MIDDLESEX FELLS. 



205 



the Medford gate-house. On the southeast side, along Wyo- 

 ming Street are several stone houses which command good 

 views. Pretty views can also be enjoyed from Pond Street, 

 where it runs along by the water. On the west side of the 

 pond is another beautiful spot, a rocky, wooded promontory, 

 commanding a view of the whole pond, including the interest- 

 ing features on the south and east sides. To reach this point, 

 take the path next south of the road which leads to the old 

 ice-house, invisible from Main Street. 



Prom Spot Pond, Governor Winthrop and his party went 

 to what is now called Bear Hill. This is the highest eleva- 

 tion in the Pells, being about 370 feet above sea-level, and is 

 distant from the State House exactly 7| miles. 1 I am indebted 

 to Professor Charles E. Fay for the following description of 

 the view from Bear Hill : — 



" The view from Bear Hill is interesting, first of all, for what lies 

 near at hand. From no point, perhaps, can one secure a more com- 

 prehensive view of the Middlesex Fells ; and it is over these scantly 

 wooded knolls, or between them, that one catches glimpses of Boston 

 and its neighbors. How subordinate the part which the city is forced 

 to play in this scene ! and then to think that there is spare money 

 enough just over there, if it could only be got at, to ransom all this 

 fair wild, and make it a free park forever ! 



" The horizon from south to west is set with familiar eminences, — 

 the Blue Hill Range, the hills of Brookline and Newton, with distant 

 Pegan over Belmont, and then the heights of Arlington, Lexington, 

 and Woburn. Then the sky-line suddenly retreats, and for sixty de- 

 grees we have an almost continuous line of distant mountains. How 

 they gleam these March days under their snowy mantles ! First the 

 ' whaleback' of Wachusett, nearly due west ; next, after two or three 

 considerable hills, Watatic rises in a pronounced cone ; then comes the 

 monarch of them all, the grand Monadnock. The lower swell of Kid- 

 der Mountain follows, and then a fine mountain-mass, rivalling Monad- 

 nock itself as seen from here, yet in reality far less grand. It consists 

 of two high peaks, some distance apart, but joined by a lofty ridge. 

 The first is Temple Mountain, the other Pack Monadnock. Yet more 

 to the right is another long mountain rising into something of a peak 

 at its eastern end, — the Lyndeborough Range. A trifle farther to the 



1 U. S. Geological Survey, 1885. 



