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America, Volume 5 (of 6)

by Joel Cook · English · Gutenberg #42842 · 464,906 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: America, Volume 5 (of 6)

Author: Joel Cook


        
Release date: May 29, 2013 [eBook #42842]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICA, VOLUME 5 (OF 6) ***

Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  The Title Page and Table of Contents for this book refer to it as
  Volume V. The half-title, and page and chapter numbering is
  consistent with this being the first half of Volume III.




THE OLD BAY STATE.

VOL. III.




  [Illustration: _The Temperance Outfit_]




     _EDITION ARTISTIQUE_

     The World's Famous
     Places and Peoples

     AMERICA

     BY
     JOEL COOK

     In Six Volumes
     Volume V.

     MERRILL AND BAKER
     New York      London




THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD'S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS
LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS
COPY IS NO. 205

Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1900




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME V


                                                          PAGE

     FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON                                   44

     ALONG THE SHORE AT CAPE ANNE, GLOUCESTER,
     MASS.                                                  86

     STATE CAPITOL, HARTFORD, CONN.                        162

     LOG BRIDGE OVER THE WILD CAT, NEAR
     JACKSON, N. H.                                        212

     HOUSE OF "THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND,"
     CASCO BAY, ME.                                        244

     ALONG THE COAST OF BAR HARBOR, ME.                    270




AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.




XV.

THE OLD BAY STATE.

     Early Explorations -- John Cabot -- Bartholomew Gosnold --
     The Old Colony -- The Mayflower -- Plymouth -- Plymouth
     Rock -- Duxbury --Samoset -- Governor Bradford -- Miles
     Standish -- Cape Cod -- Chatham -- Barnstable -- Truro --
     Highland Light -- Provincetown -- The Puritan Compact --
     Quincy -- Marshfield -- Daniel Webster -- Minot's Ledge --
     Nantasket -- Hingham -- Squantum -- Boston -- Shawmut
     --Boston Harbor and Islands -- Boston Common -- Beacon Hill
     and the State House -- The Codfish -- Boston Attractions --
     Old South Church -- Old State House -- Faneuil Hall -- Old
     Christ Church -- Boston Fire -- Boston Development -- The
     New West End -- Parks and Suburbs --Brook Farm -- Newton --
     Nonatum Hill -- Natick -- Cochituate Lake --Wellesley --
     Sudbury -- The Wayside Inn -- Charlestown -- Old Ironsides
     -- Jackson's Head -- Bunker Hill -- Cambridge -- Harvard
     University -- Henry W. Longfellow -- James Russell Lowell
     -- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Margaret Fuller -- Waltham --
     Lexington -- Concord in Middlesex and its Bridge -- Ralph
     Waldo Emerson -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Henry D. Thoreau --
     The Alcotts -- Massachusetts North Shore -- Lynn -- Nahant
     -- Swampscott -- Marblehead -- Salem and the Witches --
     Beverley -- Wenham Lake -- Ipswich -- Andover -- Merrimack
     River -- Salisbury -- Concord in New Hampshire --
     Manchester -- Nashua -- Lowell -- Lawrence -- Haverhill --
     Newburyport -- Bridal of Pennacook -- Cape Ann --
     Gloucester -- The Fisheries -- Norman's Woe -- Wreck of
     the Hesperus -- Land's End -- Thatcher's Island --Rockport
     -- Lanesville -- Granite -- The Fishermen.


EARLY EXPLORATIONS.

John Cabot was the first explorer of the coasts of New England under
British auspices. After Columbus had discovered America, fabulous
tales were told of its outlying islands. The primitive maps
represented the Atlantic Ocean as full of islands, some being very
large, especially the Island of Brazil, and the fabled Island of the
Seven Cities. The latter was said by sailors to be inhabited by
Christians who years before had fled from seven cities of Asia, under
their seven bishops, taking refuge there. Bristol was then the leading
English seaport, and five years after the discovery by Columbus, John
Cabot started from it on a western voyage of exploration in search of
these famous islands. King Henry VII. encouraged the enterprise, and
in May, 1497, Cabot sailed in the little ship "Matthew," with a crew
of eighteen, and going westward he discovered one of these islands,
which he called the New Found Land. It was Cape Breton Island, but
being apparently unproductive and without inhabitants, although some
signs of people were seen, he soon returned to England. The greatest
excitement followed his arrival home, and the report got abroad that
he had discovered the Island of the Seven Cities and the coast of
Asia. Cabot became all the rage in England, and a writer of that time
records that Englishmen called him "the Great Admiral," followed him
about "like madmen," that he was "dressed in silks," and "treated like
a prince." Cabot, feeling his importance, wanted his friends to share
his good fortune, so he appointed some of them governors, and others
bishops over the new world he had discovered, while King Henry was so
delighted at the success of the voyage that he sent Cabot a letter of
thanks and the munificent present of £10. King Henry VII. was always
regarded as being "a little near."

In 1498, another and larger expedition was fitted out, Cabot planning
to sail westward until he reached the land he had discovered in the
previous year, and then he thought by turning south he would come to
the Island of Cipango (Japan), where he would fill his ships with
spices and jewels, a half-dozen small vessels making up the fleet.
They took a more northerly course than before, got among icebergs, and
where the summer days were so long there was very little night. They
reached Labrador, where the sailors were frightened at the amount of
ice, and turning south, Cabot sailed along the American coast nearly
to Florida, once trying to plant a colony, but being discouraged by
the barren soil, abandoning it. Yet sterile as the land might be, the
waters were filled with fish, so that Cabot called the country the
"Land of the Codfish," there was such an abundance of them. The
explorers recorded that the bears were harmless, they could so easily
get food, describing how they would swim out into the sea and catch
the fish. Then Cabot disappeared from view. Whether he died on the
homeward voyage or after he returned is unknown, as everything about
his subsequent career has faded from history. But his two voyages were
the foundation of the British claim to the Atlantic coast from
Labrador to Florida, and the basis of all the English grants for the
subsequently formed American colonies.

Bartholomew Gosnold planted the first English colony in the Old Bay
State. Upon Friday, May 14, 1602, after elaborate preparations, he
sailed from Falmouth, England, in the ship "Concord," his party
numbering thirty-two, of whom about a dozen expected to remain in the
new country as settlers. Crossing the ocean and coming into view of
the American coast, he steered south, soon finding his progress barred
by a bold headland, which encircled him about. He had got into the
bight of Cape Cod Bay, and thus discovered that great bended, sandy
peninsula, to which he gave the name from the abundance of codfish he
found disporting in the waters. Many whales were also seen, and vast
numbers of fish of all kinds. He tried to get out of the bay, and
coasting around the long and curiously hooked cape, emerged into the
Atlantic, and then coming down the outer side got into Vineyard Sound,
where he planted his colony on Cuttyhunk Island, but soon abandoned
it. Gosnold returned to England, and in 1607 sailed with Newport's
expedition, carrying Captain John Smith to Virginia.


THE OLD COLONY.

The first English settlement permanently planted in New England was
the famous "Old Colony" at Plymouth. The Puritan Separatists, from the
Church of England, sought refuge from English persecution in Holland,
living in Leyden under their pastor, John Robinson, for eleven years,
when they decided to migrate to America. They arranged with the
Virginia Company to send them across the ocean, and about the middle
of the summer of 1620 the little band of Pilgrims sailed from
Delft-haven, the port of Leyden, on the "Speedwell," in charge of
Elder Brewster. The "Mayflower" joined at Southampton with other
Puritans from England, but the "Speedwell" sprung a leak and they put
into Plymouth roads. Then they decided to go on in the "Mayflower"
alone, and the party left Plymouth early in September. They were
seeking Virginia, but found the land, after a voyage of over two
months, at Cape Cod, anchoring inside the Cape. Then they thanked God,
"who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered
them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet
on the firm and stable earth." While the ship lay there, the famous
"Mayflower Compact" was drawn up, pledging the signers to obey the
government that it established, and John Carver was chosen the first
Governor, forty-one men signing the compact. After nearly a month
spent in exploration, their shallop going all about the coasts,
Plymouth was selected, and the pioneers landed December 21, 1620, the
day being now annually celebrated as "Forefathers' Day."

Plymouth has a little land-locked harbor behind a long and narrow sand
beach, projected northward from the ridge of Manomet below, this beach
acting as a protective breakwater to the wharves. The harbor is so
shallow, however, that there is little trade by sea. The town spreads
upon the bluff shores, and on a plateau to the hills in the rear.
There is now a population of about nine thousand, engaged mainly in
manufacturing cordage and textiles, and having a considerable fishery
fleet. While the town is of modern build, yet it is devoted to the
memory which gives it deathless fame, every relic of the Pilgrims
being restored and perpetuated. There is little to be seen that comes
from the olden time, however, outside of the hills and harbor and
original streets, excepting the carefully cherished relics of the
"Mayflower's" passengers, that have been gathered together. The choice
of Plymouth as the landing-place seems to have been mainly from
necessity, when protracted explorations failed to find a better place,
and the coming of winter compelled a landing somewhere. The actual
location was hardly well considered, the Pilgrims themselves being
far from satisfied. After the "Mayflower" anchored inside of Cape Cod,
several weeks were passed in explorations, and finally, upon a Sunday
in December, 1620, a landing was made upon Clark's Island, where
religious services were held, the first in New England. Upon the most
elevated part of this island stands a huge boulder, about twelve feet
high, called from some local circumstance the "Election Rock." Its
face bears the words taken from _Mourt's Relation_, which chronicled
the voyage of the "Mayflower":

     "Upon the Sabbath-Day wee rested, 20 December, 1620."

Eighteen of the Pilgrims thus "rested," after their shallop, in making
the shore, had been almost shipwrecked. The next day they sailed
across the bay to the mainland, their first landing being then made at
Plymouth, and upon the second day, December 22d, the entire company
came ashore and the settlement began.

Within the Pilgrim Hall, a fireproof building upon the chief street,
are kept the precious relics of the "Mayflower" and the Pilgrims, with
paintings of the embarkation from Delft-haven and landing at Plymouth,
and old portraits of the leaders of the colony. Among the interesting
documents are autograph writings, establishing a chain of
acquaintanceship connecting the original Pilgrims with the present
time. Peregrine White was the first child of the new colony, the
infant being born on the "Mayflower" after she came into Cape Cod Bay,
in November, 1620, and he was only a month old when they landed. The
baby, surviving all their hardships, lived to a ripe old age, and
"Grandfather Cobb," born in 1694, knew him well. Cobb, in his day,
lived to be the oldest man in New England, his life covering space in
three centuries, for he exceeded one hundred and seven years, dying in
1801. William R. Sever, born in 1790, knew Cobb and recollected him
well, and living until he was ninety-seven years old, died in 1887.
These three lives connected the Pilgrim landing almost with the
present day. The old cradle that rocked Peregrine White on the
"Mayflower," and after they landed, is preserved--an upright,
stiff-backed, wicker-work basket, upon rude wooden rockers. One of the
chief paintings represents the signing of the memorable "Mayflower
Compact." There are also in the hall some of the old straight-backed
chairs of the Pilgrims, with their pots and platters, and among other
relics Miles Standish's sword. In the court-house are the original
records of the colony, the first allotment of lands among the
settlers, their deeds, agreements and wills, and the patent given the
colony by Earl Warwick in 1629. There are also shown in quaint
handwriting, with the ink partly faded out, records of how they
divided their cattle, when it was decided to change from the original
plan of holding them in common. Signatures of the Pilgrims are
attached to many of these documents. Governor Carver died the first
year, William Bradford succeeding, and there is preserved in Governor
Bradford's writing the famous order establishing trial by jury in the
colony.


THE PLYMOUTH ROCK.

     "The breaking waves dashed high
     On a stern and rock-bound coast."

Thus begins Mrs. Hemans' beautiful hymn on the landing of the
Pilgrims. Unfortunately for the poetry, however, sand is everywhere
about, and scarcely a rock or boulder can be seen for miles, excepting
the very little one on which they landed. Down near the water-side is
this sacred stone, worshipped by all the Pilgrim descendants, the
retrocession of the sea having left it some distance back. It is a
gray syenite boulder, oval-shaped, and about six feet long. It was
some time ago unfortunately split, and the parts have been cemented
together. At the time of the landing this boulder lay on the sandy
beach, partly embedded, being almost solitary on these sands, for
unlike the verge of Manomet to the southward, and the coast north of
Boston, this sandy shore is almost without rocks of any kind. Dropped
here in the glacial period, and lying partly in the water, the rock
made a boat-landing naturally attractive to the water-weary Pilgrims
when they coasted along in their shallop from Clark's Island, so they
stepped out upon it to get ashore dry-shod. The rock is in its
original location, but has been elevated several feet to a higher
level, is surmounted by an imposing granite canopy, and is railed in
for protection from the relic-hunter. The numerals "1620" are rudely
carved upon its side, and a sort of fissure in its face seems like the
impress of a foot. Surmounting the canopy is a scallop shell, the
distinctive emblem of the pilgrim. The scallop has been called the
"Butterfly of the Sea," and in the time of the Crusades, a scallop
shell fastened in the cap denoted that the wearer had made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Thus it is said in the _Hermit_:

     "He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
     And fixed his scallop in his hat before."

Behind the Plymouth Rock rises the bluff shore into Cole's Hill,
having its steep slopes sodded, this having been the place up which
the Pilgrims climbed after the landing. A view to the front shows the
wharves, and across the bay the narrow sandspit protecting the harbor,
while on the right hand is the long ridge of Manomet, and over the
water to the left appear distant sand-dunes along Duxbury Beach. Off
to the northward rises the "Captain's Hill" of Duxbury, surmounted
with the monument to Captain Miles Standish, erected in 1889, rising
one hundred and ten feet. Upon Cole's Hill was the first burial-place
of the Pilgrims, and here were interred about half the intrepid band,
who died from the privations of the first winter. Their bones were
occasionally washed out by heavy rains, or found in digging for the
foundations of buildings, but all have been carefully collected, and,
with several of the dead thus exposed, were again entombed in the
canopy over Plymouth Rock. A little way to the southward is Leyden
Street, running from the water's edge for some distance back up the
slope to the side of the "Burial Hill," the first cemetery. This was
the earliest highway laid out in New England, although it did not
receive its present name until long afterwards. Upon this street the
Pilgrims built their first rude houses, the lots extending southward
from it to the "Town Brook," a short distance beyond, which supplied
them with good water, and was the chief feature inducing them to
select this place for settlement.

The story of their landing is told in _Mourt's Relation_, written by
one of the actors in this great historical drama. After describing
their explorations and hasty selection of the place, he continues:
"So, in the morning, after we had called on God for direction, we came
to this resolution, to go presently ashore again, and to take a better
view of two places which we thought most fitting for us; for we could
not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals
being much spent, especially our beer, and it being now the 19th of
December. After our landing and viewing the places so well as we
could, we came to a conclusion, by most voices, to set on a high
ground, where there is a great deal of land cleared, and hath been
planted with corn three or four years ago; and there is a very sweet
brook runs under the hillside, and many delicate springs of as good
water as can be drunk, and where we may harbor our shallops and boats
exceeding well; and in this brook fish in their season; on the further
side of the river also much corn-ground cleared. In one field is a
great hill on which we point to make a platform and plant our
ordnance, which will command all around about. From thence we may see
into the bay and far into the sea, and we may see thence Cape Cod. Our
greatest labor will be the fetching of our wood, which is half a
quarter of an English mile; but there is enough so far off. What
people inhabit here we know not, for as yet we have seen none. So
there we made our rendezvous, and a place for some of our people,
about twenty, resolving in the morning to come all ashore and to build
houses." About a week after landing they began constructing their
first fort on the hill, and allotted the plots of land on their
street, subsequently named Leyden. Thus the town was begun, and behind
it rose two hills, the one now known as the Burial Hill being at the
head of this street, and elevated about one hundred and fifty feet
above the sea. Miles Standish, with his military eye, for he had seen
veteran service in Flanders, selected this hill for the fort, and
here in 1622 was built the square timber block-house that made them
both a fort and a church, the entire settlement as it then existed
being enclosed with a stockade for further protection. This caused the
hill to be named Fort Hill, and it was not until long afterward that
it was used as a cemetery and called Burial Hill, the first interred
being some of the original Pilgrims after the graveyard on Cole's
Hill, down by the waterside, had been abandoned.

Upon Fort Hill was built the "Watch House," where an outlook was kept
for the Indians. Stones now mark the locations both of the fort and
the watchhouse, and surrounding them are the graves of several of the
"Mayflower" Pilgrims, with many of their descendants, the dark slate
gravestones having been brought out from England. There is a fine
outlook from Burial Hill, far over the sea to the distant yellow
sand-streak of Cape Cod. About a half-mile northward is the other
hill, rising somewhat higher, and upon it is the National Monument to
the Pilgrims, dedicated in 1889. This is a massive granite pedestal
forty-five feet high, surmounted by the largest stone statue in
existence, a colossal figure of Faith, thirty-six feet high, and
adorned by large seated statues emblematic of the principles upon
which the settlement was founded, representing Law, Morality, Freedom
and Education. Upon this great monument are also representations of
the landing of the Pilgrims, their names, and the "Mayflower
Compact." It was into this infant colony of Plymouth, after some weeks
of careful parley and investigation, there strode the stalwart Indian
Samoset, making their acquaintance and paving the way for the
subsequent treaty and alliance with Massasoit, which for many years
was scrupulously observed by both parties, and not broken until after
he died. Canonicus, of the Narragansetts, to the southward, sent to
the colony after Massasoit's death a sheaf of arrows bound with a
rattlesnake's skin as a token of hostility. Governor Bradford did not
want war, but he knew they must maintain a brave outlook, so he
promptly filled the skin with powder and shot and sent it back to
Canonicus, who understood the grim challenge, and fearing the deadly
musketry, prudently restrained the hostile instincts of his tribe. The
privations of the first year, which killed half the settlers, and were
only relieved by succor from England, are said to have originated the
New England Thanksgiving Festival Day, which has since spread over the
whole country. In December, 1621, they had their first Thanksgiving,
upon the arrival of a relief ship from abroad. Such was the dawning of
the ruling race of the American nation.


DUXBURY AND MILES STANDISH.

Upon the upper side of Plymouth Bay, enclosing its northern portion,
is one of those long peninsulas of sand and rocks, abounding upon the
Massachusetts coasts, which projects about six miles southeastward
into the sea and terminates in a high knob, called the Gurnet, with a
hook turned inward. This elongated sand-strip is Duxbury Beach, the
town of Duxbury being upon the mainland inside, a fishing village
probably best known as the terminus of the French Atlantic Cable. It
was at Duxbury that the first regular pastor was Ralph Partridge, whom
Cotton Mather described as having "the innocence of a dove and the
loftiness of an eagle." The Pilgrims allotted this district to Miles
Standish and to their youngest member, John Alden. Standish named it
from Duxbury Hall, in Lancashire, the seat of his English ancestors.
The brave Miles was not a Puritan and did not belong to their church,
but as he was an experienced warrior, they made him the commander of
their standing army of twelve men. Is is said that there have been
only two renowned military chieftains in history who were personally
acquainted with all their soldiers--Julius Cæsar and Miles Standish.
The redoubtable old captain lost his wife Rose soon after the landing,
and he then engaged the fascinating and youthful Alden to do his
courtship for him and woo the gentle Priscilla Mullins, with the usual
result that the maiden preferred the more attractive Alden to the grim
old soldier. Standish has been described as "a short man, very brave,
but impetuous and choleric, and his name soon became a terror to all
hostile Indians." His is the romance of early Plymouth, for he has
been made the hero of Longfellow's poem, and of renowned operas and
many New England tales, while the fair Priscilla gave her name to the
great Long Island Sound steamer. Standish lived upon the "Captain's
Hill," out on the Duxbury peninsula, the highest land thereabout,
rising one hundred and eighty feet, upon a broad point projecting into
Plymouth Bay. His monument is near the site of his house upon the
bare-topped, oval-shaped hill, a rather bleak place, however, to have
selected for a home. Beyond it the projecting Duxbury Beach ends in
the high Gurnet, with twin lighthouses, and then hooks inward to
another bold terminating bulb, the headland of Saquish. To the
northward is Clark's Island, where the Pilgrims first landed, a
similarly round-topped mass rising from the water. Thus is Plymouth
Bay environed, for to the southward its long guarding ridge on that
side, Manomet, projects far into the sea.


CAPE COD.

