The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Old Coast Road, by Agnes Rothery This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Old Coast Road From Boston to Plymouth Author: Agnes Rothery Illustrator: Louis H. Ruyl Release Date: June 21, 2007 [eBook #21895] [Most recently updated: July 27, 2021] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COAST ROAD *** [Illustration] Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected. Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter. THE OLD COAST ROAD From Boston to Plymouth BY AGNES EDWARDS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOUIS H. RUYL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY AGNES EDWARDS PRATT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE OLD COAST ROAD From Boston to Plymouth CONTENTS Boston: A Foreword ix I. Dorchester Heights and the Old Coast Road 1 II. Milton and the Blue Hills 19 III. Shipbuilding at Quincy 35 IV. The Romance of Weymouth 57 V. Ecclesiastical Hingham 75 VI. Cohasset Ledges and Marshes 92 VII. The Scituate Shore 111 VIII. Marshfield, the Home of Daniel Webster 123 IX. Duxbury Homes 142 X. Kingston and its Manuscripts 157 XI. Plymouth 175 ILLUSTRATIONS A Bit of Commercial Street in Weymouth Frontispiece The State House from Park Street ix Map of the South Shore facing 1 Dorchester Bay 1 Off for Plymouth by the Old Coast Road 18 Great Blue Hill 19 Milton Estates facing 20 The Fore River Shipyard 35 The Adams Houses in Quincy 56 The Weymouth Water-Front 57 Rattling along the Old Coast Road 74 The Lincoln House in Hingham 75 The Old Ship Meeting-House facing 76 Interior of the New North Church in Hingham, with its Slave Galleries 91 Cohasset Ledges and Minot's Ledge Light 92 Modern Cohasset 110 Drying Sea-Moss at Scituate Harbor 111 Fourth Cliff, Scituate 122 The Webster House 123 Marshfield Meadows facing 136 A Duxbury Cottage 142 A Bay View to Duxbury Beach 156 The Standish Monument as seen from Kingston 157 Old Records 174 The Memorial Building for the Town of Plymouth, designed by Little and Russell, Architects 175 View from Steps of Burial Hill, Plymouth, showing the Town Square, Leyden Street, the Church of the Pilgrimage, the First Church, and, in the Distance, the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown facing 192 Clark's Island, Plymouth 203 [Pg ix] BOSTON: A FOREWORD To love Boston or to laugh at Boston—it all depends on whether or not you are a Bostonian. Perhaps the happiest attitude—and the most intelligent—is tinged with both amusement and affection: amusement at the undeviating ceremonial of baked beans on Saturday night and fish balls on Sunday morning; at the Boston bag (not so ubiquitous now as formerly); at the indefatigable consumption of lectures; at the Bostonese pronunciation; affection for the honorable traditions, noble buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city—one must remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago—and old cities, like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically increased with the passage of time. To tell the story of an old city is like cutting down through the various layers of a fruity layer cake. When you turn the slice over, you see that every piece is a cross-section. So almost every locality and phase of this venerable metropolis could be studied, and really should be studied, according to its historical strata: Colonial, Provincial, Revolutionary, economic, and literary. All of these periods have piled up their associations one upon the other, and all of them must be somewhat understood if one would sincerely comprehend what has aptly been called not a city, but a "state of mind." It is as impossible for the casual sojourner to grasp the significance of the multifarious historical and literary events which have transpired here as for a few pages to outline them. Wherever one stands in Boston suggests the church of San Clemente in Rome, where, you remember, there are three churches built one upon the other. However, those who would take the lovely journey from Boston to Plymouth needs must make some survey, no matter how superficial, of their starting-place. And perhaps the best spot from which to begin is the Common. This pleasantly rolling expanse, which was set aside as long ago as 1640, with the decree that "there shall be no land granted either for houseplott or garden out of y^e open land or common field," has been unbrokenly maintained ever since, and as far as acreage goes (it approximates fifty acres) could still fulfill its original use of pasturing cows, a practice which was continued until 1830. It was here that John Hancock's cattle grazed—he who lived in such magnificence on the hill, and in whose side yard the State House was built—and once, when preparations for an official banquet were halted by shortage of milk, tradition has it that he ordered his servants to hasten out on the Common and milk every cow there, regardless of ownership. Tradition also tells us that the little boy Ralph Waldo Emerson tended his mother's cow here; and finally both traditions and existing law declare that yonder one-story building opening upon Mount Vernon Street, and possessing an oddly wide door, must forever keep that door of sufficient width to let the cows pass through to the Common. Let us stand upon the steps of the State House and look out over the Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its charming beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the first time. It was the windiness of this corner which was responsible for Tom Appleton's suggestion (he was the brother-in-law of Longfellow) that a shorn lamb be tethered here. The graceful spire of Park Street Church serves not only as a landmark, but is also a most fitting terminal to a street of many associations. It is on Park Street that the publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (now Houghton Mifflin Company) has had its offices for forty years, and the bookstores and the antique shops