526 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 193. 



now badly scalded may very likely be improved by getting the 

 roots of the plants into a more healthful stratum. This can be 

 done by covering the bog with a layer of sand so thick that the 

 roots may work up into it, leaving the old portion below. 

 If, in addition to this, more attention could be paid to irri- 

 gation and drainage, it is not improbable that bogs now prac- 

 tically unprofitable might be made to pay a large dividend 

 upon the investment. Persons who have sanded a few square 

 rods as an experiment intend to extend the area this winter. 

 Rutgers College. Byron D. Halsted. 



Correspondence. 



In the Shore Towns of Massachusetts. — -I. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Beginning at the New Hampshire line, in my search 

 for public holdings in the shore towns of Massachusetts, I 

 found that Salisbury has no land belonging to the town, no 

 place on the shore to which the public can resort as a matter 

 of right. Salisbury Beach runs the whole length of the town, 

 from the mouth of the Merrimack River to the state line. It 

 formerly belonged to the people in common, and was then re- 

 garded as of little value. It now brings important annual rev- 

 enues to its owners, a corporation, entitled "The Commoners 

 of Salisbury." The members of this body, forty or fifty young 

 and vigorous business men, hold that they are more truly in 

 the legal line of descent and inheritance from the early settlers 

 than the present town itself. The town has so far recognized 

 their title as to tax them on this beach property for the last 

 seventy-five years, but last spring the people voted in town 

 meeting to inquire into the title, and appointed a committee 

 for that purpose. The corporation does not sell land, but 

 leases sites for summer cottages, and there is an almost con- 

 tinuous village of these habitations along a great part of the 

 beach, many of them fairly good houses. Visitors are wel- 

 come, for the owners wish to lease cottage sites to more 

 people, but it is all private property, and the public goes there 

 as a matter of sufferance or privilege, and not of right. 



The city of Newburyport has a fine system of public parks 

 or open spaces. Some of them have been long in use, and are 

 restful and beautiful, while others are still in process of con- 

 struction and development. Washington Park consists of about 

 eight acres and has many fine trees. Brown Square, in front 

 of City Hall, is two acres in extent. Kent Street Common, a 

 half-mile away, has five acres in grass and paths. A mile and 

 a half out on High Street is Atkinson Common, ten acres 

 given to the city by Mrs. Eunice Atkinson Currier ; this tract 

 is not much improved as yet, as there are few residents in that 

 vicinity, but it will be developed as the increase of population 

 may require. Riverside Park has a front of 125 feet on the 

 river and runs back 500 feet. The Improvement Association 

 is raising money to build a bulk-head here, and thus furnish a 

 public bathing-place. James Parton was much interested in 

 the movement for new public reservations. He told me that 

 for several years he had opened the grounds around his house 

 to the children of the city for a play-ground — over an acre, 

 with sward, flowers and shrubbery. Mr. Parton said the flow- 

 ers were " almost never touched ; not five times in a summer." 

 These children's thought of him is a pleasant fame for this 

 bright-spirited man to leave behind him. 



Some of the leading women of Newburyport would like to 

 have " The Captain's Well," which is celebrated in Mr. Whit- 

 tier's poem of that name, preserved for public use, as the 

 Captain desired, and as a tribute and memorial to the vener- 

 able poet. I believe the well is near the road between New- 

 buryport and Amesbury, and it was said to be covered over 

 and not in use, but I did not see it. 



Newbury includes nearly all the northern half of Plum 

 Island, with its extensive beaches and shore lands. These all 

 belong to private owners, and ground is leased to summer 

 visitors for cottages, as on Salisbury Beach. Many thousands 

 of people from Massachusetts and New Hampshire towns 

 come down the Merrimack Valley every summer to these 

 beaches. Several crowded steamboats brought excursions the 

 day that I was on this part of the shore. There is no public 

 holding on the beach, but inland there are two small reserves 

 owned by the town, Upper Green and Lower Green, four or 

 five acres each, unfenced, grazed by the neighborhood cows, a 

 few trees, and a school-house on each, with some interesting 

 history in each case, beginning with the first white settlement 

 of the region. The Lower Green was originally the Common 

 of the "Old Town," which was laid out here near the Parker 

 River before Newburyport was thought of. I saw a plat of 



this most ancient village, with the common much larger than 

 it is now, and the adjacent house-lots all marked with their 

 their owners' names. 