The Old Bay State presents a front to the rough Atlantic like a
gladiator at bay. She has in Cape Cod one defensive forearm boldly
extended, and she likewise is prepared, if necessary, to thrust out
the other, which keeps close guard upon her rugged granite breast in
Cape Ann. These capes are the portals of Massachusetts Bay, and of the
ocean entrance to Boston. Everyone, in viewing the map, marvels at the
extraordinary formation of Cape Cod. Thoreau, who in days gone by
tramped all over the Cape, says, "A man may stand there and put all
America behind him." This great sandy headland stretches eastward from
the mainland at Sandwich about thirty miles, then turns north and
northwest thirty miles more, finally terminating in a huge hook, bent
around to the south and east again, and forming the spacious
landlocked harbor of Provincetown. At Harwich and Chatham the elbow
sharply bends, the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay, the wrist at Truro,
and the closing fingers make Provincetown's haven. The Cape is nearly
all white sand, with boulders occasionally appearing, particularly
near the extremity. Thin layers of soil extend as far as Truro, but
the sand is seen through many rents, and the extremity is completely
bare, being a wilderness of sand, kept in partial motion by the winds,
and making constantly shifting dunes. The prevalent northeast winds
and surf are regarded as having made the hooked end of the Cape by
gradually moving the sands upon the shore around to the west and
south. This hooked end impressed the Colonial navigators, and the
ancient Dutch maps call it Staaten Hoeck, and the enclosed waters
Staaten Bay. The extremely white sand, in contrast with the darker
rocks of more northern shores, led Champlain to name it Cape Blanc.
Gosnold, as already announced, from the abundance of codfish named it
Cape Cod, whereof the faithful historian, Cotton Mather, who records
the fact, writes naïvely that he supposes it will never lose its name
"till swarms of codfish be seen swimming on the highest hills."

This remarkable cape came near being an island, Buzzard's Bay on the
south and Cape Cod bay on the north being so deeply indented that
their waters approach within about seven miles. The isthmus is a low,
broad alluvial valley stretching between, having Monumet River flowing
from Herring Pond south into Buzzard's Bay, and the Scusset River
north from the divide, their headwaters only a thousand yards apart,
so that this narrow neck of land, nowhere elevated more than
twenty-five feet, is all that saves the famous Cape from being an
island. A canal was projected there as early as 1676, and the proposed
"Cape Cod Ship Canal" has been regularly agitated ever since, and may
at some time be constructed, saving the shipping from the long detour
around the Cape. This neck has been called "the collar of the Cape,"
and beyond was the Indian domain of Monomoy. Chatham then was Nauset,
and Barnstable was Cummaquid, these, as indeed every village on the
Cape, being famous nurseries of sailors and fishermen. Here is some
agriculture, the farms and towns having roomy old houses, and the
extensive cranberry bogs showing one of the chief industries of the
people. Along the southern shore are Marshpee, Cotuit, and Hyannis,
all changing from fishing-ports to modern fashionable watering-places.
The surface is composed of sharply defined hills of white sand,
having broad sandy levels between that are almost desert plains. There
are some trees, but the growth becomes gradually stunted, as the
journey is made out upon the Cape, and villages are less frequent and
population sparser. Modern cottages crown the hilltops, and the
frequent cranberry bogs are as level as a floor, being thickly grown
with the myriad runners and sombre foliage of the prolific plant.

Passing Yarmouth and Harwich, the railway turns northward at the elbow
of the cape, where Chatham is on the ocean shore. Brewster is
northward, and Eastham, noted for its fortified church, whose colonial
pastor received by law, for his salary, part of every stranded whale
coming upon the shore. To the left is Welfleet, on the bay shore, and
to the right the triple lighthouses of Nauset Beach, in front of which
the ocean tides divide, moving in opposite directions, one current
south to Nantucket Sound, and the other north, to go around the Cape
into Massachusetts Bay. Northward is the sandy desert of Truro, the
"Dangerfield" of early days, regarded as the most fatal coast in New
England. This town of Truro has been described as "a village where its
able-bodied men are all ploughing the ocean together as a common
field," while in North Truro "the women and girls may sit at their
doors and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their
mackerel fifteen to twenty miles off on the sea, with hundreds of
white harvest-wagons." Here, upon the high hill making the ocean
shore, where the headland curves from north around to the west, is the
guardian beacon of Cape Cod, the lofty Highland Light, forty-one miles
southeast of Boston Light, and whose powerful white rays shine for
twenty miles over the ocean without, and the bay within. The tower
stands on a hill one hundred and forty-two feet high, and the light is
elevated nearly two hundred feet. Along here Thoreau walked on the
"sand-bar in the midst of the sea," and as he gazed far over the
ocean, thus reflected: "The nearest beach to us on the east was on the
coast of Galicia in Spain, whose capital is Santiago, though by old
poets' reckoning it should have been Atlantis, or the Hesperides; but
Heaven is found to be farther west now. At first we were abreast of
that part of Portugal _entre Douro e Mino_, and then Galicia and the
port of Pontevedro opened to us as we walked along, but we did not
enter, the breakers ran so high. The bold headland of Cape Finisterre,
a little north of east, jutted toward us next with its vain brag; for
we flung back 'Here is Cape Cod, Cape Land's Beginning.' A little
indentation toward the north--for the land loomed to our imaginations
like a common mirage--we knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we sang,
'There we lay, till next day, in the Bay of Biscay, O!' A little south
of east was Palos, where Columbus weighed anchor, and further yet the
pillars which Hercules set up."


THE PURITAN COMPACT.

At the extremity of Cape Cod is Provincetown, among the sand dunes, a
town with about forty-five hundred inhabitants, encircling the harbor
on its western verge, a long, narrow settlement between the high white
sand-hills and the beach. There are two main streets, one along the
beach and the other parallel to it back among the hills. Upon the
highest hill is the Town Hall, the mariner's landmark entering the
harbor, and from it are good views over ocean and bay, displaying the
curious end of the Cape sweeping grandly around and enclosing the
spacious harbor with room enough for anchoring an enormous fleet. To
the west and south is the great bended hook having Race Point on its
northwesterly verge and a lighthouse on the southern termination,
whence a tongue of beach juts over towards Truro. This is a haven for
many fishermen, and the people, who are among the purest descendants
of the original Puritans, devote their energies largely to catching
mackerel and cod, curing and stacking the fish all around the bay. The
first appearance of Provincetown in history was when the "Mayflower"
entered the harbor with the Pilgrims in November, 1620. Cape Cod was
the first land they saw after leaving the English Channel, then not
bare as now, but wooded down to the shore. They anchored in the bay,
and the men were forced to wade "a bow-shoot" to the shore to make a
landing, and it was this wading and subsequent exposure which gave
them the colds and sickness resulting in the deaths of so many during
the subsequent winter. It is recorded that upon Monday, November 23,
1620, the women went ashore to wash, and thus they inaugurated that
universal institution which has extended all over the country, the
great American Monday washing-day. It was while anchored in
Provincetown harbor the Pilgrims framed and signed the celebrated
Puritan Compact, so long ruling Plymouth, which is regarded as the
foundation of constitutional government. John Quincy Adams said of it:
"This is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive
original social compact which speculative philosophers imagined as the
only legitimate source of government." It was signed by forty-one
Pilgrims, of whom twenty-one died during the ensuing four months. It
reads:

"In the name of God, amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal
subjects of our direct sovereign lord King James, by the grace of God,
of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith,
etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the
Christian faith and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant
the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these
presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one
another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body
politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of
the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and
offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
expedient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise
all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof, we have
hereunder inscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th day of November
(old style), in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord King
James, of England, France and Ireland, the 18th, and of Scotland, the
54th, Anno Domini, 1620."

Provincetown was a long time afterwards started, and began with a few
fishermen's huts, which grew in the eighteenth century to a small
village with extensive fish-drying flakes. The people top-dressed the
soft sands with clay, shells and pebble, thus making the streets.
There are relics of wrecks all about the extremity of the Cape, and it
has had a sad history, though now, being better lighted and having
life-saving stations, these terrible disasters are rare. The town has
become an attractive summer resort, and has quite a development of
pleasant homes. The visitor mounts High Pole Hill to get the view, and
all around it is over the sea, for, gaze whither one may as the winds
blow freshly across the Cape, the scene is of dazzling white sand or
deeply blue water.


APPROACHING MASSACHUSETTS BAY.

From Plymouth Harbor northward to Massachusetts Bay is but a short
distance. Inland from the coast-line the land rises into the noted
"Blue Hills of Milton," their highest dome-like summit elevated six
hundred and fifty feet and surmounted by an Observatory. These are
granite hills, having the picturesque town of Quincy stretching down
to the sea, with a broad fringe of salt marshes in front. Thus are
named the "Quincy granites," famous for building, and it was to get
these huge stones out that the earliest rude railway in New England
was constructed in 1826, a line three miles long to Neponset River,
the cars being drawn by horses. It is said by the geologists that
these hills of Milton are an older formation than the Alps, and their
earliest English name, designated by King Charles I., was the Cheviot
Hills. Among the salt marshes just north of Duxbury is Marshfield, the
home of Daniel Webster, whose remains lie in an ancient graveyard on
an ocean-viewing hill not far away. Beside him are the graves of his
sons--Edward, killed in the Mexican War, and Fletcher, killed at Bull
Run in the Civil War. An ornamental villa has replaced his old house,
which was burnt, and the homestead has gone to strangers. Close by
Webster's is the grave of the early Pilgrim Governor Winslow, whose
quaint old dwelling is near. Quincy is famous as the home of the
greatest families of the original colony of Massachusetts Bay--Quincy
and Adams. The antique church of Quincy, known as the Adams Temple,
has in the yard the graves of the two Presidents Adams, father and
son. John Hancock, whose bold signature leads the Congress in the
Declaration of Independence, was a native of Quincy. It was among the
earliest Massachusetts settlements, having been colonized by a number
of Episcopalians at Merry Mount, who were such jovial people that the
strict Puritans of Plymouth were aghast at their goings on, and sent
Miles Standish with the whole army against them, and capturing the
leaders shipped them prisoners back to England. This severe treatment
was administered a second time before they were subdued. Thomas
Morton, who was among those twice banished, wrote the _New England
Canaan_, giving this curious account of the aborigines: "The Indians
may be rather accompted as living richly, wanting nothing that is
needful, and to be commended for leading a contented life, the younger
being ruled by the elder and the elder ruled by the Powahs, and the
Powahs are ruled by the Devill; and then you may imagine what good
rule is like to be amongst them." This theory was generally prevalent
among the early colonists, for Cotton Mather was convinced that "the
Indians are under the special protection of the Devill."

The coast, as Massachusetts Bay is approached, rises into the rocky
shores of Scituate and Cohasset. Here is the dangerous reef of Minot's
Ledge in the offing, guarded by the leading beacon of the New England
waters, about four miles from the shore. The original lighthouse was
washed away in a terrific storm in April, 1851. The catastrophe
occurred in the night, when those on shore heard a violent tolling of
the lighthouse bell, and in the morning the tower was gone, with all
the light keepers, the only relic being a chair washed ashore, which
was recognized as one that had been in the watch-room of the tower.
Scituate was the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, author of the _Old
Oaken Bucket_. These shores are all lined with villas and attractive
coast resorts, and the noted Jerusalem Road is the chief highway of
Cohasset, following the coast-line around to the westward. Here
projects the narrow and strange peninsula of Nantasket Beach, five
miles out into the sea to Point Allerton, then hooking around and
terminating in the town of Hull, and making one of the most popular
seaside resorts of Bostonians. Farther to the westward, behind it, is
Hingham Harbor, the quaint old village of Hingham on its shores,
settled in 1635, having the oldest occupied church in New England,
dating from 1681. This most ancient church of Yankeedom is a square
building of the colonial style, its steep roof sloping up on all four
sides to a platform at the top surrounded by a balustrade and
surmounted by a little pointed belfry. Still farther westward, and
within the entrance to Boston Harbor, projects the bold bluff of
Squantum, thrust out into the bay, it having been named in memory of
the old sachem who ruled all the country round about when Boston was
first colonized, his home being on an adjacent hill. Sturdy old
Squantum was a firm friend of the colonists, and when he was dying he
besought Governor Bradford to pray for him, "that he might go to the
Englishman's God in Heaven."


THE CITY OF BOSTON.

The approach to the New England metropolis, especially by way of the
harbor, is fine. The city rises gradually ridge above ridge, until the
centre culminates in Beacon Hill, surmounted by the bright gilded dome
and lantern-top of the Massachusetts State House. From all sides the
land, with its varied surfaces of hill and vale, slopes down towards
the water courses, leading into the deep indentation of Boston Harbor.
The pear-shaped peninsula, forming the original town, was the Indian
Shawmut, or the "sweet waters," a name reproduced in many ways in the
modern city. William Blackstone, the recluse Anglican clergyman of
London who could not get on there with the "Lords Bishops" and
emigrated, was the first white inhabitant of Shawmut, coming in 1623.
Governor John Winthrop, of the Massachusetts colony, who came out in
1630 to Salem, removed to Shawmut the same year with Thomas Dudley
and a number of Puritans, crossing over from Charlestown in a search
for good water, which led them to select this place, which, from its
three hills, they called the Tri-mountain, since shortened into
Tremont. Blackstone, having lived there in solitude for several years,
soon tired of having such near neighbors, and in 1634 he sold out the
whole town site to them for about $150, and being disgusted with these
"Lords Brethren," as he had previously been with the "Lords Bishops,"
avoided controversy by going farther into the wilderness. Winthrop and
Dudley had come originally from Boston in England, and making this the
capital of the Massachusetts colony, they gave it that name. The
English Boston in Lincolnshire grew around the monastery of the Saxon
St. Botolph, established in the seventh century, and hence its name of
Botolph's Town, which has been condensed into Boston. Some years ago
the English Bostonians presented a Gothic window from the ruins of old
St. Botolph's to Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. When this
Massachusetts colony was originally established, one of Winthrop's
depressed companions, writing home, described Shawmut as "a hideous
wilderness possessed by barbarous Indians, very cold, sickly, rocky,
barren, unfit for culture, and like to keep the people miserable." Yet
the settlement grew, and, as an early historian says, "Philadelphia
was a forest and New York was an insignificant village long after its
rival, Boston, had become a great commercial town." In 1663 an
English visitor, describing the place, wrote that "the buildings are
handsome, joining one to the other, as in London, with many large
streets, most of them paved with pebble-stones. In the high street
toward the Common there are faire houses, some of stone." The young
colony encouraged commerce and became possessed of many ships, the
earliest built at Boston being the bark "Blessing of the Bay" of
thirty tons, a noted vessel belonging to Governor Winthrop, and
considered a wonder in her time. The first solid wharf was built in
1673. It was Governor Winthrop who put into one of his official
messages this chunk of wisdom: "The best part of a community is always
the least, and of that part the wiser are still less." Anterior to the
Revolution, Boston was the largest and most important American city,
then having twenty-five thousand inhabitants.

Boston Harbor covers about seventy-five square miles, having various
arms, such as South Boston Bay and Dorchester Bay, and the estuaries
of the Charles, Mystic and Neponset Rivers, which enlarge the
landing-spaces. The outer harbor has great natural beauty, increased
by the improvements and adornments of buildings, the water surface
gradually narrowing towards the city, and dotted with craggy,
undulating islands, having long stretches of bordering beaches,
interspersed with jutting cliffs, broad and bold promontories, and
both low and lofty shores. The adjacent coasts are lined with
villages that gradually merge into the suburbs of the great city. In
this spacious harbor there are at least fifty large and small islands,
and most of these, which were bare in Winthrop's day, are now crowned
with forts, lighthouses, almshouses, hospitals and other civic
institutions, several being most striking edifices, giving a pleasing
variety to the scene. The splendid guiding beacon for the harbor
entrance stands upon Little Brewster or Lighthouse Island, at the
northern edge of Nantasket Roads. This is Boston Light, elevated about
one hundred feet, a revolving light visible sixteen miles. George's
Island, near the entrance and commanding the approach from the sea,
has upon it the chief defensive work of the harbor, Fort Warren, about
two miles west of Boston Light. Farther in, and near the city, off
South Boston, is Castle Island, with Fort Independence, the successor
of the earliest Boston fort, the "Castle," built by Winthrop in 1634.
Opposite and about one mile northward is Governor's Island, containing
Fort Winthrop. This island was originally the "Governor's garden," and
Winthrop paid a yearly rent of two bushels of apples for it. These
forts are nearly all constructed of Quincy granite, but none has seen
actual warfare. Long Island spreads its high crags across the harbor,
outside of the inner forts, and has a lighthouse on its northern end,
while to the eastward is a low, rocky islet, bearing as a warning to
the mariner a curious stone monument, known as Nix's Mate. It was
here the colonists used to hang the pirates caught on the New England
coasts. Upon Deer and Rainsford Islands are hospitals and
reformatories, and upon Thompson's Island, which is fantastically
shaped like an unfledged chicken, is an asylum and farm-school for
indigent boys. Spectacle, Half Moon and Apple Islands received their
names from their shapes.

At the inward, western extremity of the harbor is the pear-shaped
Shawmut peninsula of Boston, having water ways almost all around it.
Upon the one side is South Boston and upon the other Charlestown, the
comparatively narrow intervening water courses of Fort Point Channel
and Charles River being in parts nearly roofed over with bridges, that
grudgingly open their draws to let through the vessels laden with
lumber and coal. To the northeast, upon another peninsula, which
formerly was an island, is East Boston, having Chelsea beyond to the
northward. Towards the west, across the broadened estuary of Charles
River, is Cambridge, this part of the estuary known as the Back Bay
having been largely encroached upon to create more land for the
crowded and spreading city. To the southward are Roxbury and
Dorchester, and to the westward Brookline, Brighton and Somerville.
Upon the Shawmut peninsula, the original city of Boston covered only
seven hundred and eighty-three acres, but by the reclamations this has
been more than doubled. It absorbed Dorchester Neck to enlarge South
Boston; took in Noddle's Island for East Boston; and annexed about all
the other suburbs, so that the city now covers forty-three square
miles. The hills have been partly levelled and the whole face of the
ancient town altered, these improvements and the great changes wrought
by fires obliterating the older narrow and crooked streets, having
thus wrought a complete transformation. The alignments of the colonial
maps can now hardly be recognized, and scarcely a vestige, beyond the
three old burying-grounds and a few buildings, remains of primitive
Boston. When the first settlers coming from Charlestown saw Shawmut or
the Tri-mountain, it seemed to chiefly consist of the three high hills
which they called Copp's, Beacon and Fort Hills, the highest of these,
the Beacon, being itself a sort of tri-mountain, having three
well-developed surmounting little peaks. These, however, were
afterwards cut down, although the massive elevation of Beacon Hill,
whereon the colonists burnt their signal-fires, remains the crowning
glory of the peninsula.


BOSTON COMMON.

The city of Boston has a population of six hundred thousand, and the
centre around which it clusters is the well-known Boston Common, set
apart in 1634, and always jealously reserved for public uses, the
surface rising upon its northern verge towards Beacon Hill. No matter
by what route approached, the city has the appearance of a broad cone
with a wide-spreading base, ascending gradually to the bulb-like apex
of the gilded State House dome. Occasionally a tall building looms
above the mass, or it is surmounted by church-spires and the fanciful
towers of modern construction, or by a high chimney pouring out black
smoke; but it is a symmetrical scene in the general view, though in
many parts the surface of the actual city is very uneven. The Common
rises towards the State House from the south and west by a graceful
plane interspersed with hillocks. It is crossed by many pleasant
walks, and has broad open spaces used for sports and military
displays. It is rich in noble old trees, and covers nearly fifty
acres, while to the westward is an additional level park of half the
size, known as the Public Garden, separated by a wide street
accommodating the cross-town traffic. This noted Boston Common was the
ancient Puritan pasture-ground, and it is rich in traditions. In the
colonial wars, the captured hostile Indians were put to death here,
their grinning heads impaled on stakes for a public warning. Murderers
were gibbeted, witches burnt and duels fought here. The impassioned
George Whitefield, in the middle of the eighteenth century, preached
here to a congregation of twenty thousand. An English traveller in the
late seventeenth century described the place as "a small but pleasant
Common where the gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their
marmalet-madams till the bell at nine o'clock rings them home."
Sometimes it was a fortified camp, and it was always a pleasure-ground,
while during the great fire of 1872, which destroyed the chief
business section with property valued at $70,000,000, enormous piles
of hastily saved goods filled the eastern portions next to Tremont
Street, bounding it on that side. Beacon Street is the northern border
and Boylston Street the southern, there being rows of stately elms
upon the walks along these streets and the pathways leading across the
Common in various directions.

