First Day.
“You see,” said Nathan, who was rather the historical member of the home crowd, and was at home somewhat distinguished for “poking about” in one and another corner—“you see, the absolute original landmarks of Boston are gone, or as much altered as they could be.”
“When the first people came here, old John Blackstone, and even Winthrop and Dudley, our Tom. Dudley, our ancestor, of course it was not called Boston. It was called Trimountain, or Tremont, I suppose by people in the fishing ships, because at the top of Beacon Hill there were three hummocks, like this,” and the boy cut a bit of bread into the shape he meant, two protuberances in the side of a hill a little higher.
“And these were Fort Hill, and Copp’s Hill, and Beacon Hill,” said his Aunt Isabella, as usual willing to show that she also knew something.
“Not quite yet, Aunt Isabella,” said the boy, modestly enough. “Most people think so. And I think most Boston people would tell you so, but they would be wrong. The three hummocks were all on Beacon Hill—that’s where the State House is now. Oddly enough they are all gone. They dug down the highest, where the Beacon was, part of it when they built the State House, and the rest afterward, to fill up the old mill pond. And the others were so steep that they had to be dug down for streets. But when I take you to the State House, and over Mt. Vernon and Somerset streets you will have tramped over them all.”
“I really think, mamma,” the boy added, “that at least the boys had better go to the top of the State House with me, first of all. You know Dean Stanley did.”
It is true that when Dr. Stanley came to Boston, true to the principles of Arnold’s school of history, he was eager first of all, to understand the precise topography of all he was to see. His first visit, therefore, was to the top of the State House, and his last, after his short stay, was to the same observatory, that he might be sure he had rightly placed all that he had seen.
In our case it need not be said that all the children ridiculed any doubts of their ability to climb two hundred and twenty stairs, more or less, and also ridiculed that other idea, that they were tired. Accordingly, though the two mothers took the morning to talk over the events of twenty years by themselves in Mrs. Dudley’s room, and while Mr. Crehere went down town to look up some business correspondents, Nathan was permitted, to his solid satisfaction, to take the young people to the top of the State House, to the Common, and anywhere else he chose. “And we will get our lunch where we do our work, mamma,” he said.
“Cousin Nathan,” said his new friend Caroline, who was no more his cousin than you are, “be sure that I see a ship, a real three-master, before we go away. Steamships I don’t care for.” And he promised.
This article is written in some hope that it may serve as a handy guide for visitors to Boston this summer, who may have time to make any of the excursions which these young people made during the week of their visit. We shall not, therefore, try so much to tell what they saw, as how they saw it, in the hope and wish that others may see the same. A street car brought the party to the head of Winter Street, and here Nathan brought them out of it upon what he called the Lower Mall, on the eastern side of Boston Common. Here he put all the girls upon a seat, while the boys grouped around him, and with his stick he drew a rough map on the ground.
“We may get parted from each other. But if any one is lost while you are in Boston, the streets are just as easy to understand as those of Philadelphia or Chicago, after you once know the law of the instrument.
“This hill we are on is the east slope of Beacon Hill. If we had followed in the car we could have ridden round it to Cambridge, in this open horse shoe which I draw.
“North of us, quite at the north of the town, is Copp’s Hill. We will see that another day. The streets around that are in curves also.
“Off here on the southeast was Fort Hill. The streets there bent to follow the curve. But that is all dug down.
“Then, of course, in a seaboard town, from every wharf or pier, there ran up streets into the town. If you took a fan, and put the center at the Postoffice Square, the sticks would be Water Street, Milk Street, Pearl Street, Federal Street, and so on. Now all this is just as much according to rule as if you made a checker board. Only you must know what the rule is.”
“I think it is a great deal nicer,” said Caroline. And Nathan thanked her.
The rule in practice is said to be: “Find out where the place is to which you go, and take a horse car running the other way.”
“Now we will go up to the State House.” So they slowly pulled up the Park Street walk, up the high steps between the two bronze statues, stopped in the Doric Hall to see the statues and the battle flags, and then slowly mounted the long stairways which lead to the “lantern” above the dome. Fortunately the Legislature had adjourned. When the House is in session visits to the lantern are not permitted, lest the trampling on the stairs above the Representatives’ Hall might disturb the hearers.
