To the westward of the river are the famous "Blue Hills of Southington," the most elevated portion of the State of Connecticut, and nestling under their shadow is Meriden, the hills rising high above its western and northern verge, in the West Peak and Mount Lamentation. Here are gathered over thirty thousand people in an active factory town, the neat wooden dwellings of the operatives forming the nucleus of the city adjacent to the extensive mills, and having as a surrounding galaxy the attractive villas of their owners, scattered in pleasant places upon the steep adjacent hills. They are industrious iron and steel, bronze, brass and tin workers, and the Meriden Britannia and electro-plated silver wares are famous everywhere. The Meriden Britannia Company has enormous mills, and is the greatest establishment of its kind in the world. Meriden and Berlin, a short distance northward, have long been the headquarters of the peripatetic Connecticut tin-pedler, who goes forth laden with all kinds of pots and pans, and other bright and useful utensils, to wander over the land, and charm the country folk with his attractive bargains. Berlin began in the eighteenth century the first American manufacture of tinware. There are scores of villages about, cast almost in the same mould. Each has the same beautiful central Public Green, the charm of the New England village, shaded by rows of stately elms; the tall-spired churches; the village graveyard, usually on a gently-sloping hillside, with the lines of older white gravestones, supplemented in the modern interments by more elaborate monuments; the attractive wooden houses nestling amid abundant foliage, and surrounded by gardens and flower-beds, that are the homes of the people, and the huge factories giving them employment. Some of these villages are larger than others, thus covering more space, but excepting in size, all are substantially alike.
HARTFORD.
The high gilded dome of the Capitol at Hartford and the broad fronts of the stately buildings of Trinity College surmounting Rocky Hill, above a labyrinth of factories, are seen rising on the Connecticut River bank to the northward. This is the noted city, with about seventy thousand people, which has reproduced in New England the name in the mother country of the ancient Saxon village just north of London at the "Ford of Harts," whence some of its early settlers came. The brave and pious Thomas Hooker led his flock from the seacoast through the wilderness in 1636 to Hartford, to establish an English colony at the Indian post of Suckiang, the Dutch three years before having built a fort and trading-station at a bend of the Connecticut, where the little Park River flowing in gave a water-power which turned the wheels of a small grist-mill, to which all the country around afterwards brought grain to be ground. Cotton Mather, the quaint historian, described Hooker as "the renowned minister of Hartford and pillar of Connecticut, and the light of the Western churches." Hartford is known as the "Queen City," and its centre is the attractive Bushnell Park, fronting on the narrow and winding Park River. An airy bridge leads from the railway station over this little stream, to the tasteful Park entrance, a triumphal brownstone arch with surmounting conical towers, erected as a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the Civil War. A grand highway then continues up the hill to the Connecticut State Capitol, which cost $2,500,000 to build, one of the finest structures in New England, an imposing Gothic temple of white marble, three hundred feet long, the dome rising two hundred and fifty feet, and all the fronts elaborately ornamented with statuary and artistic decoration. The statue of General Putnam, who died at Hartford in 1790, is in the Park, and his tombstone, battered and weatherworn, is kept as a precious relic in the Capitol. The "Putnam Phalanx" is the great military organization of Hartford. In the east wing of the Capitol is the bronze statue of Nathan Hale, whom the British hanged as a spy in the Revolution. It is a masterpiece, the almost living figure seeming animated with the full vigor of earnest youth, as with outstretched hands he actually appears to speak his memorable words: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." The Connecticut law-makers of to-day who meet in this sumptuous Capitol are milder legislators than their ancestors who made the "blue laws" of the olden time, when the iron rule of the Puritan pastors governing the colony enacted a Draconian code, inflicting death penalties for the crimes of idolatry, unchastity, blasphemy, witchcraft, murder, man-stealing, smiting parents, and some others, with savage punishment for Sabbath-breaking and the use of tobacco.
State Capitol, Hartford, Conn.
