Chapter 23

THE OLD TOWER AT NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND.

From Wolfborough the route was east by the Maine Central Railroad to Portland, and thence by steamer to Boston. There are many beautiful places in the vicinity of Portland, and particularly about the popular summer resorts of Mount Desert Island and Bar Harbor; but much must be sacrificed to the limit of space, for no one book can ever contain pictures of all the natural scenery that is worthy to be reproduced. Among other photographs taken in and about Portland, we have room for only one, viz.: the light-house on Cape Elizabeth, in the harbor, a dreary desolation of stone, where the ocean is treacherous and a warning to incoming vessels is indispensable.

Boston is historic ground, around which are many sacred spots perpetuated in patriotic memories. It is a great city; but the traveled visitor is indifferent to municipal sights, and is restless to pay his tribute of respect and curiosity to those shrines that keep in mind the reverent character of the Puritan, and the heroism of the Revolutionary soldier. It is hard to resist this infectious temptation to photograph monuments and battle-fields, when one is walking upon the very famous dust, and reading inscriptions recording the valor of those who fought for our National Independence; but this is a volume devoted to American scenery rather than to American history, a subject which ought to inspire equal patriotic sentiment, and monumental tributes must therefore be omitted, or casually mentioned by incidental reference, as may appear proper.

From Boston our artist proceeded by a train on the Old Colony Railroad to Cohasset, a town which it has been truthfully said marks one of the most interesting, most wildly beautiful bits of nature on any coast.

“This town,” let it be said, “marks one of the most interesting, most wildly beautiful bits of nature on any known coast. In this situation are to be found all the beauties and all the terrors which ocean scenes can compass. The history of Cohasset,for the past two hundred and fifty years, has in it an element personal to every civilized people on the globe, since all have sent their ships and their travelers this way, and added names to the death-roll hereabouts. The crags and ledges along these shores have taken part in ocean tragedies for generations, and have witnessed more of human suffering and the extremity of distress than often falls to the lot of natural scenes. Upon their faces the ocean surges have never ceased to dash themselves since the morning of creation. Here the whiteness never goes out of the line of surf; and often the conditions are of shattered waters flying in the air, of roaring breakers crashing into fragments along the rocks, of great masses of billows lashed into fury, and resistless in their commonest attacks by all except the natural barriers to their progress here set up.”

THE CLIFFS AT NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND.

Beautiful, commanding, stirring as the scenes are about Cohasset’s bounding shores, yet the tragedies which have occurred in the treacherous approaches to the harbor are both numerous and heart-appalling. On these very rocks, where the waters usually play in such happy abandon, more than seven score of persons from a single ship—theSt. John, in October, 1849—were dashed to their deaths, and disasters attended by less mortality became so common that the Government erected a lighthouse at Minot’s Ledge, which is two miles off Cohasset Point, where the hidden rocks are most dangerous to shipping.

From Cohasset the trip was south, by the Old Colony, along the Atlantic shore, passing many points of great interest, though for scenery there is nothing but marshes and a waste of sandy beach. But on the way, Daniel Webster’s farm is pointed out, located on a level strip between the railroad and Marshfield Neck, where it would appear that raising clams might be more profitably pursued than the growing of grain or vegetable. Quaint scenes, reminders of the olden times when stage-coaching was the most luxurious mode of travel, and pot-hooks and hangers were adjuncts of the crane that rendered the fire-place the sole convenience for cooking, pass in review and are a source of the greatest interest to those of a retrospective and reflective turn of mind. Here and there we observe old Puritan churchesand equally old-fashioned people, whose appearances indicate that they have not been widely distributed since the Mayflower landed. There is a Miles Standish, John Alden and Priscilla in every village, and the houses, in many cases, tell of a time quite as remote. Indeed, in the little but ancient hamlet of Greenbush, which is within a half-dozen miles of Cohasset, and twice as far to Nantasket, an intensely fashionable resort, one may see the identical old oaken bucket and the crazy sweep by which “dripping with coolness it rose from the well,” which inspired Woodworth’s immortal lay in 1817. There, too, is the same old house, hiding behind a clump of trees, under which the poet sat and drank from the “full blushing goblet,” which, alas for human weakness, he really coveted less than a beaker of good wine.

