Ivi LIFE OF WILSON. 
entrenchinents of tliis hallowed spot, made immortal by tlie bravery of those 
heroes who defended it, whose ashes are now mingled with its soil, and of 
whom a mean, beggarly pillar of Ln'cks is all the memento." 
To Mr. D. H. Miller. 
" Windsor, Vt., October 2Gth, 1808. 
" Dear Sir. 
"I wrote you two or three weeks ago from Boston, where I spent about a 
week. A Mr. S., formerly private secretary to John Adams, introduced me to 
many of the first rank in the place, whose influence procured me an acquaint- 
ance with others; and I journeyed through the streets of Boston with my 
book, as I did at New York and other places, visiting all the literary charac- 
ters I could find access to. 
" I spent one morning examining Bunker's Hill, accompanied by Lieutenant 
Miller and Sergeant Carter, two old soldiers of the Revolution, who were both 
in that celebrated battle, and who pointed out to me a great number of inter- 
esting places. The brother of General Warren, who is a respectable physician 
of Boston, became very much my friend, and related to me many other matters 
respecting the engagement. 
" I visited the University at Cambridge, where there is a fine library, but 
the most tumultuous set of students I ever saw. 
" From the top of Bunker's Hill, Boston, Charlestown, the ocean, islands 
and adjacent country, form the most beautifully varied prospect I ever beheld. 
"The streets of Boston are a perfect labyrinth. The markets are dirty; 
the fish-market is so filthy that I will not disgust you by a description of it. 
Wherever you walk you hear the most hideous howling, as if some miserable 
wretch were expiring on the wheel at every corner ; this, however, is nothing 
but the draymen shouting to their horses. Their drays are twenty-eight feet 
long, drawn by two horses, and carry ten barrels of flour. From Boston I 
set out for Salem, the country between swampy, and in some places the most 
barren, rocky, and desolate in nature. Salem is a neat little town. The 
wharves were crowded with vessels. One wharf here is twenty hundred and 
twenty-two feet long. I staid here two days, and again set off for Newbury- 
port, through a rocky, uncultivated, sterile country." 
^ ^ :^ ^ 
" I travelled on through New Hampshire, stopping at every place where I 
was likely to do any business ; and went as far east as Portland in Maine, 
where I staid three days, and, the supreme court being then sitting, I had an 
opportunity of seeing and conversing with people from the remotest boundaries 
of the United States in this quarter, and receiv»ed much interesting informa- 
tion from them with regard to the birds that frequent these northern regions. 
From Portland I directed my course across the country, among dreary savage 
glens, and mountains covered with pines and hemlocks, amid whose black 
and half-burnt trunks the everlasting rocks and stones, that cover this country, 
' grinned horribly.' One hundred and fifty-seven miles brought me to Dart- 
mouth College, New Hampshire, on the Vermont line. Here I paid my ad- 
dresses to the reverend fathers of literature, and met with a kind and obliging 
