Voted, That we are the saints.
They had a good deal of trouble afterwards, both with the Dutch from New York and the Indians, but the saints ultimately possessed the earth in peace, and their successors are now making straw hats for the country.
THE CITY OF ELMS.
The city of New Haven, the most populous in Connecticut, having a hundred thousand people, is built upon a plain, surrounded by hills, at the head of a deep bay extending several miles northward from Long Island Sound. The magnificent elms, arching over the streets and the Public Green, and grandly rising in stately rows, make the earliest and the deepest impression upon the visitor. In one of his most eloquent passages, Henry Ward Beecher said that the elms of New England are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture. The grand foliage-arched avenues of New Haven are unsurpassed elsewhere, so that they are the crowning glory as well as the constant care of the townsfolk. Among the finest is the avenue separating the Yale College grounds from the Public Green—a magnificent Gothic aisle of the richest foliage-covered interlacing boughs. The Indian name for the region round about New Haven was Quinnepiack, and the placid Quinnepiack River, coming from the northward, flows through a deep valley past the towering East Rock into the harbor. Old John Davenport was the leader and first pastor of the infant colony that settled here. He was a powerful Anglican parish pastor of London who had joined the Puritans, and in 1637 was forced to leave for New England with many of his people. They spent a year in Boston, but in April, 1638, sailed around Cape Cod to the Sound, and landed at Quinnepiack, where they laid out a town plan with nine squares for buildings, surrounding a large central square, the Public Green. At the foundation, Davenport delivered a most impressive sermon from the text, "Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars;" and from this came the original scheme of government for the colony by the seven leading church members, who were known as the "seven pillars." The colony got on well with the Indians, who revered Davenport, calling him "so big study man." They bought the whole tract of one hundred and thirty square miles from the Indians for thirteen coats. At first, however, they did not prosper, their trading ventures proving unfortunate, and they determined to abandon the place and remove elsewhere, selecting Jamaica, and afterwards Galloway in Ireland. The ship carrying their prospectors to Ireland sailed in January, 1647, but was never heard from afterwards, save when, as the legend has it, "the spectre of the ship sailed into the harbor in the teeth of a head-wind, and when in full view of the anxious people, it slowly melted into thin air and vanished." Then they decided to remain, and getting on better, in 1665 united their plantation with that of Connecticut at Hartford, under the condition that each should be a capital, a compact observed until 1874, when Hartford was made the sole capital. The British in July, 1779, attacked and partly burnt and plundered the town, the Americans galling them by desultory attacks as they passed through the streets. They captured Rev. Naphtali Daggett, President of Yale College, musket in hand, and with repeated bayonet-thrusts forced him to guide them. When he was wearied and sore from wounds they asked, "Will you fight again?" He sturdily answered, "I rather believe I shall if I have an opportunity." Being forced to pray for the King, he did it thus: "O Lord, bless thy servant King George, and grant him wisdom, for thou knowest, O Lord, he needs it."
The great fame of New Haven comes from Yale College, having two hundred and fifty instructors and over twenty-five hundred students, the orthodox Congregational University of New England, which for two centuries has exerted a most advantageous and widely diffused influence upon the American intellectual character, and around it and its multitude of buildings of every kind clusters the town. In the year 1700 ten clergymen planned to have a college in the colony of Connecticut, and for the purpose contributed as many books as they could spare for its library. In 1701 it was chartered, and began in a very small way at Saybrook, at the mouth of Connecticut River, during the first year having only one student. The pastor of the adjacent village of Killingworth was placed in charge, and for several years the students went there to him, though the commencements were held at Saybrook, and in 1707 the college was located at Saybrook. Subsequently, for a more convenient location, it was removed to New Haven, the first commencement being held there in 1718, and its first building being named Yale College, in honor of Elihu Yale, a native of the town, born in 1648, who went abroad, and afterwards became Governor of the East India Company. He made at different times gifts of books and money amounting to about five hundred pounds sterling, the benefactions being of greater value because of their timeliness. His name was afterwards adopted in the incorporation of the university. Timothy Dwight and Theodore D. Woolsey were perhaps the greatest Presidents of Yale, and among its graduates were Jonathan Edwards, Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B. Morse, Benjamin Silliman, Noah Webster, John C. Calhoun, J. Fenimore Cooper, James Kent, William M. Evarts, John Pierpont and Samuel J. Tilden. The College buildings are of various ages and styles of architecture, the original ones being the plain "Old Brick Row" on College Street, northwest of the Public Green, behind which what was formerly a large open space has been gradually covered with more modern structures. The line of ancient buildings facing the Green has a venerable and scholarly aspect, stretching broadly across the greensward, fronted by noble elms arranged in quadruple lines along the street. One of these houses, Connecticut Hall, was built with money raised by a lottery, and from the proceeds of a French prize-ship in the colonial wars, when Connecticut aided the King by equipping a frigate. There are on the campus statues of the first rector, Abraham Pierson, President Woolsey and Professor Silliman. Various elaborate buildings are also upon adjacent grounds, such as the Peabody Museum, the Sheffield Scientific School, of four halls; the Divinity Halls, Observatory, Laboratory and Gymnasium, while the entrance to the campus from the Public Green is by an imposing tower-gateway known as Phelps Hall. The Peabody Museum has one of the best natural-history collections in the country, and the College Library approximates three hundred thousand volumes. Besides the Academic Department, Yale has schools of Science, Law, Medicine, Theology and the Fine Arts, and its properties and endowments exceed $10,000,000, the grounds occupying nine acres.