The celebrated Charter Oak is the great memory of Hartford. In 1856 the old tree was blown down in a storm, and a marble slab marks where it stood. The remains of the tree were fashioned into many precious relics, and our friend of humorous memory, Mark Twain, who lives in Hartford, says he has seen all conceivable articles made out of this precious timber, there being, among others, "a walking-stick, dog-collar, needle-case, three-legged stool, bootjack, dinner-table, tenpin alley, toothpick, and enough Charter Oak to build a plank-road from Hartford to Great Salt Lake City." This ancient tree concealed the royal charter of the Connecticut colony, granted by the King, when, in 1687, the tyrannical Governor Andros came to Hartford with his troops and demanded its surrender. While the subject was being discussed in the Legislature, the lights were suddenly put out, and in the darkness a bold colonist seized the precious document, and running out, concealed it in the hollow of the oak. The fine statue surmounting the Capitol dome and overlooking the city is now, with extended arm, crowning the municipality with a wreath of Charter Oak leaves, and the oak leaf is repeated in many ways in the decoration of the Capitol and of many other buildings in the city. The Charter Oak Bank and Life Insurance Company are also flourishing institutions. In proportion to population, Hartford is regarded as the wealthiest city in America, and it is financially great, particularly in Life and Fire Insurance Companies, whose business is wide-spread. It has many charitable foundations, book-publishing houses, banks, manufacturing establishments and educational institutions, the most noted of the latter being Trinity College, in the southern part of the city, its brownstone Early English buildings having a grand view across the intervening valley to the hills of Farmington and Talcott Mountain, nine miles westward.
Picturesque suburbs adorned by magnificent villas environ the built-up parts of Hartford, making a splendid semi-rural residential section, where arching elms embower the lawn-bordered avenues, many localities being adorned by superb hedges. There is a fine artistic and historical collection in the Wadsworth Atheneum, where, among other precious relics, are kept General Putnam's sword and the Indian King Philip's club. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Sigourney, the poetess, were long residents of Hartford. The citizen whom it holds in steadfast memory, however, is Colonel Samuel Colt, who invented the revolving pistol. He was born in Hartford, and his remains rest under a fine monument in Cedar Hill Cemetery. His widow built as his memorial a beautiful little brownstone chapel, the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is not far away from the huge works of the Colt Arms Company, the chief industrial establishment of the city. Colt, when a boy, ran away from home and went to sea, and is said to have there conceived the idea of his great invention. He sought vainly during several years to establish a factory to make it, but did not prosper until 1852, when he started in Hartford; and with the great demand for small-arms then stimulated by the opening of the California gold mines and the exploration of the Western plains, afterwards expanded by the Civil War, his factory grew enormously. The heraldic "colt rampant" adopted by the inventor is stamped on all the arms and reproduced in all the decorations of these vast works. Among other large factories is also the Pope bicycle works. A short distance west of Hartford is New Britain, where there are twenty thousand people engaged in making hardware, locks and jewelry, its noted resident having been Elihu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," who was born there in 1810 and died in 1879.
SPRINGFIELD AND THE ARMORY.
To the north of Hartford is a fertile intervale, the rich meadows of Mattaneag, where the Connecticut River pours down the Enfield Rapids, and the diverted water flows through a canal formerly used to take the river-craft around the obstruction, but now giving ample power to many paper and other mills at Windsor Locks. The original colony was started here by John Warham, said to have been the first New England pastor who used notes in preaching. He sustained the "blue laws," but his colony to-day is a great tobacco-growing section, through which the Farmington River flows down from the western hills. At South Windsor, John Fitch, the steamboat inventor, was born. The Hazardville Powder Works, one of the greatest gunpowder factories in the world, are beyond, and also Thompsonville, a prodigious maker of carpets, and then the boundary is crossed into Massachusetts. Just north of the line, the Connecticut River sweeps grandly around in approaching Springfield, built on the eastern bank, and spreading for a long distance up the slopes of the adjacent hills. It is a busy manufacturing city, with sixty thousand population and an important railway junction, where the roads along the river cross the route from Boston to Albany and the West. This was the Indian land of Agawam—"fish-abounding"—to which the Puritan missionary William Pynchon led his hardy flock in 1636, and the statue of Miles Morgan, a noted soldier of the early time, representing the "Puritan," stands, matchlock in hand, in heroic bronze on the Public Square. Springfield is noted for its great firearms factories, having the extensive works of the Smith & Wesson Company, and also the United States Armory. This enormous Government factory, making rifles for the army previously on a large scale, quadrupled its output during the Spanish War of 1898. It occupies an extensive enclosure on Armory Hill, up to which the surface gradually slopes from the river, giving an admirable view over the city. The chief buildings stand around a quadrangle, making a pleasant stretch of lawn, with regular rows of trees crossing it. There are a few old cannon planted about, giving a military air, and here are made the Springfield rifles. During the Revolution most of the arms for the American army were made here, and the cannon were cast that helped defeat Burgoyne at Saratoga. In the Civil War the main works were constructed, and they ran day and night for four years, making nearly eight hundred thousand rifles for the Union armies. The Arsenal, a large building on the western side of the quadrangle, contains two hundred and twenty-five thousand arms, tastefully arranged, and rivalling the collection at the Tower of London. This armory is the chief industrial establishment of Springfield, and Longfellow has thus described its great Arsenal: