the Old Oaken Bucket. These shores are all lined with villas and attractive coast resorts, and the noted Jerusalem Road is the chief highway of Cohasset, following the coast-line around to the westward. Here projects the narrow and strange peninsula of Nantasket Beach, five miles out into the sea to Point Allerton, then hooking around and terminating in the town of Hull, and making one of the most popular seaside resorts of Bostonians. Farther to the westward, behind it, is Hingham Harbor, the quaint old village of Hingham on its shores, settled in 1635, having the oldest occupied church in New England, dating from 1681. This most ancient church of Yankeedom is a square building of the colonial style, its steep roof sloping up on all four sides to a platform at the top surrounded by a balustrade and surmounted by a little pointed belfry. Still farther westward, and within the entrance to Boston Harbor, projects the bold bluff of Squantum, thrust out into the bay, it having been named in memory of the old sachem who ruled all the country round about when Boston was first colonized, his home being on an adjacent hill. Sturdy old Squantum was a firm friend of the colonists, and when he was dying he besought Governor Bradford to pray for him, "that he might go to the Englishman's God in Heaven."

THE CITY OF BOSTON.

The approach to the New England metropolis, especially by way of the harbor, is fine. The city rises gradually ridge above ridge, until the centre culminates in Beacon Hill, surmounted by the bright gilded dome and lantern-top of the Massachusetts State House. From all sides the land, with its varied surfaces of hill and vale, slopes down towards the water courses, leading into the deep indentation of Boston Harbor. The pear-shaped peninsula, forming the original town, was the Indian Shawmut, or the "sweet waters," a name reproduced in many ways in the modern city. William Blackstone, the recluse Anglican clergyman of London who could not get on there with the "Lords Bishops" and emigrated, was the first white inhabitant of Shawmut, coming in 1623. Governor John Winthrop, of the Massachusetts colony, who came out in 1630 to Salem, removed to Shawmut the same year with Thomas Dudley and a number of Puritans, crossing over from Charlestown in a search for good water, which led them to select this place, which, from its three hills, they called the Tri-mountain, since shortened into Tremont. Blackstone, having lived there in solitude for several years, soon tired of having such near neighbors, and in 1634 he sold out the whole town site to them for about $150, and being disgusted with these "Lords Brethren," as he had previously been with the "Lords Bishops," avoided controversy by going farther into the wilderness. Winthrop and Dudley had come originally from Boston in England, and making this the capital of the Massachusetts colony, they gave it that name. The English Boston in Lincolnshire grew around the monastery of the Saxon St. Botolph, established in the seventh century, and hence its name of Botolph's Town, which has been condensed into Boston. Some years ago the English Bostonians presented a Gothic window from the ruins of old St. Botolph's to Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. When this Massachusetts colony was originally established, one of Winthrop's depressed companions, writing home, described Shawmut as "a hideous wilderness possessed by barbarous Indians, very cold, sickly, rocky, barren, unfit for culture, and like to keep the people miserable." Yet the settlement grew, and, as an early historian says, "Philadelphia was a forest and New York was an insignificant village long after its rival, Boston, had become a great commercial town." In 1663 an English visitor, describing the place, wrote that "the buildings are handsome, joining one to the other, as in London, with many large streets, most of them paved with pebble-stones. In the high street toward the Common there are faire houses, some of stone." The young colony encouraged commerce and became possessed of many ships, the earliest built at Boston being the bark "Blessing of the Bay" of thirty tons, a noted vessel belonging to Governor Winthrop, and considered a wonder in her time. The first solid wharf was built in 1673. It was Governor Winthrop who put into one of his official messages this chunk of wisdom: "The best part of a community is always the least, and of that part the wiser are still less." Anterior to the Revolution, Boston was the largest and most important American city, then having twenty-five thousand inhabitants.

Boston Harbor covers about seventy-five square miles, having various arms, such as South Boston Bay and Dorchester Bay, and the estuaries of the Charles, Mystic and Neponset Rivers, which enlarge the landing-spaces. The outer harbor has great natural beauty, increased by the improvements and adornments of buildings, the water surface gradually narrowing towards the city, and dotted with craggy, undulating islands, having long stretches of bordering beaches, interspersed with jutting cliffs, broad and bold promontories, and both low and lofty shores. The adjacent coasts are lined with villages that gradually merge into the suburbs of the great city. In this spacious harbor there are at least fifty large and small islands, and most of these, which were bare in Winthrop's day, are now crowned with forts, lighthouses, almshouses, hospitals and other civic institutions, several being most striking edifices, giving a pleasing variety to the scene. The splendid guiding beacon for the harbor entrance stands upon Little Brewster or Lighthouse Island, at the northern edge of Nantasket Roads. This is Boston Light, elevated about one hundred feet, a revolving light visible sixteen miles. George's Island, near the entrance and commanding the approach from the sea, has upon it the chief defensive work of the harbor, Fort Warren, about two miles west of Boston Light. Farther in, and near the city, off South Boston, is Castle Island, with Fort Independence, the successor of the earliest Boston fort, the "Castle," built by Winthrop in 1634. Opposite and about one mile northward is Governor's Island, containing Fort Winthrop. This island was originally the "Governor's garden," and Winthrop paid a yearly rent of two bushels of apples for it. These forts are nearly all constructed of Quincy granite, but none has seen actual warfare. Long Island spreads its high crags across the harbor, outside of the inner forts, and has a lighthouse on its northern end, while to the eastward is a low, rocky islet, bearing as a warning to the mariner a curious stone monument, known as Nix's Mate. It was here the colonists used to hang the pirates caught on the New England coasts. Upon Deer and Rainsford Islands are hospitals and reformatories, and upon Thompson's Island, which is fantastically shaped like an unfledged chicken, is an asylum and farm-school for indigent boys. Spectacle, Half Moon and Apple Islands received their names from their shapes.

At the inward, western extremity of the harbor is the pear-shaped Shawmut peninsula of Boston, having water ways almost all around it. Upon the one side is South Boston and upon the other Charlestown, the comparatively narrow intervening water courses of Fort Point Channel and Charles River being in parts nearly roofed over with bridges, that grudgingly open their draws to let through the vessels laden with lumber and coal. To the northeast, upon another peninsula, which formerly was an island, is East Boston, having Chelsea beyond to the northward. Towards the west, across the broadened estuary of Charles River, is Cambridge, this part of the estuary known as the Back Bay having been largely encroached upon to create more land for the crowded and spreading city. To the southward are