},’’ by Thomas Cole, in 1836

“They came singly and in groups, in small companies and in larger bands; and rapidly homes and farms doted the valley, villages were built, and in an amazingly short time the wilderness had been conquered  and tamed and the Connecticut Valley became the garden spot, the very heart of all New England.’’

— A. Hyatt Verrill (1871-1954) inventor, writer, editor and zoologist, in The Heart of Old New England