tucked quaintly down a few steps below the level of the sidewalk have much of the flavor of a bit of London. Still standing on the State House steps, facing the Common, you are also facing what has been called the noblest monument in Boston and the most successfully placed one in America. It is Saint-Gaudens's bronze relief of Colonel Robert G. Shaw commanding his colored regiment, and if you see no other sculpture in a city which has its full quota you must see this memorial, spirited in execution, spiritual in its conception of a mighty moment. [Pg x] [Pg xi] [Pg xii] [Pg xiii] [Pg xiv] If we had time to linger we could not do better than to follow Beacon Street to the left, pausing at the Athenæum, a library of such dignity and beauty that one instinctively, and properly, thinks of it as an institution rather than a mere building. To enjoy the Athenæum one must be a "proprietor" and own a "share," which entitles one not only to the use of the scholarly volumes in scholarly seclusion, but also in the afternoon to entrance to an alcove where tea is served for three pennies. Perhaps here, as well as any other place, you may see a characteristic assortment of what are fondly called "Boston types." There is the professor from Cambridge, a gentleman with a pointed beard and a noticeably cultivated enunciation; one from Wellesley—this, a lady—with that keen and paradoxically impractical expression which marks pure intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily, dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your cup of tea for three cents, if—and here is the crux—you can only be admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail to look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground, where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis, Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards, this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of further study. This is one of the many things we could enjoyably do if we had time, but whether we have time or not we must pay our respects to the State House (one does not call it the Capitol in Boston, as in other cities), the prominence of whose golden dome is not unsuggestive, to those who recall it, of Saint Botolph's beacon tower in Boston, England, for which this city was named. The State House is a distinctively American building, and Bulfinch, the great American architect, did an excellent thing when he designed it. The dome was originally covered with plates of copper rolled by no other than that expert silversmith and robust patriot, Paul Revere—he whose midnight ride has been recited by so many generations of school-children, and whose exquisite flagons, cups, ladles, and sugar tongs not only compared with the best Continental work of that period, but have set a name and standard for American craftsmanship ever since. If you should walk up and down the chessboard of Beacon Hill—taking the knight's move occasionally across the narrow cross-streets—you could not help treading the very squares which were familiar to the feet of that generation of authors which has permanently stamped American literature. At 55 Beacon Street, down near the foot of the hill and facing the Common, still stands the handsome, swell-front, buff-brick house where Prescott, the historian, lived. On Mount Vernon Street (which runs parallel to Beacon, and which, with its dignified beauty, won the approval of that connoisseur of beautiful streets—Henry James) one can pick out successively the numbers 59, 76, 83, 84, the first and last being homes of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and the other two distinguished by the residence of William Ellery Channing and Margaret Deland. Pinckney Street runs parallel with Mount Vernon, and the small, narrow house at number 20 was one of the homes of the Alcott family. It seems delightfully fitting that Louisburg Square—that very exclusive and very English spot which probably retains more of the quaint atmosphere and customs of an aristocratic past than any other single area in the city—should have been the home of the well-beloved William Dean Howells. One also likes to recall that Jenny Lind was married at number 20. Chestnut Street—which after a period of social obscurity is again coming into its own—possesses Julia Ward Howe's house at number 13, that of Motley the historian at 16, and of Parkman at 50. In this hasty map we have gone up and down the hill, but the cross-street, Charles, although not so attractive, is nevertheless as rich in literary associations as any in Boston. Here lived, for a short time, at 164, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and at 131—also for a short time—Thomas Bailey Aldrich. It is, however, at 148, that we should longest pause. This, for many rich years, was the home of James T. Fields, that delightful man of letters who was the friend of many men of letters; he who entertained Dickens and Thackeray, and practically every foreign writer of note who visited this country; he who encouraged Hawthorne to the completion of the "Scarlet Letter," and he, who, as an appreciative critic, publisher, and editor, probably did more to elevate, inspire, and sustain the general literary tone of the city than any other single person. In these stirring days facile American genius springs up, like brush fires, from coast to coast. Novels pour in from the West, the Middle West, the South. To superficial outsiders it may seem as if Boston might be hard-pressed to keep her laurels green, but Boston herself has no fears. Her present may not shine with so unique a brilliance as her past, but her past gains in luster with each succeeding year. Nothing can ever take from Boston her high literary prestige. While we are still on Beacon Hill we can look out, not only upon the past, but upon the future. Those white domes and pillars gleaming like Greek temples across the blue Charles, are the new buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and surely Greek temples