The Upper Green was part of a farm owned by a minister in 

 early times. He left this triangle between roads unfenced, and 

 in time the town assumed title, and holds it by undisputed oc- 

 cupancy. Both these small parks have been encroached upon 

 and reduced in area. A little care would make them attrac- 

 tive and valuable to the people of the town, who have no other 

 places of public resort to which they can go as a matter of 

 right. 



The public lands and rights owned by Rowley are : 1. Row- 

 ley Common, in the nature of a park, in the centre of the vil- 

 lage, about four acres, acquired from the Widow Hobsen for 

 a training-field, by exchange of land, about 1670. It was beau- 

 tified by planting a single row of Elms around it in 1839. 2 * 

 Two smaller commons, also in the village, both planted with 

 Elms in 1839. 3- The town landing on Rowley River. 4. 

 About one-fourth of an acre at the stock-yard, so-called, for 

 use as a place for leaving horses when working on the salt- 

 marshes. This has been somewhat encroached upon. 5. A 

 small common in front of Town Hall, set with trees in 1856. 

 There are no known town rights in the beach on Plum Island, nor 

 any shore rights except the one town landing mentioned above, 

 but it is probable that the public has the right of landing on 

 Nelson Island, in Plum Island River, as this landing has always 

 been in use by those who dig clams. Nobody else has any use 

 for it. 



This town, perhaps in greater degree than any other in the 

 commonwealth, has remained the same as in earlier times, 

 with people of the same blood living on the same lands, and 

 living much in the same manner ; the population is about the 

 same, without much mixture from abroad. There are Brad- 

 streets living to-day, as always, on the farm laid out to 

 Humphrey in 1634, then in Ipswich, now in Rowley by an- 

 nexation. The same, or nearly the same, may be said of the 

 Mighills and of other families. The general interest in mat- 

 ters of local history is much less than one would expect to find 

 here, but it is an interesting town to the student of civilization 

 and to any observing visitor. Some of the locally historic 

 names get changed or lost, and the errors are perpetuated by 

 the map-makers. Thus a recent map shows the old name 

 Hunsley Hill changed to Huy Slow, which is printed over 

 Bradford Street Hill, leaving the real Hunsley nameless. The 

 old Rowley, with its interesting survivals from a remote past, 

 will not last much longer unchanged. The wayfarer who 

 seeks a summer home by the sea pauses here and there 

 along these quiet roads and notes the attractions of the 

 scenery. "There is a fine view from this point." A new 

 house will rise here, and alien faces will look from its windows 

 across the fields which were first tilled by men whose very 

 graves have been forgotten. 



Ipswich has no public holding on the shore. There is a 

 small and pleasant a'rea called Meeting House Green in front 

 of the principal church. This is the only park or public ground. 

 The town contains an eminence with an interesting name — 

 Heartbreak Hill— and I have been trying to find out whose 

 heart was broken there, and why it was broken. I soon met 

 the story of an Indian girl who loved a sailor and climbed to 

 this hill-top to watch for his unreturningsail till she died. This 

 account may be true, but I should like to know how old it is in 

 this case. I am inclined to distrust it because the same story, 

 or nearly the same, is told of so many places, Lovers' Leaps, 

 etc., in all parts of our country. It does notseem that all these 

 Indian girls could have broken their hearts in the same way. 

 Early in this century, perhaps earlier still, the story was told in 

 the Bradstreet family here of a young woman of their own race 

 and name, Hannah Bradstreet, who went up this hill every day 

 to see if her lover's ship was coming up the bay ; and it never 

 came. What we need to know about it is the time when the 

 name was first given to the hill, or when it came into popular 

 use, but I fear it is all irrecoverable. I am trying, however, to 

 ascertain when the name was first put on the maps and into 

 the Ipswich town records. Perhaps some reader of this ac- 

 count may be able to give me this information. . 



Essex has no real sea-shore, as Ipswich and Gloucester meet 

 on the ocean beach, but Essex has all the lower reaches and 

 broad expansions of Essex River, and all this shore is just 

 about the same as sea-shore. It is all private property except 

 the Town Farm and two or three landings. For many years 

 a part of the Town Farm has been devoted to the uses of a 

 public summer resort, the town officers leasing sites four rods 

 by three for cottages, two adjoining lots to one person if de- 

 sired. There is an area for picnics, clam-bakes, fish-dinners, 

 etc. These grounds are on the bank of the river, and any- 