Flagstaff Hill, the most prominent eminence, near the centre of the
Common, is surmounted by the Soldiers' Monument, rising ninety feet,
with a colossal statue of America on the apex, overlooking the city.
It was designed by Milmore, and is one of the most imposing memorials
of the Civil War in the country. Nearby stood the "Old Elm," which was
much older than the city, and was blown down in 1876. The adjacent
sheet of water is the noted "Frog Pond" of colonial memory, and dear
to the hearts of all old Bostonians. Near the northeastern boundary
the Brewer Fountain, famous for its magnificent bronzes, the
munificent gift of a prominent citizen, pours out its limpid waters. A
colossal equestrian statue of Washington adorns the Public Garden.
These attractive grounds are additionally embellished by tasteful
little lakes, statues and lovely floral displays. On the southern side
of the Common is the old Central Burying-Ground, which contains the
grave of Gilbert Stuart, the portrait painter, who died in 1828.
Beneath the edge of the Common on the southern and eastern sides is
the great Subway, which crosses Boston, giving needed relief to the
congested traffic, and was completed in 1898 at a cost of nearly
$5,000,000, a most commodious, airy and well-lighted tunnel,
accommodating many lines of electric cars, and providing speedy
transit across the crowded city.


THE STATE HOUSE.

The famous Boston State House, fronting on Beacon Street at the summit
of the hill, stands upon ground which, in the eighteenth century, was
John Hancock's cow-pasture, his residence, for many years alongside,
having been replaced by the ornamental "swell-fronts" of the Somerset
Club. This rounded construction, known as the swell-front, is a
distinctive feature of the old-time Boston residential architecture,
and in many buildings the effect is heightened by the luxuriant
overrunning vines of the Boston ivy, which is especially fine in the
autumn. A Corinthian portico fronts the State House, which was built
about the beginning of the nineteenth century, but has since been
repeatedly enlarged, the latest extension being completed in 1898, so
that the whole building is now four hundred by two hundred and twelve
feet, the lantern on the dome rising one hundred and fifty feet. Upon
the terrace in front are statues of Daniel Webster and Horace Mann.
The eastern side of the last extension has a small park, and here, on
top of Beacon Hill, has been erected a reproduction, practically on
the original site, of the Beacon Monument, which was put there in 1790
to commemorate the success of the Revolution, but was removed in 1812.
Within the State House is the Memorial Hall, containing the
battle-flags of Massachusetts regiments and other historical relics.
Portraits, busts and statues of the great men of Massachusetts adorn
the interior rooms. From the lantern surmounting the dome is the
finest view of Boston, with the mass of estuaries penetrating the land
on all sides, the harbor and islands, and over the neighboring country
for many miles. In the Representatives' Chamber hangs, high on the
wall, one of the precious relics of the Old Bay State, the noted
carved codfish, typifying a great industry. In the original State
House preceding this one, down on Washington Street, in the heart of
the older town, on March 17, 1785, Representative Rowe--who is also
said to have been the suggester of throwing the tea overboard in
Boston harbor--according to the minutes moved, "That leave might be
given to hang up the representation of a codfish in the room where the
House sit, as a memorial of the importance of the cod-fishery to the
welfare of the Commonwealth, as had been usual formerly." Leave was
accordingly given, and this emblem was brought in time to the present
State House and hung on the wall, and it has always been an object of
interest to visitors, not only as emblematic of sundry fishery
problems that perplex the statesmen, but also as recalling a question
always of lively interest in New England and elsewhere, "Does the
codfish salt the ocean, or the ocean salt the codfish?" Another great
treasure is held by the State Library, which has a hundred thousand
volumes; and the chief of its possessions, exhibited under glass, is
the "History of the Plimouth Plantation," popularly known as the "Log
of the 'Mayflower,'" written by Governor William Bradford. This
manuscript, discovered in London in 1846, was presented to
Massachusetts in 1898.


NOTABLE BOSTON ATTRACTIONS.

A ramble through the older parts of Boston discloses many objects of
interest. Near the northern edge of the Common, at the corner of Park
and Tremont Streets, is the old "Brimstone Corner," where stands the
citadel of orthodoxy, the Puritan meeting-house, Park Street Church.
Adjoining is an ancient graveyard, the "Old Granary Burying-Ground,"
where lie the remains of some of the most famous men of Boston, John
Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, James Otis, Peter Faneuil, many of
the colonial Governors, and also the parents of Benjamin Franklin, a
prominent monument marking the graves of the latter. The rows of
ancient, dark-looking and half-effaced gravestones in this quiet
burial-place, in one of the busiest parts of the city, are an antique
novelty. Many noted buildings are near it--Tremont Temple, the
Horticultural and Music Halls, the Athenæum, and not far away,
fronting Pemberton Square, the massive County Court-house of granite
in Renaissance style, four hundred and fifty feet long, having in its
imposing central hall a statue of Rufus Choate. On Tremont Street was
established the first Episcopal Church in Boston, the King's Chapel,
the present building replacing the original one in 1754. Adjacent is
the oldest burying-place of the colony, where lie the remains of
Governor John Winthrop and his sons, with other early settlers. Most
of the old gravestones in this yard have been taken away from the
graves and reset in strange fashion as edge-stones along the paths.
One of these odd old stones of a greenish hue marked the grave of
William Paddy, dying in 1658. In an unique poetical effusion it
records these quaint words:

     "Hear sleaps that blessed one
     Whoes lief God help us all
     To live that so when tiem shall be
     That we this world must liue,
     We ever may be happy
     With blessed William Paddy."

Adjoining this old-time region is the splendid City Hall, grandly
rising beyond the graveyard, in Italian Renaissance, with an imposing
louvre dome. In front, upon School Street, are statues of Benjamin
Franklin and Josiah Quincy.

Various intricate streets and passages lead eastward from Tremont
Street into Washington Street, these two chief business highways in a
certain sense being parallel. Washington Street is the main
thoroughfare of the city, having prominent theatres, newspaper
offices, many of the largest stores and great office buildings, and it
finally crosses over into the South End, being a wider and straighter
street in this newer portion. Benjamin Franklin was born in a little
old dwelling near Washington Street, where now stands a newspaper
office. Alongside is the "Old South Church," the most famous church of
Boston, but now an historical relic and museum of Revolutionary
antiquities, the congregation having built themselves a magnificent
temple, the "New Old South Church," upon Boylston Street, in the
fashionable quarter of the Back Bay. This ancient church is a curious
edifice of colonial style, built in 1729, when it replaced an earlier
building. It has a tall spire and a clock, to which it is said more
eyes are upturned than to any other dial in New England. The interior
is square, with double galleries on the ends, and its original
condition has been entirely restored. It is brimful of history, and
was the colonial shrine of Boston, wherein were held the spirited
meetings of the exciting days that hatched the Revolution. Within it
were arranged the preliminaries leading to the march from its doors of
the party of disguised men who went down to the Liverpool wharf and
threw the tea overboard in December, 1773. Behind the pulpit is the
famous window through which climbed Dr. Joseph Warren in 1775 to make
the oration on the anniversary of the "Boston Massacre," that had so
much to do with creating the high condition of feeling producing the
final defiance of the British soldiery, culminating in the battle of
Lexington. The British afterwards turned the building into a
riding-school. Franklin was baptized in the original church, and here
Whitefield preached. For nearly two centuries there was delivered, in
this noted church, the annual "election sermon" before the Governor
and Legislature. It was only by the greatest exertions that the
venerable building was saved from the fire of 1872, which halted at
its edge. It now belongs to a patriotic society, who maintain it as a
precious historical relic.

Also fronting upon Washington Street is the "Old State House," an
oblong and unpretending building at the head of State Street, dating
from 1748, which was the headquarters of the Massachusetts Provincial
Government. The "Boston Massacre," in March, 1770, originating in an
encounter between a British sentry and the crowd, resulting in the
troops firing upon the populace, occurred in the street on its
eastern side. Afterwards Samuel Adams, voicing the public
indignation, made within the building, in an address to the Executive
Council, his memorable and successful demand that the British soldiery
should be removed outside the city. It has been restored as far as
possible to its original condition, even the figures of the British
"Lion and Unicorn," which had been taken down in Revolutionary days,
having been replaced on the wings of the roof over the southern front.
The upper rooms contain a valuable collection of relics and paintings,
and much that is of interest in connection with early Boston history.
Opposite are the tall Ames and Sears Buildings of modern construction,
while State Street extends northeast through the financial district to
the harbor, passing the massive granite dome-surmounted Custom House.

Dock Square is not far away, and Change Alley and other intricate
passages lead over to the Boston "Cradle of Liberty," Faneuil Hall.
Old Peter Faneuil, a Huguenot merchant, built it for a market and
presented it to the city in 1742, but it was unfortunately burnt,
being rebuilt in 1761. Within it were held the early town-meetings,
and it is still the great place for popular assemblages. It was
enlarged to its present size in 1805. This famous Hall is a plain
rectangular building, seventy-six feet square inside, the lower floor
a market, and the upper portion an assembly room. It is located, with
surmounting cupola, in an open square, and when anything excites the
public it is crowded with standing audiences, there being no seats.
Across the end is a raised platform for the orators, behind which, on
the wall, is Healy's large painting, representing the United States
Senate listening to a speech by Daniel Webster, his noted oration in
the South Carolina nullification days of 1832, when Webster was the
champion of the Union. There are numerous historical portraits on the
walls. The "Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company," dating from
1638, occupy the floor above the Hall, while in front of it and
extending towards the harbor is the spacious Quincy Market.

At the corner of Washington and School Streets is another ancient
building, its quaint gambrels and gables recalling primitive
architecture--the "Old Corner Book-store," long a favorite literary
haunt. Northward, Washington Street extends to Haymarket Square, and
beyond is Charlestown Street, passing by Copp's Hill, now reduced in
size. Upon this hill is the oldest Boston church,--Christ Church in
Salem Street,--dating from 1723, from whose steeple, on the eve of the
battle of Lexington, in April, 1775, were displayed the lights giving
warning of the movement of the British troops starting from Boston for
Concord. These signals notified Paul Revere, across the Charles River,
who made his famous midnight ride that roused the country. The
silver-plate, service-books and Bible of the church were gifts from
King George II., and in the adjacent burial-ground are the graves
of the three noted Doctors Mather, who had so much to do with colonial
affairs and history--Increase, Cotton and Samuel--the last dying in
1785. The great Boston fire of 1872, which ravaged the district east
of Washington Street for two days, extended over fifty acres, and
destroyed nearly eight hundred buildings. The section was quickly
rebuilt, however, with much finer structures, and is now the chief
wholesale business district of Boston. The elaborate Government
Building, containing the Post-office and Courts, was erected, since
the fire, of Cape Ann granite, at a cost of $7,500,000. In this
district are enormous office-buildings, insurance-offices, banks,
extensive blocks of stores, and the headquarters of the leading trades
of New England, the boot and shoe, cotton and woollen, dry goods,
paper and wool merchants, Boston being the greatest wool mart in the
country. When Boston, having preserved Beacon Hill and reduced in size
Copp's Hill, decided to remove the third eminence of the
"Tri-mountain," Fort Hill, its earth and rocks were used to give
better commercial facilities by filling in and grading the magnificent
marginal highway fronting the harbor, Atlantic Avenue. In front of
this broad street the wharves project many hundreds of feet, having
rows of capacious storehouses in their centres, while on either side
are wide docks for the shipping. Here is conducted an extensive
traffic with all parts of the world, and to these wharves come the
yacht-like fishing-smacks to unload their catch of cod and mackerel,
while there are piles of fish in the stores. Thus is realized the
significance of the emblematic codfish hanging in the State House.

  [Illustration: _Faneuil Hall, Boston_]


BOSTON DEVELOPMENT.

When the great Boston fire had been quenched, and an estimate was
being formed of the enormous losses, the significant statement was
made that "the best treasure of Boston cannot be burnt up. Her grand
capital of culture and character, of science and skill, humanity and
religion, is beyond the reach of flame. Sweep away every store and
house, every school and church, and let the people with their history
and habits remain, and they still have one of the richest and
strongest cities on earth." This is the prominent characteristic of
Boston public spirit. The people take the greatest pride in their
city, its high rank and achievements, and the wealthy and energetic
townsfolk are always alert to extend them. There are more libraries,
schools, colleges, art and scientific collections, museums,
conservatories of music and educational foundations in and near Boston
than in any other American city. Magnificent structures, the homes of
art, science and education, are scattered with prodigality all about.
Next to the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library is the
largest in America. Bostonians love the fine arts, and the many open
spaces and public grounds are adorned with statues of eminent men and
groups representing historical events. The people seem to be always
studying and investigating, the women as well as the men pursuing the
difficult paths of abstruse knowledge, so that armies of them, fully
equipped, scatter over the country to impart the learning of the
"Modern Athens" to less fortunate communities. There are many fine
churches, especially in the newer parts of the West End, whither have
removed into grand temples of modern artistic construction quite a
number of the wealthy congregations of the older town. Boston is also
full of clubs, in endless variety, formed for every conceivable
purpose, and several of them very handsomely housed.

To get available room and facilitate business, the city has gathered
the terminals of all the railways into two enormous stations on the
northern and southern sides of the town, and for nearly a half century
it has been filling-in the fens and lowlands to the westward, so that
now this reclaimed West End is the fashionable section, containing the
finest churches, hotels, and residences. Through this splendid
district extends for over a mile the grand Commonwealth Avenue, two
hundred and forty feet wide, its centre being a tree-embowered park
adorned by statues of Alexander Hamilton, John Glover, William Lloyd
Garrison, and Leif Ericson, and having on either side a magnificent
boulevard. The bordering residences are fronted by delicious gardens,
and at regular intervals fine streets cross at right angles, their
names arranged alphabetically, in proceeding westward, with the
well-known English titles, Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth,
Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, etc. Parallel to the Avenue
are also laid out Boylston, Marlborough, Newbury and Beacon Streets
through this favorite residential section. Proceeding out Boylston
Street are passed the stately buildings of the Museum of Natural
History, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with twelve
hundred students, the leading institution of its kind in America.
Beyond, at the intersection of Dartmouth Street, is Copley Square,
displaying around it the finest architectural group in the city, five
magnificent buildings, three of them churches. Trinity Episcopal
Church, built on the northern side, in free Romanesque, is formed as a
Latin cross, with a massive central tower, two hundred and ten feet
high. It has elaborate interior decoration and fine windows. The
Public Library, on the southern side, is in Roman Renaissance, two
hundred and twenty-eight by two hundred and twenty-five feet, and
sixty-eight feet high, erected at a cost of nearly $2,400,000. It
contains eight hundred thousand volumes, and the interior is
excellently adapted to its uses, being tastefully adorned. The Second
Unitarian Church, on the northern side of the square, built in 1874,
was the church of the three Mathers, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The
Museum of Fine Arts, on the eastern side of the square, is constructed
of red brick and terra-cotta, and contains extensive collections. The
fifth building fronting the square is the "New Old South Church," in
Italian Gothic, with a tower rising two hundred and forty-eight feet.

Beyond this fashionable district, the "Back Bay Fens" have been
skillfully laid out in a series of boulevards and parks, making a
chain extending several miles south and southwest through the suburbs,
Franklin Park, covering nearly a square mile, being the chief. Here,
on grounds with great natural adornments, in Roxbury, Brookline, and
Brighton, is a region of much beauty. The surface is undulating,
finely wooded, dotted with lakes, and displaying many costly suburban
houses, in full glory of garden and foliage. This pleasant region
spreads to Chestnut Hill, where the city has its great water
reservoir, holding eight hundred million gallons, the favorite drive
from Boston being to and around this reservoir, the route giving
splendid views from the hilltop. Jamaica Pond and Jamaica Plain are
near by, two of Boston's attractive cemeteries being beyond the
latter, Mount Hope and Forest Hills. Here is also the famous Arnold
Arboretum, the greatest institution of its kind, now part of the park
system, and having a grand outlook from its central hill. In West
Roxbury is the Martin Luther Orphan Home, which now occupies the noted
"Brook Farm," where a group of cultivated people, led by George
Ripley, and including Hawthorne, Curtis, Dana, Channing, Thoreau,
Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, made their famous attempt to found a
socialistic community in 1841, but found that it would not work. It
was described as an experiment in "plain living and high thinking,"
the articles of association calling it the "Brook Farm Institute of
Agriculture and Education," for the establishment of an "agricultural,
literary, and scientific school or college." Pupils were taken, and in
its most successful period there were about one hundred and fifty
persons in the community; "kitchen and table were in common; very
little help was hired, but philosophers, clergymen and poets worked at
the humblest tasks, milking cows, pitching manure, cleaning stables,
etc., while cultivated women cooked, washed, ironed, and waited at
table; all work, manual or intellectual, was credited to members at a
uniform rate of ten cents an hour." Later, it became a Fourieristic
"phalanstery," under the title of the "Brook Farm Phalanx;" then, in
1845, the chief building burnt down, and financial difficulties
following, the experiment, which had excited world-wide comment, was
abandoned in 1847.


NONATUM AND SUDBURY.

To the westward of Brighton is the extensive and wealthy suburban city
of Newton, a favorite place of rural residence for Bostonians. Here
rises, near Newton Corner, the ancient Nonatum Hill, where the
Apostle Eliot first preached to the Indians, the name being now
classically modernized into Mount Ida. Eliot converted these Indians,
who became the Christian tribe of Nonatum and formed their system of
government after the plan set forth in the Book of Exodus, with rulers
of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. For them the Bible was
translated into the Indian language by Eliot and printed at Cambridge
in 1663. They removed nearer to Charles River, where there were better
soils, at Natick, their village consisting of three streets lined with
little huts and gardens, a large circular fort, and a building for a
church and school, at the same time having a rude bridge constructed
over the river. Natick is now a busy shoemaking town, with about ten
thousand people, and in South Natick is the old Indian cemetery and
Eliot's Oak. To the northward of Natick is Cochituate Lake, the chief
source of Boston's water supply, over three miles long, and having
with tributary ponds nearly a thousand acres area when full of water
in the spring. To the eastward of Natick is Wellesley, where the
famous Wellesley Female College, with seven hundred students, has its
spacious buildings located in a beautiful park. To the northward is
the valley of Sudbury River, into which Lake Cochituate discharges,
and here at Sudbury was the old colonial tavern which Longfellow has
given renown in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn":

     "One autumn night in Sudbury town,
     Across the meadows bare and brown,
     The windows of the wayside inn
     Gleamed red with firelight through the leaves
     Of woodbine hanging from the eaves
     Their crimson curtains rent and thin.

     "As ancient is this hostelrie
     As any in the land may be.
     Built in the old Colonial day,
     When men lived in a grander way,
     With ampler hospitality.
     A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
     Now somewhat fallen to decay,
     With weather stains upon the wall,
     And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
     And creaking and uneven floors,
     And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.

     "A region of repose it seems,
     A place of slumber and of dreams,
     Remote among the wooded hills!"

Here Longfellow located his modern Canterbury tales by the landlord,
the student, the theologian, the poet, the musician, and other
sojourners, which have become interwoven so attractively with our
better American literature.


CHARLESTOWN AND BUNKER HILL.

Across the Charles River, northward from the Shawmut peninsula of
Boston, is Charlestown, one of the earliest settled suburbs, a large
part of the river front being occupied by the Navy Yard, which covers
a surface approximating a hundred acres. Here were built many famous
vessels of the older navy, anterior to the change to steel
construction, and the first Government dry-dock in the country was
placed at this yard, which after the war of 1812 became one of the
leading naval stations. Among the historical features of the yard has
been the famous ship "Constitution," familiarly known as "Old
Ironsides," which is again to be rebuilt for preservation. This noted
ship, with others that achieved renown in the war of 1812, was kept at
Charlestown, and all of them having rotted, the Navy Department in
1830 decided to destroy them so as to save further trouble, and an
article announcing this appeared in a Boston newspaper. Little did the
naval authorities, however, appreciate the sentimental love the
country had for the old "Constitution." Two days after the newspaper
announcement, Oliver Wendell Holmes, then twenty-one years of age,
published his poem of "Old Ironsides," which caused such a sensation.

     "Aye, tear her tattered ensign down!
       Long has it waved on high,
     And many an eye has danced to see
       That banner in the sky;
     Beneath it rung the battle's shout,
       And burst the cannon's roar;--
     The meteor of the ocean's air
       Shall sweep the land no more.