were never lovelier, nor dedicated to more earnest pursuit of things not mundane. Quite as beautiful and quite as Grecian as the Technology buildings is the noble marble group of the School of Medicine of Harvard University, out by the Fenlands—that section of the city which is rapidly becoming a students' quarter, with its Simmons College, the New England Conservatory of Music, art schools, gymnasiums, private and technical schools of all descriptions, and its body of over 12,000 students. Harvard is, of course, across the river in Cambridge, and preparatory schools and colleges dot the suburbs in every direction, upholding the cultural traditions of a city which has proved itself peculiarly fitted to educational interests. All this time we have, like bona-fide Bostonians, stayed on Beacon Hill, and merely looked out at the rest of the city. And perhaps this is as typical a thing as we could have done. Beacon Hill was the center of original Boston, when the Back Bay was merely a marsh, and long after the marsh was filled in and streets were laid out and handsome residences lined them, Beacon Hill looked down scornfully at the new section and murmured that it was built upon the discarded hoopskirts and umbrellas of the true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being [Pg xv] [Pg xvi] [Pg xvii] [Pg xviii] [Pg xix] [Pg xx] carefully, almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to lose their rightful place in the general life of the city. But if Beacon Hill was conservative in regard to the Back Bay, that district, in its turn, showed an equal unprogressiveness in regard to the Esplanade. To the stranger in Boston, delighting in that magnificent walk along the Charles River Embankment, with the arching spans of the Cambridge and Harvard bridges on one side, and the homes of wealth and mellow refinement on the other—a walk which for invigorating beauty compares with any in the cities of men—it seems incredible that when this promenade was laid out a few years ago, the householders along the water's edge absolutely refused to turn their front windows away from Beacon Street. Furthermore, they ignored the fact that their back yards and back windows presented an unbecoming face to such an incomparably lovely promenade, and the inevitable household rearrangement—by which the drawing-rooms were placed in the rear—was literally years in process of achievement. But such conservatism is one of Boston's idiosyncrasies, which we must accept like the wind and the flat A. Present-day Bostonians are proud—and properly so—of their Copley Square, with its Public Library, rich with the mural paintings of Puvis de Chavannes, with Abbey's "Quest of the Holy Grail," and Sargent's "Frieze of the Prophets"; with its well-loved Trinity Church and with much excellent sculpture by Bela Pratt. Copley Square is the cultural center of modern Boston. The famous Lowell lectures—established about seventy-five years ago as free gifts to the people— are enthusiastically attended by audiences as Bostonese as one could hope to congregate; and in all sorts of queer nests in this vicinity are Theosophical reading-rooms, small halls where Buddhism is studied or New Thought taught, and half a hundred very new or very old philosophies, religions, fads, fashions, reforms, and isms find shelter. It is easy to linger in Copley Square: indeed, hundreds and hundreds of men and women—principally women—come from all over the United States for the sole purpose of spending a few months or a season in this very place, enjoying the lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions which are so easily and freely accessible. But in this bird's-eye flight across the historical and geographical map of a city that tempts one to many pleasant delays, we must hover for a brief moment over the South and the North Ends. Skipping back, then, almost three centuries, but not traveling far as distance goes, the stranger in Boston cannot do better than to find his way from Copley Square to the Old South Church on Washington Street—that venerable building whose desecration by the British troops in 1775 the citizens found it so hard ever to forgive. It was here that Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706; here that Joseph Warren made a dramatic entry to the pulpit by way of the window in order to denounce the British soldiers; and here that momentous meetings were held in the heaving days before the Revolution. The Old South Church Burying Ground is now called the King's Chapel Burying Ground, and King's Chapel itself—a quaint, dusky building, suggestive of a London chapel—is only a few blocks away. Across its doorsill have not only stepped the Royal Governors of pre-Revolutionary days, but Washington, General Gage, the indestructibly romantic figures of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes Surriage; the funeral processions of General Warren and Charles Sumner. The organ, which came from England in 1756, is said to have been selected by Handel at the request of King George, and along the walls of the original King's Chapel were hung the escutcheons of the Kings of England and of the Royal Governors. The Old State House is in this vicinity and is worthy—as are, indeed, both the Old South Church and King's Chapel— of careful architectural study and enjoyment. There are portraits, pictures, relics, and rooms within, and without the beautifully quaint lines and truly lovely details of the façade infuse a perpetual charm into the atmosphere of the city. It was directly in front of this building that the Boston Massacre took place in 1770, and from this second-story balcony that the repeal of the Stamp Act was read, and ten years later the full text of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the next most interesting building in this section of old Boston is Faneuil Hall, the "Cradle of Liberty" whose dignified, old-fashioned proportions were not lost—thanks to Bulfinch—when it was enlarged. A gift of a public- spirited