PURGATORY CHASM, NEAR NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND.

Twenty-five miles south of Cohasset is the historic town of Plymouth, and right in front of it is a harbor made by a long neck of land, parallel with the shore, and known as the Cow-Yard, in which the Mayflower came to anchor with her precious cargo of forefathers, on a bleak December day in 1620. Mr. Samuel Adams Drake has written:

“Plymouth is the American Mecca. It does not contain the tomb of the prophet, but the rock of the forefathers, their traditions and their graves. The first impressions of a stranger are disappointing, for the oldest town in New England looks as fresh as if built within the century. There is not much that is suggestive of the old life to be seen there. Except the hills, the heaven, and the sea, there is nothing antique; save a few carefully cherished relics, nothing that has survived the day of the Pilgrims.” And another writer of recent times declares “it would be difficult to name any other place in America with such a profoundlyinteresting historical event as that which has made the name of Plymouth Rock forever famous in the annals of devotion and freedom. Upwards of fifty thousand persons come here every summer, making reverent pilgrimages to the cradle of American civilization. For these, and for all who love the antique and historic, Plymouth has well-nigh unrivaled attractions. Here is the renowned rock, down by the water-side, overarched by a stately granite canopy, in whose top are the bones of several of the Pilgrims. Up in the village rises the massive structure of Pilgrim Hall, consecrated to relics and memorials of the first colonists. Near this shrine is the court-house, with rare records and documents of the seventeenth century. On a noble hill rises the Pilgrim National Monument, a vast pile of carved granite crowned by a very impressive statue of Faith, forty feet high, and the largest stone figure in the world.

NEGRO-HEAD CLIFFS, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND.

“Burial Hill is one of the most interesting localities in New England. On every side are the tombs and monuments of the founders of the State and their descendants. Above these sacred graves the pleased eye wanders over an exquisite panorama of sea and shore, lonely islands, far-reaching promontories, and distant blue hills, out across the blue sea to where the sandy strand of Cape Cod bounds the view, low down on the horizon. On this bleak summit stood the fortified log-church and watch-tower, the former bearing six three-pound cannon on its flat roof, and the latter occupied by vigilant sentinels.”

It is about forty miles from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island, one of the ultra-fashionable summer seaside resorts, and thither our artist repaired to take views of that vicinity. Newport is not only famous for its fine bathing beach, elegant villas, and its harbor specially adapted for yacht-racing; there is much more to recommend the city to visitors than these means of recreation and pleasant vanities. Commercially, Newport is a metropolis of looms; historically, it is a city of great consequence; and scenically, a place of extraordinary interest. The Old Tower at Newport has been for centuries an object of curious inquiry and patient investigation. For many years the opinion obtained generally that it was a relic of the Norsemen’s discovery and occupation of the country, five hundred years before the time ofColumbus, and that in some way the building was connected with Druidic worship. The Druids of England and France performed their religious ceremonies under oak trees and always in the open air, but this fact did not affect the belief current for so long a time that the Stone Tower was the remains of either an edifice or a monument erected by the Druids. When this opinion finally changed to the more reasonable though equally false one that the tower was the relic of a fort built by Norsemen sea-kings about the year 985, historians appeared to be satisfied and inquiry ceased for a long while. Finally, investigation of the Runic inscriptions on the Dighton Rock, in Massachusetts, revived curiosity in the tower, and the result of the last investigation is the opinion that it is the ruins of a wind-mill that was built some time in the seventeenth century. The truth, however, may as well be told, that notwithstanding what historians say to the contrary, no one knows, or is likely ever to know, when, by whom, or for what purpose the so-called tower was built. It is a question about which there can be nothing but speculation.

SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT ON EAST ROCK, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT.

