BOSTON.
Geographical Location of Boston.—Ancient Names.—Etymology of the Word Massachusetts.—Changes in the Peninsula.—Noted Points of Interest.—Boston Common.—Old Elm.—Duel Under its Branches.—Soldiers' Monument.—Fragmentary History.—Courtship on the Common.—Faneuil Hall and Market.—Old State House.—King's Chapel.—Brattle Square Church.—New State House.—New Post Office.—Old South Church.—Birthplace of Franklin.—"News Letter."—City Hall.—Custom House.—Providence Railroad Station.—Places of General Interest.
Boston sits like a queen at the head of her harbor on the Massachusetts coast, and wears her crown of past and present glory with an easy and self-satisfied grace. Her commercial importance is large; her ships float on many seas; and she rejoices now in the same uncompromising spirit of independence which controlled the actions of the celebrated "Tea Party" in the pioneer days of '76. Her safe harbor is one of the best on the Atlantic seaboard, and is dotted with over a hundred islands. On some of these, garrisoned forts look grimly seaward.
Boston is built on a peninsula about four miles in circumference, and to this fact may be attributed the origin of her first name, Shawmutt, that word signifying in the Indian vocabulary a peninsula. Its second name, Tremount, took its rise from the three peaks of Beacon Hill, prominently seen from Charlestown by the first settlers there. Many of the colonists were from old Boston, in Lincolnshire, England, and on the seventh of September, 1630, this name supplanted the first two.
BOSTON, AS VIEWED FROM THE BAY.
In this connection may be given the etymology of the word Massachusetts, which is somewhat curious. It is said that the red Sachem who governed in this part of the country had his seat on a hill about two leagues south of Boston. It lay in the shape of an Indian arrow's head, which in their language was called Mos. Wetuset, pronounced Wechuset, was also their name for a hill, and the Sachem's seat was therefore named Mosentuset, which a slight variation changed into the name afterwards received by the colony. Boston, as the centre of this colony, began from the first to assume the importance of the first city of New England. Its history belongs not only to itself, but to the country at large, as the pioneer city in the grand struggle for constitutional and political liberty. A large majority of the old landmarks which connected it with the stormy days of the past, and stood as monuments of its primeval history, are now obliterated by time and the steady march of improvements. The face of the country is changed. The three peaks of Beacon Hill, which once lifted themselves to the height of a hundred and thirty feet above the sea, are now cut down into insignificant knolls. The waters of the "black bay" which swelled around its base have receded to give place to the encroachments of the city. Made lands, laid out in streets and set thick with dwellings, supplant the mud flats formerly covered by the tide. Thousands of acres which were once the bed of the harbor are now densely populated.
The house on Harrison avenue where the writer is at present domiciled is located on the spot which once was occupied by one of the best wharves in the city. The largest ocean craft moored to this wharf, on account of the great depth of water flowing around it. The land has steadily encroached on the water, until the peninsula that was is a peninsula no longer, and its former geographical outlines have dropped out of sight in the whirl and rush of the populous and growing city. A few old landmarks of the past, however, still remain, linking the now and the then, and among the most prominent of these are Faneuil Hall, the Old South Church, which was founded in 1660, King's Chapel, the Old Granary Burying-ground, Brattle Square Church, quite recently demolished, the old State House, and Boston Common. The Common antedates nearly all other special features of the city, and is the pride of Bostonians. Here juvenile Boston comes in winter to enjoy the exciting exercise of "coasting," and woe to the unwary foot passenger who may chance to collide with the long sleds full of noisy boys which shoot like black streaks from the head of Beacon street Mall, down the diagonal length of the Common, to the junction of Boylston and Tremont streets. This winter (1874-5), owing to several unfortunate accidents to passers-by across the snowy roads of the coasters, elevated bridges have been erected, to meet the wants of the people without interfering with the rights of the boys. The Common was originally a fifty-acre lot belonging to a Mr. Blackstone. This was in 1633. It was designed as a cow pasture and training ground, and was sold to the people of Boston the next year, 1634, for thirty pounds. The city was taxed for this purpose to the amount of not less than five shillings for each inhabitant. Mr. Blackstone afterwards removed to Cumberland, Rhode Island, where he died, in the spring of 1675. It is said that John Hancock's cows were pastured on the Common in the days of the Revolution. On the tenth of May, 1830, the city authorities forbade the use of the Common for cows, at which time it was inclosed by a two-rail fence. The handsome iron paling which now surrounds the historic area has long since taken the place of the ancient fence.
Perhaps the most noticeable, certainly the most famous object on Boston Common, is the Great Tree, or Old Elm, which stands in a hollow of rich soil near a permanent pond of water, not far from the centre of the enclosure. It is of unknown age. It was probably over a hundred years old in 1722. Governor Winthrop came to Boston in 1630, but before that period the tree probably had its existence. It antedates the arrival of the first settlers, and it seems not unlikely that the Indian Shawmutt smoked the pipe of peace under its pendent branches. In 1844 its height was given at seventy-two and a half feet—girth, one foot above the ground, twenty-two and a half feet. The storms of over two centuries have vented their fury upon it and destroyed its graceful outlines. But in its age and decrepitude it has been tenderly nursed and partially rejuvenated. Broken limbs, torn off by violent gales, have been replaced by means of iron clamps, and such skill as tree doctors may use. In the last century a hollow orifice in its trunk was covered with canvas and its edges protected by a mixture of clay and other substances. Later, in 1854, Mr. J. V. C. Smith, Mayor of the city, placed around it an iron fence bearing the following inscription:—