citizen, this building has served in a double capacity for a hundred and seventy-seven years, having public market-stalls below and a large hall above—a hall which is never rented, but used freely by the people whenever they wish to discuss public affairs. It would be impossible to enumerate the notable speakers and meetings which have rendered this hall famous, from General Gage down to Daniel Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, and Marshal Joffre. If you are fond of water sights and smells you can step from Faneuil Hall down to a region permeated with the flavor of salt and the sound of shipping, a region of both ancient tradition and present activity. Here is India Wharf, its seven- story yellow-brick building once so tremendously significant of Boston's shipping prosperity; Long Wharf, so named because when it was built it was the longest in the country, and bore a battery at its end; Central Wharf, with its row of venerable stone warehouses; T Wharf, immensely picturesque with its congestion of craft of all descriptions; Commercial Wharf, where full-rigged sailing vessels which traded with China and India and the Cape of Good Hope were wont to anchor a hundred years ago. All this region is crammed with the paraphernalia of a typical water-front: curious little shops where sailors' supplies are sold; airy lofts where sails are cut and stitched and repaired; fish stores of all descriptions; sailors' haunts, awaiting the pen of an American Thomas Burke. The old Custom House where Hawthorne unwillingly plodded through his enforced routine is here, and near it the new Custom House rears its tower four hundred and ninety-eight feet above the sidewalk, a beacon from both land and sea. The North End of Boston has not fared as well as the South End. The sons of Abraham and immigrants from Italy have appropriated the streets, dwellings, churches, and shops of the entire region, and even Christ Church (the famous Old North Church) has a Chiesa Italiana on its grounds. There are many touches to stir the memory in this Old North Church. The chime of eight bells naïvely stating, "We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North [Pg xxi] [Pg xxii] [Pg xxiii] [Pg xxiv] [Pg xxv] [Pg xxvi] [Pg xxvii] America"; the pew with the inscription that is set apart for the use of the "Gentlemen of Bay of Honduras"—visiting merchants who contributed the spire to the church in 1740; vaults beneath the church, forbidden now to visitors, where lie the bones of many Revolutionary heroes; a unique collection of vellum-covered books, and a few highly precious pieces of ancient furniture. The most conspicuous item about the church, of course, is that from its tower were hung the signal lanterns of Paul Revere, destined to shine imperishably down the ever-lengthening aisles of American history. Before we press on to Bunker Hill—for that is our final destination—we should cast a glance at Copp's Hill Burying Ground, that hillside refuge where one can turn either back to the annals of the past or look out over the roof-tops and narrow streets to the present and the future. If you chose the latter, you can see easily Boston Harbor and Charlestown Navy Yard—that navy yard which has outstripped even its spectacular traditions by its stirring achievements in the Great War. "Old Ironsides" will lie here forever in the well-earned serenity of a secure old age, and it is probable that another visitor, the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, although lost under the name of the Mount Vernon and a coat of gray paint, will be long preserved in maritime memory. The plain shaft of Bunker Hill Monument, standing to mark the spot where the Americans lost a battle that was, in reality, a victory, is like a blank mirror, reflecting only that which one presents to it. According to your historical knowledge and your emotional grasp Bunker Hill Monument is significant. Skimming thus over the many-storied city, in a sort of literary airplane, it has been possible to point out only a few of the most conspicuous places and towers. The Common lies like a tiny pocket handkerchief of path-marked green at the foot of crowded Beacon Hill; the white Esplanade curves beside the blue Charles; the Back Bay is only a checkerboard of streets, alphabetically arranged; Copley Square is hardly distinguishable. The spires of the Old South Church, King's Chapel, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall punctuate the South End; the North Church, the North End. The new Custom House Tower and Bunker Hill Monument seem hardly more than the minarets of a child's toy village. The writer, as a pilot over this particular city, alights and resigns, commending for more detailed study, and for delightful guidance, Robert Shackleton's "Book of Boston." Let us now leave the city and set out in a more leisurely fashion on our way to Plymouth. THE OLD COAST ROAD From Boston to Plymouth The South Shore of MASSACHUSETTS BAY The South Shore of MASSACHUSETTS BAY THE OLD COAST ROAD [Pg xxviii] [Pg xxix] [Pg 1] CHAPTER I DORCHESTER HEIGHTS AND THE OLD COAST ROAD The very earliest of the great roads in New England was the Old Coast Road, connecting Boston with Plymouth— capitals of separate colonies. Do we, casually accepting the fruit of three hundred years of toil on this continent—do we, accustomed to smooth highways and swift and easy transportation, realize the significance of such a road? A road is the symbol of the civilization which has produced it. The main passageway from the shore of the Yellow Sea to the capital of Korea, although it has been pressed for centuries immemorial by myriads of human feet, has never been more than a bridle path. On the other hand, wherever the great Roman Empire stepped, it engineered mighty thoroughfares which are a marvel to this day. A road is the thread on which the beads of history are strung; the beads of peace as well as those of war. Thrilling as is the progress of aerial navigation, with its infinite possibilities