     "Her deck--once red with heroes' blood,
       Where knelt the vanquished foe,
     When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
       And waves were white below--
     No more shall feel the victor's tread,
       Or know the conquered knee;--
     The harpies of the shore shall pluck
       The eagle of the sea!

     "O, better that her shattered hulk
       Should sink beneath the wave;
     Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
       And there should be her grave:
     Nail to the mast her holy flag,
       Set every threadbare sail;
     And give her to the god of storms,
       The lightning and the gale!"

These stirring lines of earnest protest touched the popular heart,
there was an universal outburst of indignation, and the "Constitution"
was saved. The old ship was rebuilt on her original lines, only a few
timbers, including the keel, being retained, and the former
allegorical figure-head was replaced by one modelled in the image of
Andrew Jackson, then President of the United States. This change was
sanctioned by the Secretary of the Navy, although Commodore Hull, who
had charge of rebuilding the ship, protested against it. The
reconstructed "Constitution" was launched in 1834, and anchored, with
her figure-head, but a short distance from Charlestown bridge.
Politics ran high at the time, and the change caused great
controversy, particularly in and around Boston. One stormy night,
Captain Samuel W. Dewey, then a hardy young sailor, managed without
discovery to saw off Jackson's head, and carried it away. When the
mutilation was disclosed next day there was another great clamor, and
so intense was the excitement that the utmost exertions were vainly
made to find the man who did the daring deed. Dewey kept his secret
for several weeks, but suddenly, under an unexplainable impulse,
decided he would go to Washington and give the sawed-off head to
President Jackson himself. He appeared before the Secretary of the
Navy, and stating that he was the man who had removed the figure-head
from the "Constitution," said he had brought it along to restore it,
exhibiting the grim features tied up in a bandana handkerchief. The
Secretary was indignant, and spoke of having him arrested, but Dewey
said there was no statute that he had violated, and the Secretary,
calming down finally, listened to the man's story of how he took away
the head, and agreed to take it to President Jackson. He took the
mutilated head over to the White House, exhibited it to Jackson, and
repeated to him Dewey's story. When Jackson had heard the tale he
burst out in loud laughter, and pointing at the head, said: "That is
the most infernal graven image I ever saw. The fellow did perfectly
right; you've got him, you say; well, give him a kick and my
compliments, and tell him to saw it off again." Captain Dewey was
afterwards called the "figure-head man," and was given a public dinner
in Philadelphia on his return from Washington. He died at an advanced
age, in 1899.

The crowning glory of Charlestown is the Bunker Hill Monument, marking
the greatest historical event of Boston, the famous battle fought June
17, 1775, when the British stormed the Yankee redoubt on the hilltop
north of Charles River, which was then open country, but long ago
became surrounded by the buildings of the expanding city, excepting
the small space of the battlefield, now reserved for a park around the
monument. The granite shaft rises two hundred and twenty-one feet,
upon the highest part of the eminence. The Provincial troops had
assembled in large numbers north and west of Boston, mainly in
Cambridge to the westward, and hearing that the British intended to
occupy Bunker and Breed's Hills, in Charlestown, a force was sent
under Colonel William Prescott, a veteran of the old French war, in
the night, to fortify Bunker Hill. Upon crossing over, they hastily
decided that it was better to occupy Breed's Hill, which, while part
of the same ridge, was nearer Boston, and they constructed upon it a
square redoubt. The British ships in Charles River discovered this at
daylight, and began a cannonade; American reinforcements were sent
from Cambridge; and in the afternoon General Gage attacked, his
onslaught being three times repulsed with heavy slaughter, when, the
Americans' ammunition being spent, they could only resist with clubbed
muskets and stones, and had to retreat. Facing Boston, in front of the
monument, the direction from which the attack came, is the bronze
statue of Prescott, the broad-brimmed hat shading his earnest face,
as, with deprecatory yet determined gesture, he uttered the memorable
words of warning that resulted in such terrible punishment of the
British storming column: "Don't fire until I tell you; don't fire
until you see the whites of their eyes." The traces of the hastily
constructed breastworks of the redoubt can be seen on the brow of the
hill, and a stone shows where Dr. Joseph Warren fell, he being killed
in the battle. He came to the fight as a volunteer, and had been made
a General in the Provincial army. The top of the tall monument gives a
splendid view in all directions over the harbor and suburbs of Boston,
with traces of Mount Wachusett far to the westward, and on clear days
a dim outline of the distant White Mountains. The corner-stone of the
monument was laid by Lafayette on his American visit in 1825, and it
was completed and dedicated in 1842, the oration on both occasions
being delivered by Daniel Webster. One of his glowing passages thus
tells the purpose of the monument:

"We come as Americans to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us
and to our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time,
shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not
undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was
fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and
importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that
infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from eternal lips, and
that weary and withered age may behold it and be solaced by the
recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here
and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of
disaster which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to
come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward,
and be assured that the foundations of our national powers are still
strong."


CAMBRIDGE AND HARVARD.

Various long causeways over the wide expanse of Charles River where it
spreads out to form the Back Bay, and passing in front of the newly
filled-in West End, lead from Boston to the academic city of
Cambridge. This populous city, best known from Harvard University, is
beautifully situated on a plain, has important manufacturing
industries, handsome public buildings, and a large number of elegant
private residences in spacious grounds ornamented with fine old trees,
shrubbery and flower-gardens. Cambridge was settled soon after Boston,
as the "Newe Towne," in 1630. Its Common contains the venerable
"Washington Elm," over three hundred years old, under which, after the
battle of Bunker Hill, General Washington assumed command, July 3,
1775, of the American army besieging Boston. Opposite the southern
end of the Common are old Christ Church, built of materials sent out
from England, and the First Parish Church, with a Gothic steeple,
having between them the burying-ground of the old town. Of these,
Oliver Wendell Holmes has written:

     "Like Sentinel and Nun they keep
       Their vigil on the green;
     One seems to guard and one to weep
       The dead that lie between."

In the suburbs of Cambridge, adjoining Charles River, is Boston's
chief place of interment, Mount Auburn Cemetery, a romantic enclosure
of hill and vale, covering one hundred and twenty-five acres, with a
grand development of tombs and landscape. The tower upon the summit of
the Mount gives a beautiful outlook over the winding Charles River
valley and the Brookline, Brighton and West Roxbury villa and park
districts beyond, the distant view being closed by the charming Blue
Hills of Milton. In this cemetery are interred many of the famous men
of Massachusetts, including Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Everett,
Sumner, Motley, Choate, Quincy, Agassiz and Prescott.

The great Cambridge institution, however, is Harvard University, the
oldest, largest and wealthiest seat of learning in America. In 1636
the Massachusetts Legislature founded a school at the "Newe Towne,"
voting £400 for the purpose, and in 1638 John Harvard, who had been
for a short time a pastor in Charlestown, died at the age of
thirty-one, and left to this school his library of two hundred and
sixty volumes and half his estate, valued at about £800. Then the
school was made a college and named Harvard, and the town was called
Cambridge by the Legislature. The monument of the youthful patron is
in Charlestown, and, cast in heroic bronze, he now sits in a capacious
chair in front of the Harvard Memorial Hall. This great University far
antedates its rival Yale at New Haven, for its first class was
graduated in 1642, and in 1650 "The President and Fellows of Harvard
College" were incorporated. In fact, Harvard was founded only ninety
years later than the great College of English Cambridge--Emmanuel.
John Harvard and Henry Dunster, who was the first President of
Harvard, and several other prominent Boston colonists, had been
students at Emmanuel, and thus from the older Puritan foundation came
the younger, and it was natural to adopt for the town the name of the
English University city. The first New England printing-press was set
up in 1639 at Cambridge, and in the Riverside Press and the University
Press of to-day it is succeeded by two renowned book-making
establishments. Closely allied, in a scientific way, has also been at
Cambridgeport for many years the works of Alvan Clark & Co., the noted
makers of telescope lenses.

Harvard University has sent out many thousands of famous graduates,
and Longfellow, Holmes and Lowell have been members of its faculty. It
is liberally endowed, has ample grounds, and there are over sixty
buildings devoted to the purposes of the University, the annual
disbursements exceeding $1,000,000. Its government was formerly a
strictly religious organization, most of the graduates becoming
clergymen, but it was recently secularized so that no denominational
religion is now insisted upon, and comparatively few graduates enter
the pulpit. There are schools of law, medicine, dentistry, divinity,
agriculture, the arts and sciences, all the learned professions being
provided for, but everything is elective. In the various departments
there are more than four thousand students, taught by about four
hundred professors and instructors. It has some seven hundred acres of
land, interest-bearing endowments exceeding $8,000,000, receives,
besides, annual gifts sometimes reaching $400,000, and has a library
of five hundred thousand volumes and almost as many pamphlets. Much
attention is given outdoor sports and athletic training, Harvard
having the finest gymnasium in the country, and an athletic field of
twenty acres south of the river. Among the graduates have been two
Presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams; also his
grandson, Charles Francis Adams, William Ellery Channing, Edward
Everett, George Bancroft, Jared Sparks, William H. Prescott, Emerson,
Holmes, Sumner, Lowell, Motley and Thoreau.

The University buildings are in the centre of the old city, enclosing
two large quadrangles shaded by elms. Massachusetts Hall, the oldest
building now standing, dates from 1720, Harvard Hall from 1766, and
University Hall from 1815. The most elaborate modern building is the
Memorial Hall, a splendid structure of brick and Nova Scotia stone,
three hundred and ten feet long, having a cloister at one end and a
massive tower at the other. This was erected in memory of the Harvard
graduates who fell in the Civil War; and in the grand Vestibule which
crosses the building like a transept, having a marble floor and rich
vaulted ceiling of ash, and fine windows through which pours a
mellowed light, there are tablets set in the arcaded sides bearing the
names of the dead. Upon one side of this impressive Vestibule is the
spacious Saunders Theatre, used for the commencements and public
services, having as an adornment the statue of Josiah Quincy, a
President of the College and long the Mayor of Boston. Upon the other
side of the Vestibule is the college Great Hall, one hundred and
sixty-four feet long and eighty feet high, with a splendid roof of
open timber-work and magnificent windows. This is the refectory where
a thousand students can dine, and in it centre the most hallowed
memories of Harvard, portraits and busts of the distinguished
graduates and benefactors adorning it, with the great western window
in the afternoon throwing a flood of rich sunlight over the scene.
Harvard has been patterned much after the original Cambridge, thus
adding to the English vogue of many things seen about Boston. When
Charles Dilke visited America he wrote of Harvard, "Our English
Universities have not about them the classic repose, the air of study,
which belongs to Cambridge, Massachusetts; our Cambridge comes nearest
to her daughter-town, but even the English Cambridge has a breathing
street or two, and a weekly market-day, while Cambridge in New England
is one great academic grove, buried in a philosophic calm, which our
universities cannot rival as long as men resort to them for other
purposes than work." The people at Boston told Dilke, when he was
here, that they spoke "the English of Elizabeth," and they heartily
congratulated him at the same time upon using what they said was "very
good English for an Englishman."

Adjoining Cambridge Common is Radcliffe College, for women, named in
honor of the English Lady Anne Radcliffe, afterwards Lady Moulson, the
first woman giving a scholarship to Harvard (in 1640). Some four
hundred women receive instruction here from Harvard professors, and
the graduates are granted the college degrees. Near by, in Brattle
Street, is the Craigie House, dating from 1759, which was Washington's
headquarters in 1775-6, and later, for nearly a half century, was the
home of Henry W. Longfellow, until he died in 1882. Longfellow was for
twenty years Professor of Modern Languages in Harvard, being succeeded
in 1854 by James Russell Lowell, whose home of Elmwood, an old
colonial house, is farther out Brattle Street. Lowell was born in
Cambridge in 1819, dying in 1891. Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in
Cambridge in 1809, and being a skillful physician as well as a
_litterateur_, he was Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard
from 1847 till 1882. He resided in Boston on Beacon Street, dying in
1894. Margaret Fuller, the noted transcendentalist, was born in
Cambridge in 1810, and after writing several books, and achieving fame
as a linguist and conversationalist, she went abroad, marrying the
Marquis d'Ossoli in Rome, and returning to New York, they were both
lost by shipwreck at Fire Island in 1850.


LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.

Following up the Charles River, about ten miles west of Boston is
Waltham, with twenty-two thousand people, noted for the works of the
American Waltham Watch Company, the largest in the world, producing
nearly six hundred thousand watches and movements in a year. The
extensive factory buildings spread along the river, and there are also
large cotton mills. General Nathaniel P. Banks was a native of
Waltham. To the northward and about twelve miles from Boston is the
quiet village of Lexington, chiefly built on one long tree-shaded
street, which terminates at its western end in a broad Green of about
two acres, whereon a plain monument recalls the eight Revolutionary
patriots killed there April 19, 1775. A handsome Memorial Hall of
brick is built on the Green to commemorate the Lexington soldiers who
fell in the Civil War. It also contains statues of John Hancock and
Samuel Adams, and of the "Minute Man of 1775" and the "Volunteer of
1861."

The British commander in Boston, having learnt that the Massachusetts
patriots had collected arms and military stores at Concord, about
twenty miles northwest of Boston, on the night of April 18, 1775,
despatched a force to destroy them, and incidentally to capture
Hancock and Adams, who were at Lexington. The roads leading westward
out of Boston were picketed to prevent news being carried of the
expedition, but the signals from the old Christ Church on Copp's Hill
enabled Paul Revere to start from Charlestown through Cambridge, and
he made his rapid horseback ride, arriving by midnight at Lexington.
The bells of the village churches rang out the alarm, signal-guns were
fired, and messengers were sent in every direction to arouse the
people. About five o'clock in the morning Major Pitcairn with six
British companies arrived at Lexington, where the patriots, numbering
about seventy, were drawn up in line on the Green. Pitcairn rode
forward and shouted "Disperse, ye rebels; throw down your arms and
disperse!" They held their ground, and a volley was fired over their
heads, when, not dispersing, a second volley was fired, killing eight
and wounding ten men, the first blood shed in the American Revolution.
The American commander, seeing resistance was useless, withdrew and
dispersed his little band, some, as they retired, discharging their
muskets at the British, three of the latter being wounded and
Pitcairn's horse struck. Then the British made a rapid movement to
Concord, and some of the military stores which had not been removed
were found and destroyed. Meanwhile about four hundred Minute Men
gathered near the North Bridge over Concord River, about a mile from
the Common, and under orders they attacked and drove away the British
infantry, who had been placed on guard there. As the morning advanced,
the whole country became aroused, and armed patriots assembled from
every direction, those of Lexington having rallied and placed
themselves along the Concord road. The British commander was greatly
alarmed and ordered a retreat. They marched back to Boston under a
rattling fire, every house, barn and stone wall being picketed by
patriot sharpshooters, so that the road was strewn with dead and dying
British. Passing through Lexington, the British met reinforcements,
but they were still pursued to Cambridge and Charlestown, the
slaughter only ceasing when they had got under protection of the guns
of the fleet. The British loss was about two hundred and seventy, and
the Americans lost one hundred. In Concord the British graves and the
battle monuments are on one side of the historic bridge, and on the
other is a fine bronze statue of the "Minute Man." This Concord fight
was the first organized attack made by the Americans upon the British
in the Revolution, thus beginning the patriot rebellion against
British rule, as the Minute Men were acting under authority of the
Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, assembled in Concord, and
protecting their military stores.

     "By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
       Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
     Here once the embattled farmers stood,
       And fired the shot heard round the world."

Concord has about six thousand people, and is also famous for its
literary history and associations. It is near the tranquil Concord
River and the junction of the little Assabet and Sudbury Rivers, a
pleasant tree-embowered quiet place of rural residence. Peter Bulkley,
an English rector, who was oppressed by Archbishop Laud, fled to New
England, and in 1636 buying of the Indians their domain of
Musketaquid, founded the town and church of Concord, thus naming it
because of its peaceful acquisition. In the nineteenth century it
became noted as the home of some of the greatest men of letters in
America. Near Concord bridge is an ancient gambrel-roofed house built
for Parson William Emerson in 1765, and from its windows he watched
the fight. This is the "Old Manse" in which Ralph Waldo Emerson,
himself once a clergyman, and descended from seven generations of
clergymen, was born in 1803. Emerson was known as the "Sage of
Concord," or, as Fredrika Bremer the novelist, who visited him there,
described him, the "Sphinx in Concord," and was the head of the modern
school of transcendental philosophy. He died in 1882. Nathaniel
Hawthorne lived for awhile in the "Old Manse" at Concord, and there
wrote his "Mosses from an Old Manse." The house was afterwards burnt.
Hawthorne died in 1864. Both Emerson and Hawthorne are buried in the
attractive little Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Emerson's grave being marked
by a large block of pink quartz. Henry D. Thoreau, the eccentric but
profound scholar and naturalist, in 1845 built himself a hut on the
shores of the sequestered Walden Pond near Concord, leading the life
of a recluse, raising a few vegetables, and now and then, to get a
little money, doing some work as carpenter or surveyor. He was
profoundly skilled in Oriental and classic literature, and was an
ardent naturalist, delighting in making long pedestrian excursions to
the forests, lakes and ocean shores of New England. He never voted,
nor paid a tax, nor entered a church for worship, and of himself he
said, "I am as unfit for any practical purpose as gossamer is for
ship-timber." Emerson tells us that "Thoreau dedicated his genius
with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native
town, that he made them known and interesting to all; he grew to be
revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him only
as an oddity." Dying in 1862, he, too, is buried in Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery. In the Orchard House in Concord lived the Alcotts, of whom
Louisa M. Alcott, author of _Little Women_, is so widely known.
Adjacent is the building used by the "Concord School of Philosophy,"
established in 1879 by A. Bronson Alcott. They also rest in the little
Cemetery. Thus is Concord famed, and it has well been said of this
historic old place that "it is dangerous to turn a corner suddenly for
fear of running over some first-class saint, philosopher or sage."


THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE.

The outer verge of Boston Harbor may be described as protected on the
south by the long projection of Nantasket Beach, while on the northern
side there comes out, as if to meet it, another curiously-formed
peninsula, making the bluffs of Winthrop, and a strip beyond
terminating in the rounded headland of Point Shirley. Deer Island,
almost connected with the Point, stretches farther, and we were
anciently told it was so called "because of the deare who often swim
thither from the maine when they are chased by the wolves." All these
places are popular resorts, and their odd formations assist in making
the Boston surroundings picturesque. Some distance up the coast, and
eleven miles from Boston, is the shoemaking city of Lynn, with seventy
thousand people, the flourishing society of the "Knights of St.
Crispin" ruling the shoemakers' "teams" and largely running the
politics of the town. Most of the work is done by machinery, there
being over two hundred factories, making more women's shoes than any
other place in the country. The first colonists were brought by their
pastor from Lynn-Regis, England, in 1629, and thus the town was named.
It spreads broadly along the water-front, its attractive City Hall
seen from afar, and many ornamental villas adorning the shore. Out
beyond it, thrust into the sea, is the long, low and narrow sand-strip
barely a hundred yards wide, leading for nearly four miles to Nahant.
This is a most curious formation, the name meaning the "Lovers' Walk,"
a mass of rocks and soil at the outer end of the sand-strip covering
nearly five hundred acres, and crowned with villas, the neat tower of
a pretty white church rising on the highest part near the centre. The
Bostonians have made Nahant, thus surrounded by the ocean, one of
their most fashionable suburban sections, and it is popularly known as
"Cold Roast Boston." This strange rocky promontory was originally
bought from the Sagamore Poquanum for a suit of clothes, and it is now
valued at over $10,000,000. Many are the poems written about this
curious projection, and N. P. Willis says of it: "If you can imagine a
buried Titan lying along the length of a continent, with one arm
stretched out into the midst of the sea, the spot to which I would
transport you, reader mine, would be, as it were, in the palm of the
giant's hand." Invocations have been addressed to Nahant by
Longfellow, Whittier and Mrs. Sigourney; there Longfellow wrote part
of _Hiawatha_, Motley began his _Dutch Republic_, Prescott wrote his
Spanish histories, and Agassiz composed _Brazil_.

The region beyond Lynn and Nahant is the famous Massachusetts "North
Shore," stretching to the extremity of Cape Ann, a domain of villas
and summer homes, pleasant sea-beaches, and brisk towns with
interesting past history, now devoted largely to shoemaking and the
fisheries. From Boston State House to the extremity of the Cape at
Halibut Point, or the Land's End, is thirty-one miles, and Lucy Larcom
thus attractively describes the route along the shore:

     "You may ride in an hour or two, if you will,
     From Halibut Point to Beacon Hill,
     With the sea beside you all the way,
     Through pleasant places that skirt the bay;
     By Gloucester harbor and Beverley beach,
     Salem's old steeples, Nahant's long reach,
     Blue-bordered Swampscott, and Chelsea's wide
     Marshes laid bare to the drenching tide,
     With a glimpse of Saugus' spire in the west,
     And Malden Hills in their dreamy rest."