When they had regained their breath, they looked round on the magnificent panorama which sweeps a circle of forty miles in diameter, and Nathan lectured. His lecture must not be reported here in detail. But the main points of it shall be stated, because they give the clew to the expeditions which the party made on succeeding days.
They were so high that all the rest of the city was quite below them. Nathan was able to point out—almost in a group, they seemed to his western friends, used to large distances—Faneuil Hall, the old State House, and the Old South Meeting House of Revolutionary times.
“We will do those,” he said, “to-morrow, and then you can see where the tea was thrown over, and the scene of the Boston Massacre. That will be a good Revolutionary day.”
To the north, with a strip of water between, so narrow, and bridged so often that it hardly seemed a deep river, half a mile wide, was the monument on Bunker Hill. The Summit was the only point near them as high as they were. “We will go there on Friday,” said Nathan, “day after to-morrow. And that same day we can see Copp’s Hill, which is the north headland of Old Boston, and we can go to the Navy Yard, and Carry shall see her ship with three masts.
“Saturday—I don’t know what papa will say—but I vote that we go down the harbor. We will see Nahant, which is a rocky peninsula ten miles northeast, or Hull, which is about as far southeast; they make the headlands of Boston Bay.” And he tried to make out both these points. He did show them the outer light-house and the great forts between. And all of the Westerners were delighted with their first view of the sea horizon.
“You do not feel the same at Chicago,” said John; “though you do not see the other side, you know it is there.”
“Then Sunday,” said Nathan, husbanding his days prudently, “some of us can go to Christ Church, where the sexton showed the lantern.”
“And can we not see the church with the cannon ball?
“‘Bears on her bosom as a bride might do,
The iron breastpin that the rebels threw.’”
This was Caroline’s question. She quoted Dr. Holmes.
“No,” said John, sadly. “We were barbarians, and pulled that church down.” And he added savagely, “and no good came to the society that did it.”
“That will leave Monday for a good tramp over Dorchester Heights, and Tuesday, if you are not tired, we will go to Cambridge, and see Harvard College.”
And he showed them how high the “Dorchester Heights,” now in South Boston, rose, and how completely they commanded the harbor; so that when Washington seized them the English army and navy had to go. He also showed them Cambridge and the college buildings, lying quite near them, westward, but on the other side of the Charles River. John looked with special interest, because he was to take his first examination there for Harvard College, before the month was over.
To this plan, substantially, the party adhered. And travelers who have more or less time than they, may find it worth while to consult this plan, as they lay out their excursions. For in those seven days the visitors did, in fact, have a chance to see all the more important landmarks of the history of Boston.
As Nathan took them home from the State House he led them down Beacon Street. This is a beautiful street, making the north side of Boston Common. Where the Common ends, Charles Street crosses Beacon Street nearly at right angles. Near this corner, on land now built upon, or perhaps crossed by some street, was the cottage of Blackstone, who lived in Boston for six or seven years before Governor Winthrop and the settlers of 1630 arrived.
They made their first settlement at Charlestown on the other side of the river. The records of Charlestown say: “Mr. Blackstone, dwelling on the other side of Charles River, alone, at a place called by the Indians, Shawmut, where he had a cottage at, or not far from the place called Blackstone Point, came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent spring, inviting and soliciting him thither.”
Blackstone’s house, or cottage, in which he lived, together with the nature of his improvements, was such as to authorize the belief that he had resided there some seven or eight years. How he became possessed of his lands here is not known; but it is certain he held a good title to them, which was acknowledged by the settlers under Winthrop, who, in course of time, bought his lands of him, and he removed out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts to the valley of the Blackstone River.
Of Blackstone’s personal history Nathan afterward read them this note, by Mr. Charles F. Adams:
“He was in no respect an ordinary man. His presence in the peninsula of Shawmut, in 1630, was made additionally inexplicable from the fact that he was about the last person one would ever have expected to find there. He was not a fisherman, nor a trader, nor a refugee: he was a student, an observer, and a recluse. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he had received Episcopal ordination in England. In 1630 he was in his thirty-fifth year. All this is extremely suggestive, for it goes to make of him exactly the description of man who would naturally be found in company with the scholarly and unobtrusive Morell. Further, the probabilities would strongly point to him as Winthrop’s authority where Winthrop, in 1631, speaks of a species of weather record going back seven years since this bay was planted by Englishmen.”