Newport is located on a peninsula on the east shore of Narragansett Bay, which is a splendid harbor, having an anchorage of thirty feet in low water. The scenery about the place, too, is very fine, and is brought into advantageous view by a charming drive-way that extends along the beach and entirely around the city. A part of the sea-shore line is very rocky and precipitous, and the assaults of terrific breakers for many ages have worn these cliffs into wonderful shapes.Purgatory Chasm is, perhaps, the most remarkable example of wave force in this vicinity, though the agency of water has, no doubt, been reinforced by some other natural power, such as glacier, earthquake or volcano. Near-by are Hanging Rocks, where Berkeley is said to have composed hisMinute Philosophy; and less than three hundred yards distant is Spouting Cave, where the surf dashes into a grotto and thence through a hole in the roof to a height at times of fifty feet, affording a beautiful spectacle. Other points of interest along the cliffs are individualized by such names as Eastman’s, Green’s End, Lime Rock, Negro-Head Cliffs, the Flints, the Dumplings, Cockle-Shell Ledge, etc. After a brief circuit of Newport’s attractions, our artist departed for Western Connecticut and thence to Albany, there to take boat down the Hudson for New York City. The route lay through New Haven, where a short stop was made to take a picture of East Rock and the Soldiers’ Monument thereon. East Rock is a bluff 360 feet high, on the north side of the city, to which a beautiful carriage-road leads, and from its summit a wide extent of charming landscape is presented, taking in a part of the Connecticut Valley towards the west, Yale College on the east, and spanning Long Island Sound on the south, so that when the weather is clear the low banks of Long Island may be distinguished.

BALANCED ROCK, NEAR PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.

From New Haven the route was north and west over the Housatonic system to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire region, a city of some 17,000 people, and noted for its many interesting buildings of national reputation, as well as for the lovely scenery that environs it. The place is elegantly situated on a high plateau, with the Taconic Mountains on the west and the Hoosac Range commanding the eastern view. It will be remembered by students of history that Fighting Parson Allen, of Revolutionary fame, was pastor of the First Methodist Church in Pittsfield, and they will be gratified to know that the building is still standing and that it exhibits little impairment from age. The Agassiz Association, with an enrolled membership of 20,000, has its headquarters in the city, and the place is also the seat of many prominent historical and educational institutions. But it is the scenery thereabout that interests us most. Waconah Falls is a pretty cascade ten miles from the city, and still nearer is Roaring Brook, that rushes down the side of a mountainin torrential flow, through a gap known as Tories’ Cave, and contributes its waters to Ashley Pond, whence the city’s supply is obtained. Lake Onota is a picturesque sheet two miles west of Pittsfield, and near-by is Balanced Rock, one of the greatest natural curiosities in America. It is a tremendous bowlder, as the illustration shows, the estimated weight of which is 480 tons, and is balanced on a point that is only one foot square. So unstable is its appearance, resting on such a slender foundation, that it looks as if a zephyr might topple it over, yet so firmly poised that an army of giants could hardly disturb its equilibrium.

CROSS ROCK, NEAR PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.

In a rocky field three miles from the city is another great natural curiosity known as Cross Rock, which has been singularly cleft, by some unknown agency, into the form of a perfect cross, to which a few superstitious people formerly attributed remarkable healing virtues, but which no one any longer regards.

Four miles east of Pittsfield is the village of Dalton, where immense quantities of paper are manufactured, and on the Pittsfield line is located the mill that produces all the Government bank-note paper. West Pittsfield, about five miles from the city proper, is also an interesting place, reposing under the shadows of Taconic Mountains, and celebrated as being the national headquarters of what is known as the “United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing.” This curious sect of Shakers, disciples of Ann Lee, founded the village more than a century ago, and their “Millennial” church, which was built soon after, still stands as one of the most conspicuous buildings in New England. Massachusetts has been famous as the home of religious denominations possessing peculiar tenets almost since the landing of the Pilgrims; but from the days of Salem witchcraft to the present, few sects have adopted more curious beliefs and ceremonials than the Shakers. Yet, to their credit let it be spoken, they are good citizens, honest, generous, faithful, industrious and kindly in all their intercourse with the world as well as among themselves.

From Pittsfield our artist proceeded to New Albany, and thence by boat to New York, where he joined the two other photographers, the route of the third having been east by way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which now remains to be described.

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