Saugus, Lynn, Nahant, Swampscott, Salem and Marblehead were originally
the Indian domains of Saugus, Naumkeag and Massabequash. Beyond Lynn,
most of the coast has undergone a modern evolution from fishery
stations to smart summer resorts; and here, around the swamps and
marshes, abounding crags protrude, with many fine villas in another
fashionable Boston suburb, Swampscott, as populous and almost as
famous as Nahant, with huge hotels down by the seaside. Swampscott
merges into Clifton, and then an uneven backbone of granite covering
about six square miles is thrust into the ocean in the direction of
Cape Ann, and is hedged about with rocky islets. On one side this
granite peninsula forms Salem harbor, while on the other a miniature
haven is made by a craggy appendage to the southeastward, attached to
the main peninsula by a ligature of sand and shingle. The quaint old
town of Marblehead occupies most of the surface, and the appendage is
the modern yachtsmen's headquarters, Marblehead Neck. This is a very
ancient place, dating back to the early seventeenth century, and was
once pre-eminently nautical and the second port in Massachusetts; but
the sailors and fishermen are missing, excepting those who man the
summer yacht fleets, and the people, like so many other Massachusetts
communities, have gone largely into shoemaking, the big shoe-factories
being scattered about. The crooked narrow streets run in all
directions among and over the rocks, which appear everywhere and have
gained the mastery. When George Whitefield, the preacher, visited
Marblehead, he gazed in astonishment upon these superabundant rocks,
and asked, in surprise, "Where do they bury their dead?" Out on the
headland is the superannuated little Fort Sewall, once protecting the
port and commanding both harbors, and though the walls are decaying,
it is preserved as a memento of the past. Fine villas are all about,
and the numerous islands add picturesqueness to the sea-view. Elbridge
Gerry, of "Gerrymander" fame, was a native of Marblehead, and its
hardy sailors formed most of the crew of the old ship "Constitution"
when she fought and captured the "Guerriere," and afterwards the
"Cyane" and "Levant." Marblehead was also the scene of "Skipper
Ireson's Ride," which Whittier has made historic:

     "Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
     Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
       By the women of Marblehead!"

He had refused to take some of his townsmen off a drifting wreck,
because it would cost too much to feed them on the way home.


SALEM AND THE WITCHES.

Westward of the Marblehead peninsula, there stretches into the
mainland another noted haven of the olden time, Salem harbor,
dividing it into two arms, the North and South Rivers, having between
them the town, chiefly built upon a peninsula about two miles long.
This was the Indian domain of Naumkeag, a name preserved in many
titles there, and meaning the "Eel-Land." It was the mother-colony on
Massachusetts Bay, the first house being built in 1626, and old John
Endicott having got a grant from Plymouth for the colony, he came out
and founded the town two years afterwards, calling it Salem, "from the
peace which they had and hoped in it." But despite this peacefulness,
the people soon developed warlike tendencies. They scourged Philip
Ratcliffe, and cut off his ears and banished him soon after the
founding, for "blasphemy against the First Church," and when the port
had got well under way, an annual trade statement showed imports of
$110,000 in arms and cannon, against $90,000 in everything else. The
"First Church," formed in 1629, was the earliest church organization
in New England, and it still exists. There were then ten houses in the
town, besides the Governor's house, which the early history describes
as "garnished with great ordnance;" adding, "thus we doubt not that
God will be with us, and if God be with us, who can be against us?"
John Winthrop was here as Governor, briefly, in 1630, soon migrating
to Shawmut, to found Boston for the capital of the colony. After the
Revolution, Salem was the leading seaport of New England; but its
glory has departed, and the trade has gone to Boston. In 1785 it sent
out the first American vessel that doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and
during a half century afterwards it held almost a monopoly of the East
India and China trade with the United States, having at one time
fifty-four large ships thus engaged. The Salem ships also went to the
Southern seas, Japan and Africa. This trade gave its people great
wealth and influence, and it was said, about 1810, that a Salem
merchant was then the largest shipowner in the world. But this has
retired into the dim past, and now it is a restful city of about forty
thousand people, its leading townsmen, the descendants of the
merchants and captains, living in comfortable mansions surrounding the
Common and along the quiet elm-shaded streets in the residential
section. The rest of the population have gone into shoemaking and
other manufactures.

George Peabody, the philanthropist, was the most noted citizen of
Salem, born in the suburb of Danvers (since changed to Peabody) in
1795, and, dying in 1869, his remains rest in Harmony Grove Cemetery.
In the Peabody Institute, which he founded in Danvers, is kept as a
sacred relic Queen Victoria's portrait, her gift to him in recognition
of his benefactions. General Putnam, Nathaniel Bowditch, William H.
Prescott, the historian, W. W. Story, the sculptor, and Nathaniel
Hawthorne, were natives of Salem. The East India Marine Hall is its
most noted institution, a fine building filled with a remarkable
Oriental collection, gathered in the many voyages made by Salem ships,
and also having a valuable Natural History Museum, designed to show
the development of animal life. In the Essex Institute are interesting
historical paintings and relics, including the charter given by King
Charles I. to the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Also, carefully kept
near by, is the original "First Church," built in 1634 for the
organization formed in 1629, and of which Roger Williams was the
pastor before the Puritans banished him from the colony. When the
enlarging congregation built a more spacious church, this quaint
little house, with its high-pointed roof, diamond-paned windows and
gallery, which is revered as the shrine of Salem, was removed to its
present location. In Essex Street is also the old "Roger Williams
House," a low-roofed structure with a little shop in front, his home
for a brief period in 1635-36. This house has acquired additional fame
as a relic of the witchcraft days, for in it was held the court trying
some of the witches in 1692, who were afterwards taken to the gallows
or Witch Hill, on the western verge of the town, to be put to death.
The witchcraft delusion began in the Danvers suburb and soon overran
most of New England, the prosecutions continuing more than a year.
Nineteen proven witches were executed, while one, under the ancient
English law, was pressed to death for standing mute when told to
plead. Old Cotton Mather, the historian and pastor, was a leader in
the movement against the witches.

The North Shore, beyond Salem Harbor, stretches far along the
rock-bound coast of Cape Ann. Here all the old fishing towns have
become modern villa-studded summer resorts, picturesque and attractive
in their newer development. Beverley, Manchester-by-the-Sea and
Magnolia all have grand headlands and fine beaches. Beverley also has
shoe-factories, and is proud of the memory of Nathan Dane, the eminent
jurist, who named Dane Hall, the Harvard Law School. Manchester has
the "Singing Beach," where the white sand, when stirred, emits a
musical sound. Magnolia, on a rocky bluff, is adjoined by the
attractive Crescent Beach, and has around it very fine woodland. To
the eastward is Rafe's Chasm, sixty feet deep and only a few feet
wide, and off shore, almost opposite, is the bleak reef of Norman's
Woe. Inland is Wenham Lake, near Beverley, noted for its ice supply,
upon which all these places depend, while beyond, the Ipswich River
comes down through the pleasant town of Ipswich, covering both banks
with houses, and flowing into Ipswich Bay north of the peninsula of
Cape Ann. To the westward is Andover, where the thrifty Puritan
Fathers, having bought the domain from the Indians "for twenty-six
dollars and sixty-four cents and a coat," established the noted
Andover Theological Seminary of the Congregational Church, where its
ablest divines have been taught in what has been called "the school
of the prophets." Here, on "Andover Hill," abstruse theology has been
the ruling influence and intense religious controversies have been
waged, over three thousand clergymen having been graduated. Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here after publishing _Uncle Tom's Cabin_,
and is buried here. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was born here, and wrote
_Gates Ajar_ in the venerable "Phelps House." The Seminary buildings,
the local guidebook tells us, cause visitors to wonder "if orthodox
angels have not lifted up old Harvard and Massachusetts Halls and
carried them by night from Cambridge to Andover Hill." Ipswich, too,
has a famous Seminary, but it is for the opposite sex. We are told
that one reason for the popularity of Ipswich Female Seminary is that
its location tends to softening the rigors of study, as this is the
place "where Andover theological students are wont to take unto
themselves wives of the daughters of the Puritans." The indented shore
of Ipswich Bay was ancient Agawam, of which Captain John Smith,
coasting along in 1614, recorded in his narrative that he saw "the
many cornfields and delightful groves of Agawam." The fertile valley
of Ipswich River is a veritable oasis among the rocks, moors and
salt-marshes that environ it.


THE MERRIMACK RIVER.

Near the northern boundary of Massachusetts is the famous Merrimack
River, flowing northeastward into the Atlantic, and noted for the
enormous water-powers it provides for the various mill-towns that line
its banks. It is a vigorous stream, having frequent waterfalls and
carrying a powerful current, the name appropriately meaning "the swift
water." Oliver Wendell Holmes writes of it in _The School Boy_:

     "Do pilgrims find their way to Indian Ridge,
     Or journey onward to the far-off bridge,
     And bring to younger ears the story back
     Of the broad stream, the mighty Merrimack?"

The Merrimack drains the southern slopes of the White Mountains, and
takes the outflow of Lake Winnipesaukee, a vast reservoir, the waters
being regulated at its outlet to suit the wants of the mills below. It
flows southward through New Hampshire into Massachusetts, turning
northeast to the ocean. The river passes near Salisbury, where Daniel
Webster was born in 1782; then, seventy-five miles northwest of
Boston, comes to Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, which has a
fine Capitol building and quarries of excellent granite; and eighteen
miles below, it reaches Manchester, the chief city of New Hampshire,
having sixty thousand people and many large mills owned by wealthy
corporations. Here are the Amoskeag Falls (the Indian name meaning the
"fishing-place"), the largest on the Merrimack, having fifty-five feet
descent, and their water-power being utilized through two canals. The
chief products are textile goods, locomotives and steam fire-engines.
Eighteen miles farther southward the Nashua River comes up from the
southwest, having passed the industrial town of Fitchburg on the way,
and here at its confluence with the Merrimack is Nashua, another busy
factory town. At Amherst, not far away, Horace Greeley was born in
1811. Crossing the boundary into Massachusetts, the river comes to the
Pawtucket Falls, having thirty-two feet descent, and furnishing the
water-power, twenty-six miles northwest of Boston, for the great mills
of Lowell, the third city of Massachusetts, having a hundred thousand
people, and spreading along the Merrimack at its confluence with
Concord River, coming up from Concord Bridge of Revolutionary fame.
The first mill was built at Lowell in 1823, and its industries have
assumed a wide range and enormous output, though the operatives are
nearly all French Canadians, and the language heard in this once
Yankee mill-town is now mainly French. The Merrimack, having turned
northeast, next comes to Lawrence, where it descends rapids of
twenty-eight feet in the course of a half-mile. Here the Lawrence
family, of which the noted Abbott Lawrence was the chief, established
a town of cotton and woollen mills, utilizing the rapids by
constructing a huge dam nine hundred feet long and thirty feet high,
in 1845, at a cost of $250,000. Here are the great Pacific Mills,
among the largest textile works in the world, and the city has over
sixty thousand inhabitants. Nine miles farther down the river is
Haverhill, another manufacturing town, with forty thousand people,
largely engaged in shoemaking. The poet John G. Whittier was born in
1807 near Lake Kenoza, the scene of his _Snowbound_, on the
northeastern verge of Haverhill.

Below Haverhill the Merrimack is a navigable, tidal stream, broadening
into a spacious harbor at its mouth in the town of Newbury, where the
"ancient sea-blown city" of Newburyport is built on the southern
shore, while five miles to the westward, on the Pow-wow River, is
Amesbury, long the home of Whittier, who died in 1892, after having
celebrated this whole region in his poems. His house is maintained as
a memorial. Newburyport long since turned its attention from commerce
to making shoes and other manufactures, and it now has about eighteen
thousand population. Its splendid High Street, upon the crest of the
ridge, one of the noted tree-embowered highways of New England,
stretches several miles parallel to the river, down towards the sea,
bordered by the stately mansions of the olden time. The Merrimack
sweeps grandly along in front of them with a broad curve to the ocean,
three miles below. The Newburyport Marine Museum contains foreign
curiosities brought home by the old-time sea captains, and the Public
Library, endowed by George Peabody, occupies an impressive colonial
mansion, which has been flavored by the entertainment of Generals
Washington and Lafayette. The Old South Presbyterian Church has the
body of the famous preacher George Whitefield, who died in Newburyport
in 1770, interred in a vault under the pulpit. In a little wooden
house behind this church, William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist,
was born in 1805. Caleb Cushing the jurist and John B. Gough the
temperance lecturer lived in Newburyport; but its resident who
probably achieved the greatest notoriety in his day was "Lord" Timothy
Dexter, an eccentric merchant of the eighteenth century, who made a
large fortune by singular ventures, among them shipping a cargo of
warming-pans to the West Indies, where they were sold to the planters
at a stiff profit for boiling sugar.

Whittier's home was on the Merrimack, and he has written for the river
a noble invocation:

     "Stream of my fathers! sweetly still
     The sunset rays thy valley fill;
     Poured slantwise down the long defile,
     Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile.

     "Centuries ago, that harbor bar,
     Stretching its length of foam afar,
     And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
     And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand,
     Saw the adventurer's tiny sail
     Flit, stooping from the eastern gale;
     And o'er these woods and waters broke
     The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak,
     As, brightly on the voyager's eye,
     Weary of forest, sea and sky,
     Breaking the dull continuous wood,
     The Merrimack rolled down his flood.

     "Home of my fathers! I have stood
     Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood:
     Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
     Along his frowning Palisade;
     Looked down the Appalachian peak,
     On Juniata's silver streak;
     Have seen along his valley gleam
     The Mohawk's softly winding stream;
     The level light of sunset shine
     Through broad Potomac's hem of pine;
     And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner
     Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna;
     Yet wheresoe'er his step might be,
     Thy wandering child looked back to thee:
     Heard in his dreams thy river's sound
     Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
     The unforgotten swell and roar
     Of waves on thy familiar shore."


THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.

It was in the valley of the Merrimack that Whittier located the scene
of his famous poem, the "Bridal of Pennacook." This American epic
tells--

     "A story of the marriage of the chief
     Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
     Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
     In the old time upon the Merrimack."

Winnepurkit was the son of Nanapashemet, or the New Moon, and was the
Sagamore of Saugus, Naumkeag, and the adjoining domain. He was of
noble blood and valor, and for his bride chose the daughter of
Passaconaway, the great chief, ruling all the tribes in the Merrimack
Valley, who lived at Pennacook, now Concord. Not only was Passaconaway
a mighty chief, but he was also the greatest Powah or wizard of his
time, the colonial annalists gravely telling that he could make trees
dance, waters burn, and green leaves grow in winter, through his
necromancy. When Winnepurkit married this wizard's daughter, great was
the feasting at this "Bridal of Pennacook." Then Passaconaway caused a
select party of warriors to escort his daughter to her husband's home
at Saugus, where they received princely entertainment. Not long
afterwards the bride expressed a wish to again see her father and her
home at Pennacook, whereupon her husband sent her thither, escorted by
a trusty band, who were graciously received and rewarded. After some
time Weetamoo desired to return to Saugus, and her father sent word of
this to his son-in-law by messengers, requesting that a suitable guard
be provided to escort her down. But Winnepurkit liked not this method,
and bade the messengers return with this reply, "That when his wife
departed from him he caused his own men to wait upon her to her
father's territories, as did become him; but now that she had an
intent to return, it did become her father to send her back with a
convoy of his own people, and that it stood not with Winnepurkit's
reputation either to make himself or his men so servile as to fetch
her again." This reply, as may be imagined, ruffled the old chief, and
he sent a sharp answer "That his daughter's blood and birth deserved
more respect than to be slighted in such a manner, and therefore, if
Winnepurkit would have her company, he were best to send or come for
her." Neither would yield the point of Indian etiquette, and the
colonial narrator leaves it to be inferred that she then remained with
her father, though it is supposed she subsequently rejoined her
husband. The poet has made good use of the story, illustrating the
scenery of the region with great felicity, but giving the tale a
highly dramatic ending. Whittier makes the heart-broken bride, in her
effort to return to her husband, launch her canoe upon the swollen
Merrimack above the falls at Amoskeag when a spring freshet was
bringing down masses of ice:

     "Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide,
     The thick, huge ice-blocks threatening either side,
     The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view,
     With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe.

     "Sick and aweary of her lonely life,
     Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife
     Had left her mother's grave, her father's door,
     To seek the wigwam of her chief once more!

     "Down the white rapids, like a sere leaf whirled,
     On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled,
     Empty and broken, circled the canoe,
     In the vexed pool below--but where was Weetamoo?"


CAPE ANN.

Out in front of the region we have been describing projects the famous
"ridge of rocks and roses," the gaunt headland of Cape Ann. This is a
ponderous mass of hornblende granite, advanced forward twelve to
fifteen miles into the ocean, with Thatcher's Island beyond, on which
are the twin lighthouses that guard the mariner, forty-two miles north
of the Highland Light on Cape Cod. The granite hills of the iron-bound
headland are fringed with forests, while jagged reefs and rocky islets
surround it, against which the sea beats in perpetual warfare. The
surface is strewn with boulders, many of large size, and beds of the
finest white sand are interspersed. The Indians called this promontory
Wingaersheek, and when Captain John Smith came along he named it Cape
Tragabizonda, in memory of a Moslem princess who had befriended him
when a prisoner in Constantinople, also calling three small islands
off the cape the "Three Turks' Heads." But King Charles I. would have
none of this, however, and called the headland Cape Ann, after his
royal mother, and thus it has remained. The haven on the southern
side, Gloucester harbor, was early sought as a fishing station, being
known in 1624, and it received its name in 1642, most of the early
settlers coming from Gloucester in England. Champlain found it a safe
harbor when in peril, and writes of it as "Le Beau Port." In
August, 1892, this famous fishery port celebrated its two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary with great fervor.

  [Illustration: _Along the Shore, Cape Anne, Gloucester, Mass._]

The prosperity of Gloucester has come from the fisheries, it being the
greatest cod and mackerel port in America, and having the most
extensive fleet of fishing-boats in the world, exceeding six hundred,
employing over six thousand men. The population approximates thirty
thousand, and it is said their earnings on the fishery product are
over $4,000,000 annually. The earliest form of the Cape Ann
fishing-smack was known as the "Chebacco," two-masted, cat-rigged, and
of ten or twelve tons, made sharp at both ends, and getting the name
from the first place of building, Chebacco Parish, in Ipswich,
adjoining the Cape. From this was developed the popular American build
of vessel known as the schooner, the first one being launched at
Gloucester in 1713. After sliding down the launching-ways, she so
gracefully glided out upon the water that a bystander exclaimed in
admiration, "See how she schoons!" and thus was she unexpectedly
named, for a "schooner" has that style of vessel been ever since
called. Gloucester surrounds its spacious harbor as a broad crescent,
having Ten Pound Island in front sentinelling the entrance to the
inner haven, so named because that was the price said to have been
paid the Indians for it. The deeply indented harbor opens towards the
southwest, being protected from the ocean by the long peninsula of
Eastern Point, having a fort and lighthouse on its extremity. Some
seventy wharves jut out from the circular head of the bay, with
granite hills rising behind, up which the town is terraced. Shipping
of all kinds are scattered about, including large salt-laden ships,
while fishermen and sailors wander through the streets and assemble
around the docks, spinning yarns and preparing for fishing ventures
out to the "Banks." The odd old town around the harbor has seen little
change for years, but the newer portions are greatly improved, having
many imposing buildings, including a fine City Hall. The numerous
churches have gained for it the title of "Many-spired Gloucester," and
no place could disclose more picturesque sea views.