of human intercourse, yet surely, when the entire history of man is unrolled, the moment of the conception of building a wide and permanent road, instead of merely using a trail, will rank as equally dramatic. The first stone laid by the first Roman (they to whom the idea of road-building was original) will be recognized as significant as the quiver of the wings of the first airplane. Let us follow the old road from Boston to Plymouth: follow it, not with undue exactitude, and rather too hastily, as is the modern way, but comfortably, as is also the modern way, picking up what bits of quaint lore and half-forgotten history we most easily may. I think that as we start down this historic highway, we shall encounter—if our mood be the proper one in which to undertake such a journey—a curious procession coming down the years to meet us. We shall not call them ghosts, for they are not phantoms severed from earth, but, rather, the permanent possessors of the highway which they helped create. We shall meet the Indian first, running lightly on straight, moccasined feet, along the trail from which he has burned, from time to time, the underbrush. He does not go by land when he can go by water, but in this case there are both land and water to meet, for many are the streams, and they are unbridged as yet. With rhythmic lope, more beautiful than the stride of any civilized limbs, and with a sure divination of the best route, he chooses the trail which will ultimately be the highway of the vast army of pale-faces. Speed on, O solitary Indian—to vanish down the narrow trail of your treading as you are destined, in time, to vanish forever from the vision of New England!... Behind the red runner plod two stern- faced Pilgrims, pushing their way up from Plymouth toward the newer settlement at Massachusetts Bay. They come slowly and laboriously on foot, their guns cocked, eyes and ears alert, wading the streams without complaint or comment. They keep together, for no one is allowed to travel over this Old Coast Road single, "nor without some arms, though two or three together." The path they take follows almost exactly the trail of the Indian, seeking the fords, avoiding the morasses, clinging to the uplands, and skirting the rough, wooded heights.... After them—almost a decade after—we see a man on horseback, with his wife on a pillion behind him. They carry their own provisions and those for the beast, now and then dismounting to lead the horse over difficult ground, and now and then blazing a tree to help them in their return journey—mute testimony to the cruder senses of the white man to whom woodcraft never becomes instinctive. The fact that this couple possesses a horse presages great changes in New England. Ferries will be established; tolls levied, bridges thrown across the streams which now the horses swim, or cross by having their front feet in one canoe ferry and their hind feet in another—the canoes being lashed together. As yet we see no vehicle of any kind, except an occasional sedan chair. (The first one of these of which we have knowledge was presented to Governor Winthrop as a portion of a capture from a Spanish galleon.) However, these are not common. In 1631 Governor Endicott of Salem wrote that he could not get to Boston to visit Governor Winthrop as he was not well enough to wade the streams. The next year we read of Governor Winthrop surmounting the difficulty when he goes to visit Governor Bradford, by being carried on the backs of Indians across the fords. (It took him two days to make the journey.) It is not strange that we see no wheeled vehicles. In 1672 there were only six stage-coaches in the whole of Great Britain, and they were the occasion of a pamphlet protesting that they encouraged too much travel! At this time Boston had one private coach. Although one swallow may not make a summer, one stage-coach marks the beginning of a new era. The age of walking and horseback riding approaches its end; gates and bars disappear, the crooked farm lanes are gradually straightened; and in come a motley procession of chaises, sulkies, and two-wheeled carts—two-wheeled carts, not four. There are sleds and sleighs for winter, but the four-wheeled wagon was little used in New England until [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] the turn of the century. And then they were emphatically objected to because of the wear and tear on the roads! In 1669 Boston enacted that all carts "within y^e necke of Boston shall be and goe without shod wheels." This provision is entirely comprehensible, when we remember that there was no idea of systematic road repair. No tax was imposed for keeping the roads in order, and at certain seasons of the year every able-bodied man labored on the highways, bringing his own oxen, cart, and tools. But as the Old Coast Road, which was made a public highway in 1639, becomes a genuine turnpike—so chartered in 1803—the good old coaching days are ushered in with the sound of a horn, and handsome equipages with well- groomed, well-harnessed horses ply swiftly back and forth. Genial inns, with swinging pictorial signboards (for many a traveler cannot read), spring up along the way, and the post is installed. But even with fair roads and regular coaching service, New England, separated by her fixed topographical outlines, remains provincial. It is not until the coming of the railroad, in the middle of the nineteenth century, that the hills are overcome, and she ceases to be an exclusively coastwise community and becomes an integral factor in the economic development of the whole United States. Thus, then, from a thin thread of a trail barely wide enough for one moccasined foot to step before the other, to a broad, leveled thoroughfare, so wide that three or even four automobiles may ride abreast, and so clean that at the end of an all-day's journey one's face is hardly dusty, does the history of the Old Coast Road unroll itself. We who contemplate making the trip ensconced in the upholstered