NEW HAVEN ATTRACTIONS.
But New Haven is much more than Yale College. It is a great hive of industry, manufacturing all kinds of "Yankee notions," with agricultural machinery, corsets, scales, organs, pianos, carriages, hardware and other things, and it has a large commerce along the coast and with the West Indies. It was to New Haven that the first steamboat navigating Long Island Sound went from New York in March, 1815, the Fulton, which occupied eleven hours in going there, and fifteen hours in returning two days later, being delayed by fog, subsequently, however, making the trip in less time. This boat was constructed by Robert Fulton, and carried a figure-head of him on her bow. She was one hundred and thirty-four feet long, and of three hundred and twenty-seven tons, built with a keel like a ship, having a sloop bow, and being rigged with one mast and sails to accelerate her speed. She was managed by Elihu S. Bunker, and her ability to pass through Hell Gate against a tide running six miles an hour was regarded as one of the marvels of that time. The New York Evening Post of March 25, 1815, describing her, said, "We have been assured that this establishment has cost $90,000, and we believe it may with truth be affirmed that there is not in the whole world such accommodations afloat as the Fulton affords. Indeed, it is hardly possible to conceive that anything of the kind can exceed her in elegance and convenience." Many were the races she had with the "packet-sloops" that plied on the Sound and often beat her, when the wind was fair.
There are tastefully adorned suburbs surrounding New Haven, where the hills afford charming prospects. The two great attractions, however, are the bold and impressive promontories known as the East and West Rocks, which are high buttresses of trap rock, lifting themselves from the plain on each side of the town in magnificent opposition, and rising four hundred feet. The geologists say they were driven up through the other strata, and some people think these grim precipices in remote ages may have sentinelled the outflow of the Connecticut River, between their broad and solid bases, to the Sound. Each tremendous cliff is the termination of a long mountain range coming down from the far North. The Green Mountain prolongation, stretching through ridges southward from Vermont, is represented in the West Rock, while the East Rock terminates the Mount Tom range, through which the Connecticut River breaks its passage in Massachusetts, and part of which rises a thousand feet in the "Blue Hills of Southington," which are the most elevated portion of Connecticut. Thus projected out upon the plain, almost to Long Island Sound, the summits of these two huge rocks afford grand views. In the Judge's Cave, a small cleft in a group of boulders on the West Rock, the three regicides, Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell were in hiding for some time in 1661, and the three streets leading out to this rock from the city are named after them. It is recorded that a man living about a mile away took them food until one night a catamount looked in on them, and "blazed his eyes in such a frightful manner as greatly to terrify them." Dixwell's bones repose upon the Public Green at the back of the "Centre Church," which stands in the row of three churches occupying the middle of the Green that was the graveyard of colonial New Haven, and Whalley is buried nearby.
There is a grand approach to the East Rock, which is elevated high above the marshy valley of Mill River, winding about its base, and upon the topmost crag is a noble monument reared to the soldiers who fell in the Civil War. The whole surface of the East Rock is a park, and upon the face of the cliff the perpendicular strata of reddish-brown trap stand bolt upright. From this elevated outpost there is a charming view over the town spreading upon the flat plain, and the little harbor stretching down to the Sound; and beyond, across the silvery waters, can be traced the hazy hills of Long Island, twenty-five miles away. Two little crooked rivers come out of the deep valleys on either side of the great rock, winding through the town to the harbor, while all about, the country is dotted with flourishing villages. Among them is Wallingford, to which the railway leads northeast amid meadows and brickyards until it reaches the high hill, whose church-towers watch over the population, largely composed of plated-ware makers. When this town was founded, John Davenport came out from New Haven and preached the initial sermon from the appropriate text, "My beloved hath a vineyard on a very fruitful hill."
Hillhouse Avenue, a broad and beautiful elm-shaded street bordered by fine mansions, leads out to the "Sachem's Wood," which was the home of the Hillhouses, of whom James Hillhouse was the great Connecticut Senator after the Revolution. His remains repose in the old Grove Street Burying-Ground, where rest many other famous men of the Academic City, among them Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher, Samuel F. B. Morse, Benjamin Silliman, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, of whom Jefferson wrote that he "never said a foolish thing in his life," Eli Whitney, and Noah Webster, who, before he compiled his famous dictionary, had published the "Elementary Spelling Book," which had a sale of fifty millions of copies. The New Haven City Hall, fronting the Green, is one of the finest municipal buildings in New England. The three churches occupying the centre of the Green are the North, the Centre, and Trinity churches, the first two Congregationalist and the last Episcopal, the row presenting a curiously quaint and ancient appearance. The favorite resort of the people of New Haven is Savin Rock, a promontory four miles away, pushing a rocky front to the Sound at the end of a long sandy beach, and having a good view, being located westward from the harbor entrance.