But the fishery interest pervades the whole town, dwarfing everything
else. The main street winds about the head of the harbor, bending with
the sinuosities of the shore, and from it other streets, without much
regularity, go down to the wharves. Fishing-boats are everywhere, with
new ones building, and on most of the open spaces are "cod-flakes," or
drying-places, where the fish are piled when first landed, preparatory
to being cut up and packed in the extensive packing-houses adjoining
the wharves. Here many hundreds are employed in preparing the fish for
market, both men and women working. The best fish are either packed
whole or cut into squares, so they may be pressed by machinery into
what are known as "cod-bricks," one and two-pound bricks being put
into forty-pound boxes for shipment. When packed whole, the best fish
are known as "white clover," in this stage of what is called the
fishery "haymaking." This fish-packing is an enormous industry, and
the Gloucester product goes to all parts of the world. But the fishery
has its sombre side; the vessels are small, rarely over one hundred
tons, and the crews are numerous, so that wrecks and loss of life are
frequent. Often a tremendous storm will destroy a whole fleet on the
"Banks," with no tidings ever received; and scarcely a family exists
in Gloucester or its neighborhood that has not lost a member at sea.
Sometimes the badges of mourning are universal.

An enormous development of rocks and boulders is seen everywhere in
and around Gloucester. The houses are built upon rocks, the sea beats
against rocks; but though excellent building-material is here, the
houses are mostly of wood throughout the whole Cape Ann district.
There is almost universally an ocean outlook over a sea of deepest
blue. The outer extremity of the harbor to the westward is a long
granite ridge ending in the popular watering-place of Magnolia Point.
Down on the Eastern Point, alongside its terminating lighthouse, is a
curious granitic formation, the rocks reproducing an elderly dame with
muffled form and apron, known as "Mother Ann," this rude image being
locally regarded as representing, in the eternal granite, the lady
who named the Cape, the royal mother of King Charles I. The white
flashing light upon Ten Pound Island between them is said to have for
one of its chief duties the guiding of the mariner past the
treacherous reefs of Norman's Woe, just west of the harbor entrance,
which Longfellow has immortalized in his poem _The Wreck of the
Hesperus_. One "Goodman Norman" and his son were among the first
settlers near there, and hence the name, but no record is found as to
the "Woe" he may have had. Neither is it known that any wreck ever
occurred on this famous reef. In the winter of 1839 a terrific storm
caused many disasters around Cape Ann, and forty dead bodies, one
being a woman lashed to a spar, were washed on the Gloucester shore.
Longfellow read in a newspaper the story of these wrecks and the
horrible details, one of the vessels being named the "Hesperus," and
he somewhere saw a reference to "Norman's Woe." This name so impressed
him that he determined to write a ballad on the wrecks. Late one
night, as he sat by the fireside smoking his pipe, he conjured up the
vivid scene and wrote the ballad. He retired to bed, but, as he
relates, it was not to sleep; new thoughts crowded his mind, and he
rose and added them to the ballad, and at three o'clock in the morning
had finished his immortal poem. There was no such wreck at the place,
but his genius has associated it with the iron-bound coast of Cape
Ann, and Norman's Woe is a monument consecrated to one of America's
greatest poets.

     "It was the schooner Hesperus
       That sailed the wintry sea;
     And the skipper had taken his little daughter
       To bear him company.

     "And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
       Through the whistling sleet and snow,
     Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
       Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

     "She struck where the white and fleecy waves
       Looked soft as carded wool,
     But the cruel rocks they gored her sides
       Like the horns of an angry bull.

     "Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
       With the masts went by the board;
     Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
       Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

     "At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach,
       A fisherman stood aghast,
     To see the form of a maiden fair,
       Lashed close to a drifting mast.

     "The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
       The salt tears in her eyes;
     And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
       On the billows fall and rise.

     "Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
       In the midnight and the snow!
     Christ save us all from a death like this
       On the reef of Norman's Woe!"


THE LAND'S END.

The impressive scenery and bold picturesqueness all about attract many
artists, who haunt the rocks and sea views of Cape Ann. The whole
district is full of summer-homes, with flower-gardens and shrubbery
amid the rocks and boulders, and the cliffs and ocean presenting an
endless variety of changing scenery. The outer extremity of the Cape,
long called Halibut Point, has been modernized into the Land's End,
thus being rightly named as the termination of the great Massachusetts
granite ridge, which falls away sharply into the sea. Upon the one
hand Pigeon Cove, with its adjacent Sandy Bay, indents the rocky
buttress, while upon the other side is Whale Cove. Just off the Land's
End is the noted Thatcher's Island, low-lying on the sea, elongated,
narrow and barren, with its tall twin lighthouses, and having nearby,
in front of Whale Cove, the diminutive Milk Island. To the northward,
off Pigeon Cove, is another barren rock surmounted by a lighthouse,
Straitsmouth Island. These three outlying islands were the "Three
Turks' Heads," as originally named by Captain John Smith. Thatcher's
Island has about eighty acres of mainly gravelly surface strewn with
boulders, being named from Anthony Thatcher's shipwreck there in 1635
in the most awful tempest known to colonial New England. Rockport is a
town of quarries extended around Sandy Bay, protected by breakwaters,
behind which vessels come to load stone almost alongside the quarry.
Pigeon Cove is the port for shipping stone taken out of Pigeon Hill,
where the granite ridge is humped up into a grand eminence.
Lanesville, to the north, is another large exporter of paving-blocks
and building-stone. Alongside is Folly Point, guarding Folly Cove, at
the northeastern extremity of the Cape, and to the westward are the
villages of Bay View and Annisquam, with more quarries, and having,
not far away, flowing out to Ipswich Bay through a lovely valley in
the very heart of the Cape, the attractive little Squam River. The
people of Cape Ann outside of Gloucester are almost all quarrymen,
their product, largely paving-blocks, being shipped to all the
seaboard cities. So extensive is this trade that it is difficult to
decide which now brings the district most profit, the granite or the
fish. There is no doubt, however, that the greatest fame of this
celebrated Cape comes from its fisheries and the venturesome men who
make them so successful. Edmund Burke, in the British House of
Commons, in 1774, thus spoke of these Massachusetts fishermen: "No sea
but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness
of their toils; neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity
of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise,
ever carried their most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent
to which it has been pursued by this recent people--a people who are
yet in the gristle, and not yet hardened into manhood."

For three centuries, almost, this perilous trade has been carried on,
and they are fully as daring and even more enterprising now than in
the colonial days. Thus Whittier describes them:

     "Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's Bank,
       Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;
     Through storm and wave and blinding mist, stout are the hearts
         which man
       The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.

     "The cold North light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms
       Bent grimly o'er their straining lines, or wrestling with the
         storms;
     Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
       They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home."




THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF

NARRAGANSETT.




XVI.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF NARRAGANSETT.

     The State of Rhode Island -- Narragansett Bay -- Point
     Judith -- Aquidneck -- Conanicut Island -- Jamestown --
     Beaver Tail Light -- Patience, Hope and Despair Islands --
     The Starved Goat -- Durfee Hill -- Narragansett Indians --
     Canonicus -- Miantonomoh -- The Narragansett Fort Fight --
     Uncas -- Norwich -- Sachem's Plain -- Nanunteno -- Yantic
     Falls -- Narragansett Pier -- Commodore Perry -- Stuart the
     Artist -- Wickford -- Clams -- Rocky Point -- Blackstone
     River -- Seeconk River -- Vinland -- Roger Williams -- What
     Cheer Rock -- Providence -- General Burnside -- Malbone's
     Masterpiece -- Brown University -- Pawtucket -- Samuel
     Slater -- Central and Valley Falls -- William Blackstone --
     Study Hill -- Woonsocket -- Worcester -- George Bancroft --
     Lake Quinsigamond -- Ware -- Mount Hope Bay -- The Vikings
     -- Taunton Great River -- Bristol Neck -- Taunton --
     Dighton Rock -- The Skeleton in Armor -- Bristol -- Mount
     Hope -- King Philip -- Last of the Wampanoags -- Massasoit
     -- Death of Philip -- Fall River -- Watuppa Ponds --
     Newport -- Brenton's Point -- Fort Adams -- William
     Coddington -- Bishop Berkeley -- The Cliff Walk -- Newport
     Cottages -- The Casino -- Bellevue Avenue -- Judah Touro --
     Touro Park -- The Old Stone Mill -- Buzzard's Bay --
     Acushnet River -- New Bedford -- The Whale Fishery --
     Clark's Point -- Fort Taber -- Nonquitt -- Vineyard Sound
     -- Bartholomew Gosnold -- No Man's Land -- Elizabeth
     Islands -- Cuttyhunk -- Sakonnet Point -- Hen and Chickens
     -- Sow and Pigs -- Gay Head -- Naushon -- Penikese --
     Nashawena -- Pasque Island -- James Bowdoin -- Wood's Holl
     -- Martha's Vineyard -- Vineyard Haven -- Thomas Mayhew --
     Cottage City -- Edgartown -- Chappaquidick Island -- Cape
     Poge -- Nantucket -- Manshope -- Thomas Macy -- Wesco --
     Whaling -- Nantucket Sound -- Nantucket Shoals -- Nantucket
     Town -- Siasconset -- Wrecks.


THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.

Narragansett Bay is one of the finest harbors on the New England
coast. It stretches thirty miles inland, the rivers emptying into it
making the water-power for the numerous and extensive textile
factories of Rhode Island, which embraces the shores surrounding and
the islands within the bay. It opens broadly, having beautiful shores,
lined with pleasant beaches which dissolve into low cliffs and
water-worn crags; for the character of the coast gradually changes
from the sandy borders of Long Island Sound to the rocks of New
England. Its western boundary, stretching far out into the sea, is the
famous Point Judith, a long, low, narrow and protruding sandspit
thrust into the Atlantic, a headland dreaded by the traveller, to whom
"rounding Point Judith" and its brilliant flashing beacon, thus
changing the course over the long ocean swells, when voyaging upon a
Sound steamer, means a great deal in the way of tribute to Neptune.
This headland was always feared by the mariner, and we are
romantically told that in the colonial days a storm-tossed vessel was
driven in towards this shore, her anxious skipper at the wheel, when
suddenly his bright-eyed daughter, Judith, called out, "Land, father,
I see the land!" His dim vision not discerning it, he shouted, "Where
away? Point, Judith, point!" She pointed; he was warned; and quickly
changing the course, escaped disaster. This story was often repeated,
so that in time the sailors gave her name to the headland. It is an
interesting tale, but there are people, more prosaic, who insist that
the Point was really named after Judith Quincy, wife of John Hull, the
coiner of the ancient "pine-tree shillings," who bought the land there
from the Indians. But, however named, and whoever the sponsor, Judith
is usually well-remembered by those circumnavigating the dreaded
Point.

Within Narragansett Bay, the chief island is Aquidneck, or Rhode
Island, about fifteen miles long and of much fertility, having the
best farm land in New England, and at the southern end the noted
watering-place of Newport. This island furnishes the first half of the
long official title of the little State--"Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations." The memory of the old Narragansett chieftain, Canonicus,
is preserved in Conanicut Island, west of Rhode Island, and seven
miles long, there being between the two islands the capacious
anchorage-ground of Newport Harbor. This island in 1678 was named
Jamestown in honor of King James, and at its southern end, near the
ruins of an old British fort, is the famous Beaver Tail Light, the
guide into Newport harbor, the oldest lighthouse in America, dating
from 1667. Roger Williams, who founded the "Providence Plantations,"
distributed various names to the other islands, several of them now
popular resorts, among these titles, which represent the varying
phases of his early emotions, being Prudence, Patience, Hope and
Despair, while some later colonists with different ideas, evidently
named Dutch Island, Hog Island, and the Starved Goat. Rhode Island is
the smallest State in the Union, though among the first in
manufactures, and in wealth proportionately to population. It has
barely twelve hundred square miles of surface, of which more than
one-eighth is water, and the highest land, Durfee Hill, is elevated
only eight hundred feet.


THE LAND OF THE NARRAGANSETTS.

The region back of Point Judith and around Narragansett Bay was the
home of the Narragansett Indians, who were early made, by Roger
Williams, the friends of the white man. When the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, there were said to be thirty thousand of them, but they were
afterwards wasted by pestilence, and when Williams fled to Providence
and was received by them, he said they had twelve towns within twenty
miles, and five thousand warriors. They fought the Pequots, to the
westward, but were friendly with the tribes of Massachusetts, to which
they really gave the name, for, living in a comparatively flat
country, they described these tribes as belonging "near the great
hills or mountains," which is the literal meaning of the word, they
telling Williams it meant the many hills of that State, including the
"blue hills of Milton." Canonicus and Miantonomoh were the great
chiefs of the Narragansetts, described by the early colonists as wise,
brave and magnanimous. The former made the grant of the lands at
Providence to Roger Williams, and was his firm friend. The latter, the
nephew and successor of Canonicus, joined the Puritans under Mason at
Pequot Hill in the attack and defeat of the Pequots. In their original
theology they looked forward to a mystic realm in the far southwest
where the gods and pure spirits dwelt, while the souls of murderers,
thieves and liars were doomed forever to wander abroad. Their
friendship with the whites ended in 1675, however, when King Philip
incited them to join in his war, and the colonists attacked them on a
hill in a pine and cedar swamp near Kingston, west of Narragansett
Bay, where scanty remains still exist of their fortifications. It was
in December, amid the winter snows, and after a furious struggle their
wigwams were fired, and in the most blinding confusion a band of
warriors dashed out and covered the retreat of fully three thousand of
their people, leaving the whites in possession. Both sides had heavy
losses, but the result was the scattering and final annihilation of
the tribe. This was the famous "Fort Fight in Narragansett," of which
the memorial of the Connecticut Legislature says, "The bitter cold,
the tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numerous and
stubborn enemy they contended with for their God, King and country,
be their trophies over death."

To the westward, beyond the Rhode Island border, lived Uncas, the
enemy of Miantonomoh. His domain extended to the river Thames, and he
had been a chief of the Pequots, who revolted in 1634 against the
Sachem Sassacus and joined the Mohicans, being chosen their chief
sachem. He was friendly to the colonists, and by sagacious alliances
with them increased the power of his tribe, which had previously been
in a relatively subordinate position. He helped defeat the Pequots,
and became so strong that he was described as the "most powerful and
prosperous prince in New England." He sold the shores of the Thames
River to the whites, reserving a small tract on the river bank, and in
1660 disposed of the present site of Norwich, Connecticut, to a
nomadic church from Saybrook, for £70. He held his people friendly to
the colonists, even in King Philip's war, frequently visited their
capitals at Hartford and Boston, and after reigning nearly fifty
years, died in 1683. He is described as crafty, cruel and rapacious,
but, as the head of a savage people, far-sighted and sagacious;
skillful and fearless as a military leader. His holding aloof from the
Indian alliances adverse to the colonists and fighting with the whites
against the powerful hostile tribes, are regarded as having really
saved colonial New England. His quarrel with Miantonomoh resulted in
the battle of Sachem's Plain, on the outskirts of Norwich, in 1643.
This was then a Mohican village, and Miantonomoh marched to attack it
with nine hundred Narragansetts, Uncas defending with five hundred
warriors. By a preconcerted plan, Uncas invited him to a parley, and
while it was going on, and the Narragansetts were off their guard, the
Mohicans made a sudden onslaught, defeating and pursuing them for a
long distance. Hundreds of the Narragansetts were slain, and
Miantonomoh, being captured, was taken prisoner to the English at
Hartford. He was ultimately surrendered back to Uncas, who took him
again to the Sachem's Plain, where he was put to death, the historian
says, "by the advice and consent of the English magistrates and
elders." A monument marks the place of execution, inscribed
"Miantonomoh, 1643." His son, Nanunteno, who succeeded, led the tribe
into King Philip's war, as he hated the colonists, and being captured,
he declined to treat with them for a pardon, saying, when threatened
with death, "I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft or I
have spoken anything unworthy of myself," whereupon he was shot. He
was "acting herein," says old Cotton Mather, "as if, by a Pythagorean
metempsychosis, some old Roman ghost had possessed the body of this
Western Pagan, like Attilius Regulus."

A few miles south of Norwich is the ancient fortress of Uncas on a
hill, and a handful of weak half-breeds are all that remain of his
famous people. In the city, on Sachem Street, near the Yantic Falls,
is a little cemetery in a cluster of pine trees. This, centuries ago,
was the burial-place of the Mohican chiefs, and the whole line of
sachems is here interred, down to the last of them, Mazeen, buried in
1826 in the presence of a small remnant of the tribe. Ancient stones
mark their graves, and in the centre is an obelisk in memory of Uncas,
of which President Andrew Jackson laid the foundation-stone. The
Yantic and Shetucket Rivers unite at Norwich to form the Thames, and
the town has arisen around their admirable water-powers, which serve
many mills. The city has about twenty thousand people, being in a
beautiful situation between and on the acclivities adjoining the two
rivers. The praises of the Yantic Falls were sung by Mrs. Sigourney
and others, but their glory has departed, for the stream has been
diverted into another channel, leaving a deep cutting in the hard
rock, the bottom filled with curiously-piled and water-worn boulders.


ASCENDING NARRAGANSETT BAY.

On the western shore of Narragansett Bay, just inside of Point Judith,
stood the little fishing village of Narragansett Pier, originally
named from its ancient, sea-battered and ruined pier, built for a
breakwater in early times, which has since become one of the most
fashionable New England coast resorts, having many large hotels
spreading in imposing array along the shore. The smooth sands of its
bathing-beach look out upon Newport far over the bay and behind
Conanicut Island in front. Upon the southern border of this beach
there are precipitous cliffs against which the Atlantic Ocean breakers
dash, the last rocks on the coast of the United States until the
Florida reefs are reached. The famous Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
was a native of this town, born in 1785, a midshipman in the war with
Tripoli, and the victor in the naval battle on Lake Erie in 1813. His
brother, Commodore M. C. Perry, born in Newport in 1794, commanded the
noted expedition to Japan in 1852-54, and concluded the treaty with
that country, cementing the friendly relations with the United States
ever since existing. The celebrated portrait painter Gilbert Stuart
was also a native of this place, born in 1755, his portrait of
Washington being regarded as the best existing. The western shores of
the bay north of the Pier are lined with coast resorts. Here is quaint
old Wickford, on Coweset Bay, which has a ferry twelve miles across to
Newport, and still exhibits the "Rolling Rock," where Canonicus and
Roger Williams are said to have signed their compact, and the old
Blockhouse built for a defense in 1641. Farther northward is the
ancient Shawomet, whither Samuel Gorton came, changing its name to Old
Warwick in honor of his friend and patron, the Earl of Warwick. It
appears that Gorton, a layman, who had a penchant for theological
disputation, made himself obnoxious to the Plymouth Puritans in the
early colonial time, and they banished him in 1637. He went to Newport
and expressed his opinions too freely, and was banished thence in
1641. Wandering to Providence, he was driven from there to Cranston,
nearby, the next year, and again expelled from Cranston a few months
later, and he finally settled at Shawomet. But they still pursued him,
and in 1643 a detachment of troops came from Boston and took him and
ten others back as prisoners, and they were tried and sentenced as
"damnable heretics" to banishment from America. Gorton sought
Warwick's protection, and the Earl sent him back to Shawomet, where he
lived undisturbed, but, after changing its name, spent the rest of his
life in publishing pamphlets attacking Massachusetts and Rhode Island,
among them being the "Antidote Against Pharisaic Teachers" and
"Simplicitie's Defence against Seven-Headed Policy." The next thing of
note occurring in Warwick was the disfranchisement, in 1652, of the
clerk of the unfortunate town on seven charges: first, calling the
officers of the town rogues and thieves; second, calling all the town
rogues and thieves; third, threatening to kill all the mares in town,
etc. In 1676 the Indians attacked and burnt it, and since, it has had
little history. General Greene was a native of Warwick, born in 1742.

In sailing up Narragansett Bay, one is struck with the universality
of the prolific crop of these waters,--the clam. Many of the
inhabitants seem to spend much of their time gathering them; men and
boys in boats are dredging all the coves and shallows for the clams,
seizing enormous numbers by the skillful use of their handy double
rakes. These people are proud of their home institution, the Rhode
Island "clam-bake," which is a main-stay of all the shore resorts, and
is considered a connecting link, binding them to the Narragansetts,
who originated it. To properly conduct the "clam-bake" a wood fire is
built in the open air, upon a layer of large stones, and when these
are sufficiently heated, the embers and ashes are swept off, the hot
stones covered with sea-weed, and clams in the shells, with other
delicacies, put upon it, being enveloped by masses of sea-weed and
sail-cloths to keep in the steam. The clams are thus baked by the
heated stones, and steamed and seasoned by the moisture from the salt
sea-weed. The coverings are then removed, the clams opened, and the
feasting begins. With appetite whetted by the delicious breezes coming
over the bright waters of the bay, the meal is relished beyond
description. There are millions of clams thus consumed, but their
growth is enormous, and the supply seems perennial. The chief of these
places is Rocky Point, a forest-covered promontory, the favorite
resort of the population of the Rhode Island capital, where the
"clam-bakes" have acquired great fame.