comfort of a machine rolling on air-filled tires, will, perhaps, be less petulant of some strip of roughened macadam, less bewildered by the characteristic windings, if we recall something of the first back-breaking cart that—not so very long ago—crashed over the stony road, and toilsomely worked its way from devious lane to lane. Before we start down the Old Coast Road it may be enlightening to get a bird's-eye glimpse of it actually as we have historically, and for such a glimpse there is no better place than on the topmost balcony of the Soldier's Monument on Dorchester Heights. The trip to Dorchester Heights, in South Boston, is, through whatever environs one approaches it, far from attractive. This section of the city, endowed with extraordinary natural beauty and advantage of both land and water, and irrevocably and brilliantly graven upon the annals of American history, has been allowed to lose its ancient prestige and to sink low indeed in the social scale. Nevertheless it is to Dorchester Heights that we, as travelers down the Old Coast Road, and as skimmers over the quickly turning pages of our early New England history, must go, and having once arrived at that lovely green eminence, whitely pointed with a marble shaft of quite unusual excellence, we must grieve once more that this truly glorious spot, with its unparalleled view far down the many-islanded harbor to the east and far over the famous city to the west, is not more frequented, more enjoyed, more honored. If you find your way up the hill, into the monument, and up the stairs out to the balcony, probably you will encounter no other tourist. Only when you reach the top and emerge into the blue upper air you will meet those friendly winged visitors who frequent all spires—Saint Mark's in Venice or the Soldier's Monument in South Boston—the pigeons! Yes, the pigeons have discovered the charm of this lofty loveliness, and whenever the caretaker turns away his vigilant eye, they haste to build their nests on balcony or stair. They alone of Boston's residents enjoy to the full that of which too many Bostonians ignore the existence. Will you read the inscriptions first and recall the events which have raised this special hill to an historic eminence equal to its topographical one? Or will you look out first, on all sides and see the harbor, the city and country as it is to-day? Both surveys will be brief; perhaps we will begin with the latter. Before us, to the wide east, lies Boston Harbor, decked with islands so various, so fascinating in contour and legend, that more than one volume has been written about them and not yet an adequate one. From the point of view of history these islands are pulsating with life. From Castle Island (on the left) which was selected as far back as 1634 to be a bulwark of the port, and which, with its Fort Independence, was where many of our Civil War soldiers received their training, to the outline of Squantum (on the right), where in October, 1917, there lay a marsh, and where, ten months later, the destroyer Delphy was launched from a shipyard that was a miracle of modern engineering—every mile of visible land is instinct with war-time associations. But history is more than battles and forts and the paraphernalia of war; history is economic development as well. And from this same balcony we can pick out Thompson's, Rainsford, and Deer Island, set aside for huge corrective institutions—a graphic example of a nation's progress in its treatment of the wayward and the weak. But if history is more than wars, it is also more than institutions. If it is the record of man's daily life, the pleasures he works for, then again we are standing in an unparalleled spot to look down upon its present-day manifestations. From City Point with its Aquarium, from the Marine Park with its long pleasure pier, to Nantasket with its flawless beach, this is the summer playground of unnumbered hosts. Boaters, bathers, picnickers—all find their way here, where not only the cool breezes sweep their city-heated cheeks, but the forever bewitching passage of vessels in and out, furnishes endless entertainment. They know well, these laughing pleasure-seekers, crowding the piers and boats and wharves and beaches, where to come for refreshment, and now and then, in the history of the harbor, a solitary individual has taken advantage of the romantic charm which is the unique heritage of every island, and has built his home and lived, at least some portion of his days, upon one. Apple Island, that most perfectly shaped little fleck of land of ten acres, was the home of a Mr. March, an Englishman [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] who settled there with his family, and lived there happily until his death, being buried at last upon its western slope. The fine old elms which adorned it are gone now, as have the fine old associations. No one followed Mr. March's example, and Apple Island is now merely another excursion point. On Calf Island, another ten-acre fragment, one of America's popular actresses, Julia Arthur, has her home. Thus, here and there, one stumbles upon individuals or small communities who have chosen to live out in the harbor. But one cannot help wondering how such beauty spots have escaped being more loved and lived upon by men and women who recognize the romantic lure which only an island can possess. Of course the advantage of these positions has been utilized, if not for dwellings. Government buildings, warehouses, and the great sewage plant all find convenient foothold here. The excursionists have ferreted out whatever beaches and groves there may be. One need not regret that the harbor is not appreciated, but only that it has not been developed along æsthetic as well as useful lines. We have been looking at the east, which is the harbor view. If we look to the west we see the city of Boston: the white tower of the Custom House; the gold dome of the State House; the sheds of the great South Station; the blue line of the Charles