12. Give some facts about the commercial importance of Boston.
13. In the manufacture of what three products does Boston, with her neighboring cities, rank high?
14. Why is a codfish suspended in the hall of the House of Representatives in the State House?
[CLEVELAND]
In the days that followed the Revolution, Connecticut claimed certain lands south of Lake Erie. A large part of these she sold to the Connecticut Land Company, who wanted to colonize the country and establish New Connecticut.
It was in 1796 that the Connecticut Land Company sent General Moses Cleaveland west, to survey the land and choose a site for a settlement. After surveying about sixty miles, Cleaveland fixed on a plateau just south of Lake Erie, where the Cuyahoga River runs into the lake. Soon the settlement was laid out with a square and two main streets and was very properly called Cleaveland. The name was spelled with an a, just as Moses Cleaveland spelled his name. There is no a in the city's name to-day, the story being that the extra letter was dropped, and the new spelling adopted, in 1831, through a newspaper's claiming that the a would not fit conveniently into its headline.
At first the new settlement did not prosper. The soil was poor, and commerce along the Ohio River attracted immigrants into the interior. Those that stayed in Cleveland had a hard struggle with fever. The mouth of the Cuyahoga River was frequently choked with sand, making the water in the river's bed stagnant and furnishing a breeding place for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. During the summer and autumn of 1798 affairs were in a desperate condition. Every one in the settlement was miserable. There was no flour, and for two months Nathaniel Doan's boy was the only person strong enough to go to the house of one James Kingsbury, on the highlands back of the town, for corn. This he carried to a gristmill at Newburgh, six miles to the south, and had it ground into meal for the sick.