222 History of Hingham. 



self, might have been seen watching the hot meal as it poured 

 from the stones, while hearing and telling what each might of 

 news and rumor and gossip. Here the forebodings of the forest, 

 the startling stories of Indian devastation and cruelty, the tales 

 from over seas, the crop prospects, and the latest talk of the vil- 

 lage whiled away many an idle hour, and doubtless, too, lost little 

 in their later relation by the home firesides. To the eastward 

 and westward of the mill stream, and sloping towards each other 

 until meeting beneath its bubbling waters, rose two noble hills, 

 their tops crowned with the oak and the pine, and their ocean- 

 ward sides scantily protected by wind-twisted and stunted cedars. 

 In Cobb's Bank, earlier known as Ward's Hill, we have, bare 

 and unsightly, the little that remains of the first of these, 

 which then, rounded and srreen, stretched awav for several him- 

 drcd feet along the harbor, and gradually descending, finally dis- 

 appeared in Wakeley's meadows. Through these last coursed a 

 tiny run, which emptied into the sea by the " landing-place " of a 

 subsequent period, — now a grass-covered wharf, long since disused 

 for commercial purposes. An easy ford at the town dock ena- 

 bled those having occasion, to reach the beaches along the base 

 of the eminence, and thence, after crossing the run, to ascend 

 the hill near the steamboat landing, and through the fields and 

 woods reach Neck Gate Hill, Martin's Lane, and the planting lots 

 beyond. The hill west of the stream also skirted the harbor for 

 some distance, and then, drifting inland, continued far towards 

 the western extremity of the town ; it remains materially unal- 

 tered to this day. Old Town Street, with its name changed to 

 North, follows now as in the early days its graceful, curving 

 course along the base of the hill at whose foot it lies. Here 

 and there its lines have been moved a trifle, this way or that, 

 but from the harbor to West Street it is the same old road, border- 

 ing the pond, the brook, and the swamp, as in the days when the 

 Lincolns, the Andrews, and the Hobarts built their one-storied, 

 thatched huts along its grassy ruts. 



From the Cove, where the mill, the town dock, and the ford 

 crowd in neighborly friendship together, to the further extremity 

 of the " Swamp," this, the first of Hingham's highways, has few 

 spots uncelebrated in her history. Yet almost the whole interest 

 is confined to the northern or upper side ; for not only -was its 

 other boundary fixed so as to border upon the brook, but in fact 

 the land on that side of the travelled way was generally too 

 swampy to admit of its use for dwellings. Consequently we find 

 that scarcely a building stood upon the southerly side of the 

 street, and probably the only exception was the house of Samuel 

 Lincoln and his son, occupying a site nearly opposite the pres- 

 ent location of the New North Church. A very few years later, 

 however, in 1683 or thereabouts, another mill was built upon 

 the water side, and almost exactly where is now the little red 



