On the south, their most advanced works were where are now two little parks, Blackstone Square and Franklin Square, on the west and east sides of Washington Street, respectively. They had a square redoubt on the Common, where is now a monument to the heroes of the Civil War. A little eastward of this was a hill called Fox Hill, which was dug away to make the Charles Street of to-day. Farther west, where the ground is now covered with buildings, were two or three redoubts, generally called forts, by which they meant to prevent the landing of the Americans.
At that time Beacon Hill was much higher than it is now. Exactly on the point now marked by a monument, a monument was erected after the Revolution, in commemoration of the events of the year when it began. The present monument—completed lately—is an exact imitation of the first, but that this is of stone, and that was of brick. This has the old inscriptions.
Washington drove out the English by erecting the strong works on what was then called Dorchester Heights, which we now call South Boston. The places where most of these works existed are marked by inscriptions. Independence Square is on the site of one of them.
The careful traveller may go out to Roxbury, follow up Highland Street and turn to the right, and he will find an interesting memorial of one of the strong works built by General Ward. From this point, north and east, each of the towns preserves some relic of the same kind. In Cambridge one is marked
by a public square, on which the national flag is generally floating.
At the North End of Boston, where is now, and was then, the graveyard of Copp’s Hill, the English threw up some batteries. These are now obliterated, but the point is interesting in Revolutionary history, because it was from this height that Gage and Burgoyne saw their men flung back by the withering fire of Bunker Hill.
