WACHUSETT. 



BY starting from Cambridge at half -past six 

 A. M., on Saturday, May 23d, I was able to leave 

 Fitchburg at nine behind an eccentric stable 

 horse, bound for the top of Wachusett Moun- 

 tain. The distance to the foot of the mountain 

 was about nine miles. For the first four miles 

 the road was far from agreeable. We encoun- 

 tered rough pavements or dust, the obtrusive 

 features of a young and: by no means beautiful 

 city, hillsides denuded of trees, and in many 

 cases turned into quarries, the Nashua River 

 defiled by mill-waste and stained by chemicals, 

 railroad embankments coated with ashes and bare 

 of verdure, and brick mill buildings, grim, noisy, 

 and forbidding. The road gradually ascended, 

 and at length crossed the river, passed under 

 the railway and sought the woods. A parting 

 glance down stream showed a mass of steeples, 

 chimneys, brick walls, quarry derricks, freight 

 cars, and dirty mill ponds flanked by wasted hill- 

 sides and overhung by a cloud of smoke. Be- 

 tween the smoke and the hurly-burly of the 

 town a distant line of hills shone out on the 



