Troy rejoices also in a paper boat manufactory—the boats being made especially for racing and feats of skill. They find sale principally in foreign markets, and at stated seasons divide the attention of the English with the "Derby." The boats are made of layers of brown paper put together with shellac.
There is a large society of Grand Army men in Albany, one Post numbering five or six hundred members. Their rooms are tastefully decorated, and hung with patriotic pictures, which make the blood thrill anew, as in the days of '61. A miniature fort occupies the centre of the room, and emblematic cannon and crossed swords are to be seen in conspicuous places.
A trip down the Hudson, in summer, from Albany to New York, is said to afford some of the finest scenery in the world, not excepting the famous sail on the castled Rhine; and the large river boats which leave Albany wharf daily, for our American London, are, indeed, floating palaces. The capital city of the Empire State is not, therefore, without its attractions, despite the fact that it was settled by the Dutch, and that a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep seems, at times, to have fastened itself upon the drowsy spirit of Albanian enterprise.
CHAPTER II.
BOSTON.
Geographical Location of Boston.—Ancient Names.—Etymology of the Word Massachusetts.—Changes in the Peninsula.—Noted Points of Interest.—Boston Common.—Old Elm.—Duel Under its Branches.—Soldiers' Monument.—Fragmentary History.—Courtship on the Common.—Faneuil Hall and Market.—Old State House.—King's Chapel.—Brattle Square Church.—New State House.—New Post Office.—Old South Church.—Birthplace of Franklin.—"News Letter."—City Hall.—Custom House.—Providence Railroad Station.—Places of General Interest.
Boston sits like a queen at the head of her harbor on the Massachusetts coast, and wears her crown of past and present glory with an easy and self-satisfied grace. Her commercial importance is large; her ships float on many seas; and she rejoices now in the same uncompromising spirit of independence which controlled the actions of the celebrated "Tea Party" in the pioneer days of '76. Her safe harbor is one of the best on the Atlantic seaboard, and is dotted with over a hundred islands. On some of these, garrisoned forts look grimly seaward.
Boston is built on a peninsula about four miles in circumference, and to this fact may be attributed the origin of her first name, Shawmutt, that word signifying in the Indian vocabulary a peninsula. Its second name, Tremount, took its rise from the three peaks of Beacon Hill, prominently seen from Charlestown by the first settlers there. Many of the colonists were from old Boston, in Lincolnshire, England, and on the seventh of September, 1630, this name supplanted the first two.