ROGER WILLIAMS.

There flows southeastward out of Massachusetts the Blackstone River
into Rhode Island, and going over Pawtucket Falls it then becomes for
a brief space the Pawtucket River, and finally, at its mouth, the
Seeconk River, making part of Providence harbor and one of the heads
of Narragansett Bay. The shores of this river swarm with industrial
operatives, for its valley is one of the greatest regions of textile
mills in the world, and half the people of Rhode Island live in the
chief city on its banks, Providence. Nine centuries ago the Norsemen
are said to have sailed up into this region, which they called
Vinland, but the first settlement was not made until 1636. The brave
and pious Welshman, Roger Williams, the heretical Salem preacher whom
the Puritans in 1635 banished from Massachusetts, went afoot through
the forest to the Seeconk Plains along the lower Blackstone River, and
halting there, lived with the Narragansetts, who were always his firm
friends. But the wrathful Puritans would not long permit this, and
ordered him to move on, so that in the spring of 1636, with five
companions, he embarked in a log canoe and floated down the Seeconk
River, his movements being watched by Indian groups upon the banks. He
crossed over the stream finally, and landed on what has since been
called "What Cheer Rock," on the eastern edge of Providence, thus
named because, when Williams stepped ashore, some of the Indians
saluted him with the pleasant greeting, "What cheer, Notop?"
(friend)--words that are still carefully preserved throughout
Providence and the State in the names of banks, buildings, and various
associations. He regarded this as a decidedly good omen, and started a
settlement, calling it Providence, "in grateful acknowledgment of
God's merciful providence to him in his distress." His exalted piety
was beyond question, and not only is the religious spirit in which the
city was founded indicated by its name, but even in the titles of the
streets are incorporated the cardinal virtues and the higher emotions,
as in Joy Street, Faith Street, Happy Street, Hope Street, Friendship
Street, Benefit Street, Benevolent Street, and many more. We are told
that his early colonists adopted the Indian foods, such as parched
corn, which the aborigines called "anhuminea," from which has come the
name of hominy, and the famous Narragansett mixture of corn and beans,
the "m'sickquatash," which has become succotash.

Roger Williams in Rhode Island, in 1639, became a Baptist, and the
"Society of the First Baptist Church," which he founded that year in
Providence, claims to be the oldest Baptist organization in America.
But Williams seems to have been somewhat unstable, for he only
remained with this church as pastor four years, then withdrawing, as
he had grave doubts of the validity of his own baptism. It appears
that when this church was started, a layman, Ezekiel Holliman, first
baptized Williams, and then Williams baptized Holliman and the others.
When he withdrew, it was not only from the pastoral relation, but he
ceased worshipping with the brethren, and his conscientious scruples
finally brought him to the conclusion that there is "no regularly
constituted church on earth, nor any person authorized to administer
any church ordinance, nor could there be until new apostles were sent
by the great Head of the Church, for whose coming he was seeking."
During many years thereafter he held his religious meetings in a
grove. This venerable Baptist society which Roger Williams founded
built a new church in 1726, and in its honor they had a "grand
dinner." The elaborate banquet of those primitive days consisted of
the whole congregation dining upon one sheep, one pound of butter, two
loaves of bread, and a peck of peas, at a cost of twenty-seven
shillings. Their white wooden church, with its surmounting steeple,
overlooks the city from a slope rising above Providence River.


THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE.

Providence is beautifully situated on the hills at the head of
Narragansett Bay, and its centre is a fine new Union Railway Station,
completed in 1897. Near by is the massive City Hall, one of the chief
public buildings in Rhode Island, a granite structure costing
$1,500,000. In high relief upon its front is a medallion bust of the
founder of the little State, Roger Williams, wearing the typical
sugar-loaf hat. A feature of this impressive building is the
magnificent stair-hall, lighted from above; and from the surmounting
tower there is a wide view over the city and suburbs, and far down the
bay towards the ocean. In front is the public square, with a stately
Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument of blue Westerly granite, bearing the
names of nearly seventeen hundred men of Rhode Island who fell in the
Civil War, and guarded by well-executed bronze statues representing
the different arms of the service. Facing it is a statue in heroic
bronze of the Rhode Island General Burnside, who died in 1881. These
works are artistic, but the priceless art gem in Providence is the
exquisite little picture of "The Hours," painted on a sheet of ivory
six by seven inches, in London, by the great portrait and miniature
painter, Edward Greene Malbone, of Newport--the three Grecian nymphs,
Eunomia, Dice and Irene, representing the Past, Present and Future.
The President of the Royal Academy said of it, "I have seen a picture,
painted by a young man of the name of Malbone, which no man in England
could excel." This is his masterpiece, one of the most admired
paintings in America, and is kept carefully in the Athenæum (to which
it was presented by a public subscription in 1853), a solid little
granite house built on the hillside, not far from the Baptist church.

Farther up this hill are the campus and rows of buildings of Brown
University, the great Rhode Island Baptist College with seven hundred
students, founded in 1764, and bearing the name of one of the leading
families of the wealthy manufacturing house of Brown & Ives. The
campus is shaded with fine old elms, and some of the newer buildings
are handsome and elaborate structures. Around this university, and all
through the extensive suburbs, are the splendid homes of the
capitalists and mill-owners of the State, who have made this hill,
rising between the Providence and Seeconk Rivers, the most attractive
residential section. Benefit Street, on the hill, is lined with the
palaces of these textile millionaires. Providence is, in fact, a city
of many hills, and its houses are mostly of wood. Extensive sections
can be traversed without seeing a single brick or stone building.
There is a large railway traffic, but only a small trade by sea,
beyond bringing coal and cotton, though the city formerly enjoyed an
extensive China trade. Like all the Rhode Island towns it has many
mills and much wealth, and there are thirty or forty banks to take
care of its money. Besides textiles, its mills make locomotives and
Corliss steam-engines, silverware and jewelry, cigars, rifles and
stoves, gimlet-pointed wood-screws, tortoise-shell work and cocoanut
dippers, cottonseed and peanut oils, and many other things, not
overlooking the famous "Pain-killer," for the ills of humanity, which
is consumed by the hundred thousand gallons in all parts of the world.
The "Pain-killer" factory was always one of the lions of the town,
although now the new Rhode Island State House, finished in 1898, also
commands great public admiration. This is a huge dome-surmounted
building in Renaissance, constructed of Georgia marble and pink
granite. But Providence, above everything else, reveres the memory of
Roger Williams, who died in 1683, and is interred in the old North
Burying Ground. On Abbott Street is carefully preserved, as a precious
relic, a small old house with quaint peaked roof, built in the
seventeenth century, and reverenced as the place where he held some of
his religious meetings. His bronze statue ornaments the Roger Williams
Park to which Broad Street leads, a beautiful tract of about one
hundred acres, surrounding the quaint gambrel-roofed house in which
lived his great-great-granddaughter, Betsy Williams, for many years,
who gave this domain to the city in 1871, as her tribute to his
memory. Here are refreshments served at "What Cheer Cottage." But the
most treasured memorial of the founder is his original landing-place
of "What Cheer Rock," where the Indians greeted him alongside the
Seeconk River,--a pile of slaty rocks, enclosed by a railing, near the
foot of Williams Street, down by the waterside.


PROVIDENCE TO WORCESTER.

We ascend the Seeconk River to Pawtucket, about five miles distant, a
busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, noted as the place
where Samuel Slater introduced the cotton manufacture into the United
States in 1790, the original Slater mill still standing. The Pawtucket
Falls of fifty feet give the valuable water-power which has made the
place, and here are some of the greatest thread factories in the
world. The town extends up into the villages of Central and Valley
Falls, and the enormous power furnished by the river is drawn upon at
different levels from several dams. All sorts of cotton textiles,
muslins and calicoes are made, and the slopes running up from the
valley, with the plateaus above, are covered with the operatives'
houses. This town has the most attractive situation on the Blackstone
River, which here changes its name to the Pawtucket, and finally to
the Seeconk. Samuel Slater, who started it, was a native of Belper, in
Derbyshire, England, having worked there for both Strutt and
Arkwright, the fathers of the textile industries. Learning that
American bounties had been offered for the introduction of Arkwright's
patents in cotton-spinning, he crossed the ocean, landing at Newport
in 1789. Here he heard that Moses Brown had attempted cotton-spinning
by machinery in Rhode Island. He wrote Brown, telling what he could
do, and received a reply in which Brown said his attempt had been
unsuccessful, and added: "If thou canst do this thing, I invite thee
to come to Rhode Island and have the credit and the profit of
introducing cotton manufacture into America." Slater went to
Pawtucket, and on December 21, 1790, he started three carding-machines
and spinning-frames of seventy-two spindles. He afterwards became very
prominent, building large mills at Pawtucket and elsewhere, and the
impetus thus given the place made it the leading American
manufacturing centre for a half-century. The Indian name of the falls
was retained by the city.

The Blackstone River was named after the recluse Anglican clergyman,
Rev. William Blackstone, who, as heretofore stated, first settled
Boston about 1625. When he found, after a brief experience, that he
could not get on with the Puritan colonists, who came in there too
numerously, he sold out and "retired into the wilderness." He wandered
for over forty miles into the forests, and during more than forty
years made his home on the banks of this stream among the Indians, not
far above Pawtucket Falls. He lived there in his hermit home at Study
Hill among his books, the river rushing by, and the Providence and
Worcester Branch of the New Haven Consolidated Railroad now cuts its
route deeply through his hill, running among the dams, and in some
cases over them, on its way up the busy valley of this very crooked
river. Its waters, which do such good service for so many mills,
become more and more polluted as they descend, so that its lower
course is a malodorous and dark-colored stream. The river is about
forty-five miles long, rising in the hills adjacent to Worcester and
flowing in winding reaches towards the southeast, descending over five
hundred feet to Providence. The mills, however, have grown vastly
beyond its capacity as a water-power, so that auxiliary steam is now
largely used. Numerous ponds and other feeders accumulate a vast
amount of water for the Blackstone in Southern Massachusetts, and its
lower course for nearly thirty miles is a succession of dams, canals
and mills, making one of the greatest factory districts in existence.
Over a half-million people work and live in this busy valley, the
operatives being chiefly French Canadians, Swedes, and the various
British races, the French preponderating in some of the towns. The
Yankees long ago left, seeking better pay elsewhere, being replaced by
a more contented people satisfied to work in mills. Most of the huge
factories lining the river are owned by wealthy corporations having
their head offices in Boston or Providence, and it is said that, the
buildings being without signs or names, many of the operatives
actually do not know who they work for. These mills are four and five
stories high, often a thousand feet long, with hundreds of windows and
ponderous stairway-towers.

Ascending the river, the factory settlements of Lonsdale, Ashton,
Albion and Manville are passed, and we come to Woonsocket Hill, one of
the highest in Rhode Island. Here the river goes around various bends
admirably arranged for conducting its waters through the mills, and
the town of Woonsocket is built where twenty thousand people make
cotton and woollen cloths, the noted "Harris cassimere" having been
long the chief manufacture at the Social Mills. To the northward,
Woonsocket spreads into the towns of Blackstone and Waterford, also
industrial hives; and finally, having followed the river up to its
sources, the route leads to Worcester, the second city of
Massachusetts, forty-five miles west of Boston, styled the "heart of
the Commonwealth," with a population of over one hundred thousand
people. Its chief newspaper, the _Massachusetts Spy_, is noted as
having actually started as a spy upon the royalists in the exciting
times preceding the Revolutionary War, and is still a prosperous
publication. It was at a Worcester banquet in 1776 that the "Sons of
Freedom" drank the noted toast: "May the freedom and independence of
America endure till the sun grows dim with age and this earth returns
to chaos; perpetual itching without the benefit of scratching to the
enemies of America!" Worcester is a great manufacturing city, but has
almost lost its New England population from the steady Yankee
migration westward, they being replaced in its numerous mills by
French Canadians, Swedes and Irish, the latter predominating. It has a
noble Soldiers' Monument, a splendid railway station, and the fine
buildings of the Massachusetts Lunatic Asylum standing on the highest
hill in the suburbs. Its new white marble City Hall, completed in
1898, is an imposing edifice. The huge Washburn & Moen Wire Works are
on Salisbury Pond, in the outskirts. Among the interesting old
dwellings is the Bancroft House, where the historian, George Bancroft,
was born, in 1800, dying in 1891. The great attraction of Worcester is
Lake Quinsigamond, on the eastern verge, a long, deep, narrow loch,
stretching among the hills four miles away, with little gems of
islands and villa-bordered shores. Scattered over the distant rim of
enclosing hills are several typical Yankee villages, with their
church-spires set against the horizon. Worcester had a chequered
colonial career, the Indians repeatedly driving out the early
settlers, until they built a fortress-like church on the Common, where
each man attended on the Sabbath, carrying his musket. These resolute
colonists were Puritans, bent on enforcing their own ideas, for when a
few Scotch Presbyterians came in 1720, and built a church of that
creed, it was declared a "cradle of heresy" and demolished. A
considerable number of the French Acadians, exiled from Nova Scotia in
the eighteenth century, came to Worcester, and their descendants are
now among its prominent people.

New England, as is well known, was forced to adopt manufacturing,
because the inhabitants could not extract a living from the soil. It
is difficult to say where is the most sterile region, but in
Massachusetts it seems to be generally agreed that the town of Ware,
on the Ware River, northwest of Worcester, is hard to beat in this
respect. It is a picturesquely located mill-village, with a soil that
is stony and sterile. The original grant of the land was made to
soldiers as a reward for bravery in King Philip's War. They thankfully
accepted the gift and went there, but after examination left, and sold
all their domain at the rate of about two cents an acre. President
Dwight, of Yale College, rode through the town, but never wanted to
see it again, saying regretfully, in describing the land: "It is like
self-righteousness; the more a man has of it, the poorer he is."
Someone wrote a poem describing the creation of the place, of which
this a specimen stanza:

     "Dame Nature once, while making land,
     Had refuse left of stone and sand.
     She viewed it well, then threw it down
     Between Coy's Hill and Belchertown,
     And said, 'You paltry stuff, lie there,
     And make a town, and call it Ware.'"


MOUNT HOPE BAY.

On the northeastern verge of Narragansett Bay is Mount Hope Bay, its
shores attractive alike in lovely scenery and the most interesting
tradition. It is also a region of most venerable antiquity in
America. Hither came the ancient Norsemen Vikings, who explored it,
and sojourned there almost a thousand years ago. These wandering
Norsemen, early colonizing Iceland and Greenland, are said to have
discovered the mainland of North America in the tenth century, the
energetic Leif, a son of Eric the Red, afterwards, in the year 1001,
sailing along the American coast, and finding first, Helluland, or the
"Flat Land," supposed to be Newfoundland, then Mark Land, or the "Wood
Land," now Nova Scotia, and Vinland, or the "Vine Land," being the
coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and wintering in
Narragansett and Mount Hope Bays. The next year Leif's brother,
Thorvald, came along these coasts with thirty men, and also passed a
winter in Mount Hope Bay. The following season he sent a party of
explorers hither, and in the year 1004 he again came personally, and
was killed in a skirmish with the Indians, his companions returning to
Greenland. There seem to have been subsequent Norsemen visits, and the
name of Vinland was given by them on account of the profusion of vines
growing on the shores and islands, which was a novelty to these
wanderers from the far north.

Mount Hope Bay is the broadening estuary of Taunton Great River, and
the elongated peninsula of Bristol Neck divides it from Narragansett
Bay to the westward, stretching up to Providence. Upon Taunton Great
River is a magnificent water-power which has produced the success of
Taunton, a busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, where
they make locomotives and tacks, bricks, screws and britannia ware,
its name coming from Taunton in Somersetshire, its founder having been
Elizabeth Pool, a pious Puritan lady of that place. When the first
settlers explored the river they made a wonderful antiquarian
discovery. Upon the shore, below Taunton, and opposite what are now
the gardens and pleasure-grounds of Dighton, was found the famous
"Writing Rock," lying partly submerged by the waterside, and when the
tide is out, presenting a smooth face slightly inclined towards the
river. It is a large greenstone boulder, the color changed to dusky
red by the elements, and it now has the faint impression of
hieroglyphics on its surface that have been almost effaced by the
action of the water. In the early colonial days these marks were very
distinct, and even after the beginning of the nineteenth century they
could be plainly distinguished from the deck of a passing vessel.
These inscriptions on the Dighton rock excited much wonder, and were
generally attributed to the Norsemen. Old Cotton Mather described it,
saying that among the "curiosities of New England, one is that of a
mighty rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high
tide covers part of it, there are very deeply engraved, no man alive
knows how or when, about half a score lines, near ten foot long and a
foot and a half broad, filled with strange characters." Another
learned man speaks of them as "Punic inscriptions which remain to this
day," made by the Phoenicians. Below, and near Fall River, many
years ago, there was exhumed a skeleton in sitting posture, wearing a
brass breast-plate and a belt of brass armor. Much marvel resulted
from this important discovery, which was thought to have produced a
veritable dead Viking, and it is said to have inspired Longfellow's
poem of "The Skeleton in Armor":

     "Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
     Who, with thy hollow breast
     Still in rude armor drest,
       Comest to daunt me!

     "Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
     But with thy fleshless palms
     Stretched, as if asking alms,
       Why dost thou haunt me?"

Thus he answers:

     "I was a Viking old!
     My deeds, though manifold,
     No Skald in song has told,
       No Saga taught thee!

     "Take heed, that in thy verse,
     Thou dost the tale rehearse,
     Else dread a dead man's curse;
       For this I sought thee."

And then the poet unfolds his weird and romantic history. Despite the
Norsemen traditions, however, it is regarded as more probable that
both the hieroglyphics and the skeleton were of Indian origin.


KING PHILIP.

Upon the western shore of Mount Hope Bay is the town of Bristol,
quiet, with wide, grassy, tree-shaded streets leading down to the
waterside, now a pleasant summer-resort, having a ferry over to Fall
River. Farther up the peninsula is Warren, with its factories. In
Bristol rises the splendid isolated eminence of Mount Hope, which
gives the bay its name. Its rounded summit is a mass of quartzite
rock, almost covered by grass. It is hardly three hundred feet high,
but being the most elevated spot anywhere around, has a grand outlook,
every town in Rhode Island being visible from it, and all the islands
of Narragansett Bay, while far to the southward, upon distant
Aquidneck, Newport gleams in the sunlight. Eastward, across Mount Hope
Bay, the city of Fall River, with its rising terraces of huge granite
mills, is built apparently into the sloping side of a ledge of rocks.
Upon this mountain lived the famous chief, King Philip, and from it,
with his warrior band, he sallied forth to carry slaughter and rapine
among the Puritan settlements. The eastern side of Mount Hope falls
off precipitously to the bay, and when he was finally surprised by the
colonists in his lair, he is said to have rolled down this steep
declivity like a barrel. The mountain top is now known as "King
Philip's Seat;" there is a natural excavation in the mountain side,
called "King Philip's Throne;" and from the foot the waters of
"Philip's Spring" flow away, a little purling brook, out to Taunton
River. One disgruntled early colonial annalist described the place as
"Philip's Sty at Mount Hope." The greatest tradition of this region
tells of the ambush, surprise and death of this famous sachem, the
"Last of the Wampanoags."

The name of Wampanoag means "the men of the East Land," or the Indians
to the eastward of Narragansett Bay. When the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, the noted Massasoit was the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoags,
or Pokanokets, whose territory embraced most of the country from
Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod. The tribe had previously numbered thirty
thousand, but a pestilence had reduced them to a small figure, barely
three hundred, not long before the arrival of the "Mayflower."
Massasoit felt his weakness and made friends with the colonists, his
treaties of peace being faithfully kept for a half-century. The old
sachem lived north of Mount Hope, at Sowamset, now the town of Warren,
where his favorite "Massasoit Spring" still pours out its libations.
He died in 1661, at the age of eighty, leaving two sons, Mooanum and
Metacomet. Shortly after his death, these sons went to Plymouth to
confirm the treaties with the whites, and were so much pleased with
their reception that they asked to be given English names. The
colonial court accordingly conferred upon them the names of Alexander
and Philip. The former was chief sachem, but died within a year,
Philip succeeding. During the next decade he lived in comparative
friendliness, but was always unsatisfied and restless. He grew to
distrust the colonists, and never could be made to comprehend their
religion. When John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who converted so many,
preached before him, Philip pulled a button off Eliot's doublet,
saying in contempt that he valued it more than the discourse, a remark
which led pious old Cotton Mather to exclaim, in horror, "the
monster!" It was not long before the peaceful relations were broken,
and, after 1671, Philip travelled among the tribes throughout New
England, exciting them to a crusade against the colonists, and forming
a powerful league, including the Narragansetts, who had been friendly.
The result was the most desolating Indian war from which the colonies
ever suffered. The whites were everywhere attacked, but made heroic
defense, and in 1675-6 they defeated all the tribes, the Narragansetts
and Wampanoags being practically annihilated.


