That broad winding stream of water that we see is the Charles River. Just beyond it to the north is Charlestown, its Bunker Hill Monument towering up for all to see. The city of Cambridge is just across the Charles River to the west, and next to it, skirting the southern bank of the river, is the district of Brighton. South Boston, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Dorchester lie toward the south. Among the many islands in the harbor, East Boston is the most crowded and the closest to the city proper. Towards the southwest, between us and the Charles, lies Back Bay, once tidewater but now filled in and made into land. Look around you and notice how the surrounding parts of Boston form a chain about their parent, a chain broken only by Cambridge—the seat of Harvard University—and Brookline,—Massachusetts' wealthiest town,—which refuses to become a city or to join its larger neighbor.
As we leave the State House, a few minutes' walk brings us to the heart of Boston's great shopping district and to Boston's leading business street. You will be glad to know that this street is called neither Main Street nor Broadway, but Washington Street. Originally, part was known as Orange, part as Marlborough, and part as Newbury. But when, at the close of the Revolution, Washington rode through the city at the head of a triumphal procession, the people renamed the street along which he passed, Washington, and so it is called to-day in all its ten miles of length. Washington Street is very narrow in parts, and as it is lined on both sides with some of Boston's largest and finest department stores, it presents a very animated appearance on a week-day afternoon.
THE CITY OF BOSTON
Stop for a moment on busy Newspaper Row. Here a bystander may read the news of the world as it is posted hourly upon the great bulletin boards of the various newspaper offices.
Parallel to Washington Street, and connected with it by many short streets, is Tremont Street, another old historic road. Originally Tremont Street was a path outlined by William Blackstone's cows on their way to pasture; now it is second only to Washington Street in importance.
Washington Street is really the main dividing line between the retail and wholesale parts of the city. The water front is the great wholesale section. Here there is a constant odor of leather in the air, and great heavy wagons laden with hides are continually passing to and from the wharves and stations. When we stop and consider that Boston and the neighboring cities of Brockton and Lynn are among the largest shoe-manufacturing cities in the world, then we do not wonder at the leather we see. It is no vain boast to say that in every quarter of the world may be seen shoes that once, in the form of leather, were carted through the streets of Boston.
