“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.