KING PHILIP'S DEATH.

Defeated, and left without resources, the savage king was then hunted
from one place to another, finally seeking refuge in his eyrie on
Mount Hope, with a handful of followers. Here Captain Church attacked
him, and on August 12, 1676, he was killed by a bullet fired by an
Indian. In Church's annals of that terrible war the story is told of
the death of this chief, the last of his line. Philip was ambushed and
completely surprised on the mountain, and running away, rolled down
its side, the Indians trying to escape through a swamp at the foot.
The attacking party was posted around the swamp in couples, hidden
from view. Philip, partly clad, ran directly towards two of the
ambush, an Englishman and an Indian. The former fired, but missed him;
then the Indian fired twice, sending one bullet through his heart and
the other not more than two inches from it. Philip fell dead upon his
face in the mud and water; most of his companions escaped. In Church's
recital is told what followed:

"Captain Church ordered Philip's body to be pulled out of the mire on
to the upland. So some of Captain Church's Indians took hold of him by
his stockings, and some by his small breeches, being otherwise naked,
and drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great,
naked, dirty beast he looked like. Captain Church then said that,
forasmuch as he had caused many an Englishman's body to lie unburied
and rot above ground, not one of his bones should be buried. And,
calling his old executioner, bid him behead and quarter him.
Accordingly he came with his hatchet and stood over him, but before he
struck, he made a small speech, directing it to Philip, and said 'he
had been a very great man, and had made many a man afraid of him, but
so big as he was, he would now chop him in pieces.' And so went to
work and did as he was ordered. Philip having one very remarkable
hand, being very much scarred, occasioned by the splitting of a pistol
in it formerly, Captain Church gave the head and that hand to
Aldermon, the Indian who shot him, to show to such gentlemen as would
bestow gratuities upon him, and accordingly he got many a penny by it.
This being on the last day of the week, the Captain with his company
returned to the island (Aquidneck), tarried there until Tuesday, and
then went off and ranged through all the woods to Plymouth, and
received their premium, which was 30 shillings per head for the
enemies which they had killed or taken, instead of all wages, and
Philip's head went at the same price. Methinks it is scanty reward and
poor encouragement, though it was better than what had been some time
before. For this much they received four shillings and sixpence a man,
which was all the reward they had, except the honor of killing
Philip."

When the party brought Philip's head to Plymouth, the Puritan meeting
was celebrating a solemn thanksgiving, and quoting, again, the words
of old Cotton Mather, "God sent them in the head of a leviathan for a
thanksgiving feast." This head was exposed on a gibbet at Plymouth for
twenty years, as the arch-enemy of the colony. But things were
different afterwards. The "monster" of the seventeenth century became
a martyr in the nineteenth century. Irving wrote King Philip's
biography; Southey was his bard; and Edwin Forrest nobly impersonated
him. Thus the great Metacomet, in the light of history, is regarded as
sinned against as well as sinning, for he was trying to drive the
invader from his native land. The resistless westward march of the
white man overcame him, the first of a long line of famous Indians to
fall in front of American colonization.


FALL RIVER.

Across Mount Hope Bay is Fall River, in Massachusetts, now the leading
American city in cotton-spinning and the manufacture of print cloths.
Its huge granite mills stand in ranks, like the platoons of a marching
regiment, upon the successive rising terraces of the eastern shore.
Nestling among the hills above the town are the extensive Watuppa
ponds, long and narrow lakes, spreading eight or ten miles back upon
the higher plateau. These, with other tributary ponds, cover about
twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small
stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall
River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long,
but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards
distance it descends one hundred and thirty-six feet, thus being
appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered
around this admirable water-power. The mills, however, have grown so
far beyond the ability of the water-wheels that they now run chiefly
by steam, and Fall River has a population approximating one hundred
thousand. The prolific granite quarries in the surrounding hills have
furnished the stone for these imposing mills, and also for the chief
buildings. Although a New England manufacturing city of the first
rank, it is not a Yankee settlement, for the operatives are chiefly
English, Irish, Welsh and French Canadians. When the settlement began,
it was called Freetown, and afterwards Troy, but the name of the
stream finally became so popular that the others were discarded, and
Fall River was adopted officially upon its incorporation as a city.
The rocky environment enabled it to cheaply construct the grand mill
buildings, and thus had much to do with its success.


NEWPORT OF AQUIDNECK.

The eastern side of Narragansett Bay is chiefly occupied by Aquidneck,
or Rhode Island, upon which is the queen of American seaside resorts,
Newport. Aquidneck is the Indian "Isle of Peace," the word literally
meaning "floating on the water," and its southwestern extremity
broadens into a wide peninsula of almost level and quite fertile land,
making a plateau elevated about fifty feet above the sea. The island
is fifteen miles long and from three to four miles wide, and this
plateau rests upon rock, the strata making cliffs all around it, with
coves worked into them by the waters, presenting smooth sand beaches
having intervening bold promontories. The southeastern border of this
plateau, facing the Atlantic, has an irregular front of little bays
and projections, with the waves dashing against the bases of the
cliffs and among the rocks profusely strewn beyond them. Behind the
western extremity of the island is Brenton's Point, projecting in such
a way as to protect the inner harbor of Newport. Here are the wharves,
facing the westward, and the ancient part of the town, its narrow
streets and older houses covering considerable surface. The harbor is
protected by a breakwater, and beyond is Conanicut Island. This was
"Charming Newport of Aquidneck," as the colonial histories recorded
it, then a leading seaport of New England. Thames Street, fronting it,
was, in the eighteenth century, one of the busiest highways of
America. Protecting the harbor entrance, upon Brenton's Point, is Fort
Adams, which was a formidable fortification before modern-gunnery
improvements superseded the old systems, and, next to Fortress Monroe,
it is the largest defensive work in the United States, having
accommodations for a garrison of three thousand men. It was built
during the Presidency of John Adams, and named for him, being then
hurried to completion as a defense against French attacks, war with
that country seeming to be imminent, and the French particularly
desiring to possess Newport. All around the ancient town, and
spreading over the plateau, to which the surface slopes upward in
gentle ascent from the harbor, is the modern Newport of the American
nineteenth century multi-millionaires. From the older town, southward
across the plateau, stretches the chief street, Bellevue Avenue,
through the fashionable residential district.

William Coddington, whose name is preserved in various ways, but whose
descendants are said to have been degenerate, founded Newport. He led
a band of dissenters from the Puritan church in Massachusetts and
bought Aquidneck from the Indians, starting his colony in 1639. Most
of the earlier settlers, in fact, were people of various religious
sects driven out of the strictly Puritan New England towns. Having
abandoned England because they objected to a State Church, we are told
that the Puritans forthwith proceeded to set up in Massachusetts what
was very like a State Church of their own, and soon made it hot for
the unbelievers. They drove out both William Blackstone and Roger
Williams. Blackstone, when he had to go over the border and establish
his hermitage at Study Hill on Blackstone River, said: "I came from
England because I did not like the Lords Bishops, but I cannot join
with you, because I would not be under the Lords Brethren." After
Blackstone and Williams, many others came to Rhode Island and settled
at Newport, for there they enjoyed the completest liberty of
conscience. The Quakers were unmolested and came in large numbers; the
Baptists flocked in and built a meeting-house; the Hebrews came, solid
business men, originally from Portugal, and established the first
synagogue in the United States; the sternest doctrines of the
Calvinists were preached; the Moravians held their impressive
love-feasts; and orthodox Churchmen fervently prayed for the English
King. There were all shades of belief, and dissenters of all ilks, and
many having no belief at all, so that the fair town on Aquidneck was
pervaded with such an atmosphere of religious toleration and
cosmopolitan irregularity that it became famous for its sharp contrast
with the stern rigidity of New England. Hence it was not unnatural
that at the opening of the nineteenth century President Dwight should
have declared that an alleged laxity of morals in Stonington was due
to "its nearness to Rhode Island." But despite these peculiarities the
Newport colony got on well, so that the growing settlement on the
"Isle of Peace" in time came to be designated as the "Eden of
America." Dean Berkeley, afterwards Bishop, visited Newport in 1729,
remaining several years, and gave the colony an elevated literary
tone. An Utopian plan for converting the Indians brought him over from
England, but he soon discovered that it was impracticable, and went
back home to become a Bishop. His favorite resort is shown at the part
of the Newport Cliffs called the "Hanging Rocks," and it is said he
there composed his _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, and the
noble lyric closing with the famous verse proclaiming the patriotic
prophecy which Leutze made the subject of his grand mural painting in
the Capitol at Washington:

     "Westward the course of empire takes its way."


NEWPORT DEVELOPMENT.

Newport, before the Revolution, was a most important seaport. When
Dean Berkeley was there it had about forty-five hundred inhabitants,
and they had grown to twelve thousand when the Revolution began. The
preceding half-century was the era of its greatest maritime
prosperity, when Newport ships circumnavigated the globe. The
salubrity of the climate and advantages of the harbor providing safe
anchorage but a few miles from the ocean attracted many merchants and
a large trade, and in those days the Quakers and the Hebrews were the
leading citizens. In 1770 Boston alone surpassed Newport in the extent
of its trade, which then was much greater than that of New York. It
was about this time that a visitor to New York wrote back to the
_Newport Mercury_ that "at its present rate of progress, New York will
soon be as large as Newport." The Revolutionary War, however, almost
ruined the town, and annihilated its commerce. The port was at first
held by the English, and afterwards by the French, both battering and
maltreating it, so that it emerged from the conflict in a dilapidated
condition, with the population reduced to barely five thousand. The
French learned to love the attractive island, and sought earnestly
after the war to have it annexed to France, in return for the aid
given the Americans, but Washington strongly opposed this and
prevented it. The trade was gone, never to return, the merchants went
away to Providence, New York and Boston, and it existed in quiet and
uneventful neglect until the nineteenth century had made some
progress, when people began seeking its pleasant shores for summer
recreation. In 1840 two hotels were built, and this began the
_renaissance_. The Civil War made vast fortunes, and their owners
sought Newport, and it has since become the great summer home of the
fashionable world of America, where they can, in friendly rivalry,
make the most lavish displays possible for wealth to accomplish at a
seaside resort.

Unlike most American watering-places, Newport is not an aggregation of
hotels and lodging-houses, but it is pre-eminently a gathering of the
costliest and most elaborate suburban homes this country can show.
Built upon the extensive space surrounding the older town, and between
it and the ocean, south and east, modern Newport is a galaxy of large
and expensive country-houses, each in an enclosure of lawns,
flower-gardens and foliage, highly ornamental and exceedingly well
kept. Many of them are spacious palaces upon which enormous sums have
been expended; and in front of their lawns, for several miles along
the winding brow of the cliffs that fall off precipitously to the
ocean's edge, is laid the noted "Cliff Walk." This is a narrow
footpath at the edge of the greensward that has the waves dashing
against the bases of the rocks supporting it, while inland, beyond the
lawns, are the noble palaces of Newport. Each is a type of different
architecture, and no matter how grand and imposing, each is called a
"cottage." The greatest rivalry has been shown in construction, and
the styles cover all known methods of building--Gothic, Elizabethan,
Tudor, Swiss, Flemish, French, with every sort of ancient house in
Britain or Continental Europe, imitated and improved upon, and in some
cases widely varying systems being condensed together. Some of these
"cottages" have thus become piles of buildings, with all sorts of
porticos, doorways, pavilions, dormers, oriels, bow-windows, bays and
turrets, towers, chimneys, gambrel roofs and gables, the whole being
charmingly elaborated into wide-spreading, imposing and sometimes
astonishing houses. Occasionally the villa is elongated into the
stable, in an extended house, which includes the family, horses,
hounds, domestics and grooms, all living under the same roof. A low
and rambling style of architecture, with many gables and prominent
colors, is the favorite for various Newport cottages. To the southward
of the town are the Ocean Avenue and Ocean Drive, skirting the whole
lower coast of the island for some ten miles, and displaying fine
marine views.

There have been lavished upon these palaces of Newport, in
construction and decoration, large portions of the greatest incomes of
the multi-millionaires of New York and Boston, and hither they hie to
enjoy the summer and early autumn in a sort of fashionable
semi-seclusion, mingling only in their own sets, and rather resenting
the excursions occasionally made by the plebeian folk into Newport to
look at their displays. These princes of inherited wealth have made
Newport peculiarly their own, and, their expenditures being on a scale
commensurate with their millions, the growth and improvement of the
newer part of the place have been extraordinary. Land in choice
locations is quoted above $50,000 an acre, and a Newport "cottage"
costs $500,000 to $1,000,000 to build, with more for the furnishing.
Once, when I asked what was the qualification necessary to become a
director of one of the great banks of New York, I was told that it was
the ownership of ten shares of stock and a cottage at Newport. The
sense of newness is sometimes impressive in gazing at these Aladdin
palaces, for while the architecture reproduces quaint and ancient
forms, the ancestral ivy does not yet cling to the walls, and the
trees are still young. But there are older sites in Newport, back from
the sea-front, where some of the estates, existing many years, have
smaller and more subdued houses with signs of maturity, where the ivy
broadly spreads and the trees have grown. Some of the foliage-embowered
lanes, leading through the older suburbs, are charming in leafy
richness and make scenes of exquisite rural beauty.

The Casino is the fashionable centre of Newport, a building in Old
English style, fronting on Bellevue Avenue, having reading-rooms, a
theatre, gardens and tennis-court, and here the band plays in the
season, and there are concerts and balls. During the fashionable
period, Bellevue Avenue is the daily scene of a stately procession of
handsome equipages of all styles, as it is decreed that the great
people of Newport shall always ride when on exhibition, and they thus
pass and repass in the afternoons in splendid review. In the earlier
times the town's chief benefactor was Judah Touro, who gave it Touro
Park. His father was the rabbi of Newport synagogue, which now has no
congregation. Judah spent fifty years in New Orleans amassing a
fortune, which was bequeathed to various charities. He also liberally
aided the fund for building Bunker Hill Monument. The synagogue, with
the beautiful garden adjacent, the Jewish Cemetery, is maintained in
perfect order. Touro Park is a pretty enclosure in the older town,
containing statues of Commodore M. C. Perry and William Ellery
Channing, who were natives of Newport, and a statue of the former's
brother, Commodore Oliver H. Perry, the victor of Lake Erie, is also
at the City Hall, not far away. In Touro Park is the great memorial
around which the antiquarian treasures of this famous place are
clustered, the "Old Stone Mill," a small round tower, overrun with ivy
and supported on pillars between which are arched openings. Its origin
is a mystery, and this is the antiquarian shrine at which Newport
worships. Longfellow tells weirdly of it in his _Skeleton in Armor_,
and some of the wise men suggest that it was built by the Norsemen
when they first came this way and found Vinland so long ago. But the
more practical townsfolk generally incline to the belief that an early
colonist put it up for a windmill to grind corn, the weight of the
evidence appearing to favor the theory that it was erected by Governor
Benedict Arnold, of the colony, who died in 1678, and described it in
his will as "my stone-built wind-will." It is, however, of sufficient
antiquity and mystery to have a halo cast around it, and is the great
relic of the town. The seacoast rocks that make the Newport Cliffs
show some wonderful formations of chasms and spouting rocks. A fine
fleet of yachts is usually in Newport water, and it is a favorite
naval rendezvous, having the Training Station, War College and Torpedo
Station, and a new Naval Hospital. This most famous of American
seaside watering-places has a permanent population approximating
twenty-five thousand, considerably increased by the summer visitors.


NEW BEDFORD.

To the eastward of Narragansett another bay is thrust far up into the
land of Massachusetts, Buzzard's Bay, which almost bisects the great
defensive forearm of Massachusetts, Cape Cod. This bay is thirty miles
long and about seven miles wide. Between it and Narragansett are the
tree-clad hills of the sparsely-settled regions which the Indians
called Aponigansett and Acoaksett, out of which the Acushnet River
runs down to its broadening estuary, now the harbor of New Bedford.
Originally this city was peopled by Quakers of the English Russell
family, of which the Duke of Bedford is the head, so that the colony
was named from his title. A numerous Portuguese migration to the early
settlements has caused one of the suburbs to still retain the name of
Fayal. New Bedford stretches two miles along the western river-bank
and far back upon the gradually ascending surface, and the population,
including the opposite suburb of Fairhaven, numbers seventy thousand.
Early a shipping port, it grew into celebrity with the advance of the
whale fishery, which became its chief industry, and it was then said
to be the wealthiest city in the country in proportion to population,
having in 1854 four hundred and ten whaling ships, with ten thousand
sailors, its fleets patrolling the remotest seas. When this fishery
died out, the people went to manufacturing, and now they have numerous
large mills busily spinning cotton, its noted product being the
Wamsutta muslins. There still remain a few of the little bluff-bowed
and flush-decked old whalers rotting at the wharves, with huge
overhanging davits, and still redolent of oil--the relics of an almost
obsolete industry. The ample fortunes originally gathered in the
fishery enabled the marine aristocracy of the town to build their
stately and comfortable old mansions which now enjoy an honorable
repose in ample grounds along the quiet streets on the higher plateau
back from the river.

When Samuel de Champlain came into the St. Lawrence River, he wrote
that whales were killed by firing cannon-balls at them, and later
explorers described how the Indians captured them. The colonists early
began the fishery along the New England coasts, and New Bedford sent
out its first ships in 1755. The period of greatest success in whaling
was between 1820 and 1857. The advent of gas and petroleum, financial
reverses, the gradual extermination of the whales, which had been
pursued to the remotest regions, the substitution of steel for
whalebone, and the use of hard rubber, all contributed to the decline
of the business, and it was given its death-blow by the ravages of the
Confederate privateers among the Pacific whaling fleets. Its memory
is kept alive, however, by many romances of the sea, it having
furnished an extensive and interesting literature. Not long ago it was
related that the unfortunate sculptor who had carved the figure-heads
for the whaleships was since compelled to earn a precarious livelihood
by chopping out rude wooden idols for the South Sea islanders.
Acushnet River is dammed in its upper waters, making an immense
reservoir, furnishing power to the extensive mills. The harbor
gradually broadens as it opens into Buzzard's Bay, and Clark's Point
stretches far into the bay, having on the extremity an old-time square
stone fort, with bastions at the corners, formerly the trusted
defender of the harbor and the town, Fort Taber. Now, its only use is
to furnish, on the outer corner, a foundation for a lighthouse
lantern. The whaling fleet it formerly guided is all gone, but now it
is the beacon for an enormous trade in coal, landed here for
distribution by railway throughout New England. Another little stone
fort is also built on the opposite side of the harbor, on a rock at
the lower end of Fairhaven. Outside is the broad surface of the bay, a
noble inland sea, with irregular and generally thinly populated
shores, but with attractions that have drawn to it, in various
localities, a large summer population, with many ornate villas of
modern fashion. Just below Clark's Point is villa-studded Nonquitt,
upon an upland among the undulating hills, where lived General Philip
Sheridan, and to which he was brought home in a United States warship
to die, in July, 1888. They tell us that when the venturesome Norsemen
came along here, the bay was given the name of the Straum Fiord, but
the antiquary is at a loss to find a satisfactory derivation for the
present name of Buzzard's Bay. Far over its waters, as seen from
Clark's Point, is the low, dark, gray forest-clad eastern shore,
stretching down to the distant strait of Wood's Holl, leading out of
the bay into Vineyard Sound. Spread across the bay entrance to the
southward, and protecting it from the open sea, are the Elizabeth
Islands.


VINEYARD SOUND.

After Captain Bartholomew Grosnold had discovered Cape Cod in May,
1602, he coasted along its shores, and coming down into what is known
as Vineyard Sound, found himself in an archipelago of islands. He
halted at the one called "No Man's Land," and gave it the name of
Martha's Vineyard, which is now applied to the largest of these
islands. Who his favorite Martha was, and why she should have been
immortalized, old Bartholomew never told, thus disappointing many
industrious people who have vainly sought the lady's personal history.
"The Vineyard," as it is familiarly called, lies southeast of
Buzzard's Bay, across which is the extended and narrow range of the
Elizabeth Islands, trending far away to the southwestw

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