ALEXANDER WILSON. l v ii 



and, after inquiring particularly for Mr P and Mr B , 



wished to be remembered to both. 



"My journey through almost the whole of New England has 

 rather lowered the Yankees in my esteem. Except a few neat 

 academies, I found their school-houses equally ruinous and deserted 

 with ours ; fields covered with stones ; stone fences ; scrubby oaks, 

 and pine trees ; wretched orchards ; scarcely one grain~ field in 

 twenty miles ; the taverns along the road, dirty, and filled with 

 loungers, brawling about law-suits and politics ; the people snappish 

 and extortioners, lazy, and two hundred years behind the Pennsyl- 

 vanians in agricultural improvements. I traversed the country 

 bordering the river Connecticut for nearly two hundred miles. 

 Mountains rose on either side, sometimes three, six, or eight miles 

 apart, the space between almost altogether alluvial ; the plains fer- 

 tile, but not half cultivated. From some projecting headlands I 

 had immense prospects of the surrounding countries, everywhere 

 clothed in pine, hemlock, and scrubby oak. 



" It was late in the evening when I entered Boston, and, whirl- 

 ing through the narrow lighted streets, or rather lanes, I could form 

 but a very imperfect idea of the town. Early the next morning, 

 resolved to see where I was, I sought out the way to Beacon Hill, 

 the highest part of the town, and whence you look down on the 

 roofs of the houses — the bay, interspersed with islands — the ocean 

 — the surrounding country, and distant mountains of New Hamp- 

 shire ; but the most singular objects are the long wooden bridges, 

 of which there are five or six, some of them three quarters of a 

 mile long, uniting the towns 'of Boston and Charleston with each 

 other, and with the main land. I looked round, with an eager eye, 

 for that eminence, so justly celebrated in the history of the revolu- 

 tion of the United States, — Bunker's Hill ; but I could see nothing 

 that I could think deserving of the name, till a gentleman, who 

 stood by, pointed out a white monument upon a height beyond 

 Charleston, which he said was the place. I explored my way thither 

 without paying much attention to other passing objects; and, in 

 tracing the streets of Charleston, was astonished and hurt at the 

 indifference with which the inhabitants directed me to the place. 

 I inquired if there were any person still living here who had been 

 in the battle, and I was directed to a Mr Miller, who was a lieutenant 



vol. i. e 