River. Here is the place to come if one would see a living map of the city and its environs. Standing here we realize how truly Boston is a maritime city, and standing here we also realize how it is that Dorchester Heights won its fame. It was in the winter of 1776, when the British, under Lord Howe, were occupying Boston, and had fortified every place which seemed important. By some curious oversight—which seems incredible to us as we actually stand upon the top of this conspicuous hill—they forgot this spot. When Washington saw what they had not seen—how this unique position commanded both the city and the harbor— he knew that his opportunity had come. He had no adequate cannon or siege guns, and the story of how Henry Knox —afterward General Knox—obtained these from Ticonderoga and brought them on, in the face of terrific difficulties of weather and terrain, is one that for bravery and brains will never fail to thrill. On the night of March 4, the Americans, keeping up a cannonading to throw the British off guard, and to cover up the sound of the moving, managed to get two thousand Continental troops and four hundred carts of fascines and intrenching tools up on the hill. That same night, with the aid of the moonlight, they threw up two redoubts—performing a task, which, as Lord Howe exclaimed in dismay the following morning, was "more in one night than my whole army could have done in a month." The occupation of the heights was a magnificent coup. The moment the British saw what had been done, they realized that they had lost the fight. However, Lord Percy hurried to make an attack, but the weather made it impossible, and by the time the weather cleared the Americans were so strongly intrenched that it was futile to attack. Washington, although having been granted permission by Congress to attack Boston, wished to save the loyal city if possible. Therefore, he and Howe made an agreement by which Howe was to evacuate and Washington was to refrain from using his guns. After almost two weeks of preparation for departure, on March 17 the British fleet, as the gilded letters on the white marble panel tell us, in the words of Charles W. Eliot: Carrying 11,000 effective men And 1000 refugees Dropped down to Nantasket Roads And thenceforth Boston was free A strong British force Had been expelled From one of the United American colonies The white marble panel, with its gold letters and the other inscriptions on the hill, tell the whole story to whoever cares to read, only omitting to mention that the thousand self-condemned Boston refugees who sailed away with the British fleet were bound for Halifax, and that that was the beginning of the opprobrious term: "Go to Halifax." That the battle was won without bloodshed in no way minimizes the verdict of history that "no single event had a greater general effect on the course of the war than the expulsion of the British from the New England capital." And surely this same verdict justifies the perpetual distinction of this unique and beautiful hill. This, then, is the story of Dorchester Heights—a story whose glory will wax rather than wane in the years, and centuries, to come. Let us be glad that out of the reek of the modern city congestion this green hill has been preserved and this white marble monument erected. Perhaps you see it now with different, more sympathetic eyes than when you first looked out from the balcony platform. Before us lies the water with its multifarious islands, bays, promontories, and coves, some of which we shall now explore. Behind us lies the city which we shall now leave. The Old Coast Road— the oldest in New England—winds from Boston to Plymouth, along yonder southern horizon. More history than one person can pleasantly relate, or one can comfortably listen to, lies packed along this ancient turnpike: incidents closer set than the tombs along the Appian Way. We will not try to hear them all. Neither will we follow the original road too closely, for we seek the beautiful pleasure drive of to-day more than the historic highway of long ago. Boston was made the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1632. Plymouth was a capital a decade before. It is [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] to Plymouth that we now set out. Chapter II MILTON AND THE BLUE HILLS Milton—a town of dignity and distinction! A town of enterprise and character! Ever since the first water-power mill in this country; the first powder mill in this country; the first chocolate mill in this country, and thus through a whole line of "first" things—the first violoncello, the first pianoforte, the first artificial spring leg, and the first railroad to see the light of day saw it in this grand old town—the name of Milton has been synonymous with initiative and men and women of character. Few people to-day think of Milton in terms of industrial repute, but, rather, as a place of estates, too aristocratic to be fashionable, of historic houses, and of charming walks and drives and views. Many of the old families who have given the town its prestige still live in their ancestral manors, and many of the families who have moved there in recent years are of such sort as will heighten the fame of the famous town. As the stranger passes through Milton he is captivated by glimpses of ancient homesteads, settling behind their white Colonial fences topped with white Colonial urns, half hidden by their antique trees with an air of comfortable ease; of new houses, elegant and yet informal; of cottages with low roofs; of well-bred children playing on the wide, green lawns under the supervision of white-uniformed nurses; of old hedges, old walls, old trees; new roads, old drives, new gardens, and old gardens—everything well placed, well tended, everything presenting that indescribable atmosphere of well-established prosperity that scorns show; of breeding that neither parades nor conceals its quality. Yes—this is Milton; this is modern Milton. Boston society receives some of its most prominent contributions from this patrician source. But modern Milton is something more than this, as old Milton was something more than this. [Pg 19] [Pg 20] For Milton, from this day of its birth, and countless centuries before its birth as a town, has lived under the lofty domination of the Blue Hills, that range of diaphanous and yet intense blue, that swims forever against the sky, that marches forever around the horizon. The rounded summits of the Blue Hills, to which the eye is irresistibly attracted before entering the town which principally claims them, are the worn-down stumps of ancient mountains, and although so leveled by the process of the ages, they are still the highest land near the coast from Maine to Mexico. These eighteen or twenty skyey crests form the southern boundary of the so-called Boston Basin, and are the most prominent feature of the southern coast. From them the Massachuset tribe about the Bay derived its name, signifying "Near the Great Hills," which name was changed by the English to Massachusetts, and applied to both bay and colony. Although its Indian name has been taken from this lovely range, the loveliness remains. All the surrounding country shimmers under the mysterious bloom of these heights, so vast that everything else is dwarfed beside them, and yet so curiously airy that they seem to perpetually ripple against the sky. The Great Blue Hill, especially—the one which bears an observatory on its summit—swims above one's head. It seems to have a singular way of moving from point to point as one motors, and although one may be forced to admit that this may be due more to the winding roads than to the illusiveness of the hill, still the buoyant effect is the same. Ruskin declares somewhere, with his quaint and characteristic mixture of positiveness and idealism, that "inhabitants of granite countries have a force and healthiness of character about them that clearly distinguishes them from the inhabitants of less pure districts." Perhaps he was right, for surely here where the succeeding generations have all lived in the atmosphere of the marching Blue Hill, each has through its own fair name, done honor to the fair names which have preceded it. One of the very first to be attracted by the lofty and yet lovely appeal of this region was Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the last of the Royal Governors Massachusetts was to know. It was about the middle of the eighteenth century that this gentleman, of whom John Adams wrote, "He had been admired, revered, and almost adored," chose as the spot for his house the height above the Neponset River. If we follow the old country Heigh Waye to the top of Unquity (now Milton) Hill, we will find the place he chose, although the house he built has gone and another stands in its place. Fairly near the road, it overlooked a rolling green meadow (a meadow which, by the gift of John Murray Forbes, will always be kept open), with a flat green marsh at its feet and the wide flat twist of the Neponset River winding through it, for all the world like a decorative panel by Puvis de Chavannes. One can see a bit of the North Shore and Boston Harbor from here. This is the view that the Governor so admired, and tradition tells us that when he was forced to return to England he walked on foot down the hill, shaking hands with his neighbors, patriot and Tory alike, with tears in his eyes as he left behind him the garden and the trees he had planted, and the house where he had so happily lived. Although the view from the front of the house is exquisite, the view from the back holds even more intimate attraction. Here is the old, old garden, and although the ephemeral blossoms of the present springtime shine brightly forth, the box, full twenty feet high, speaks of another epoch. Foxgloves lean against the "pleached alley," and roses clamber on a wall that doubtless bore the weight of their first progenitors. Another governor who chose to live in Milton was Jonathan Belcher, but one fancies it was the grandness rather than the sweetness of the scene which attracted this rather spectacular person. The Belcher house still exists, as does the portrait of its master, in his wig and velvet coat and waistcoat, trimmed with richest gold lace at the neck and wrists. [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] Small-clothes and gold knee and shoe buckles complete the picture of one who, when his mansion was planned, insisted upon an avenue fifty feet wide, and so nicely graded that visitors on entering from the street might see the gleam of his gold knee buckles as he stood on the distant porch. The avenue, however, was never completed, as Belcher was appointed governor of, and transferred to, New Jersey shortly after. Two other men of note, who, since the days of our years are but threescore and ten, chose that their days without number should be spent in the town they loved, were Wendell Phillips and Rimmer the sculptor, who are both buried at Milton. Not only notable personages, but notable events have been engendered under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever made in this country received its conception and was brought to fulfillment in the Crehore house, which, although still sagging a bit, is by no means out of commission. And Wilde's Tavern, where was formed the public opinion in a day when the forming of public opinion was of preëminent importance, still retains, in its broad, hospitable lines, some shred of its ancient charm. Milton is full of history. From the Revolutionary days, when the cannonading at Bunker Hill shook the foundations of the houses, but not the nerves of the Milton ladies, down to the year 1919, when the Fourth Liberty Loan of $2,955,250 was subscribed from a population of 9000, all the various vicissitudes of peace and war have been sustained on the high level that one might expect from men and women nobly nurtured by the strength of the hills. How much of its success Milton attributes to its locati...