Ixxxii 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
me to put down his name as a subscriber; 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 schoolhouses 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 Pennsylvanians in agricultural improvements. 
I traversed the country bordering the river Connecticut for 
nearly two hundred miles. Mountains rose on either side, some- 
times three, six, or eight miles apart, the space between almost 
altogether alluvial; the plains fertile, but not half cultivated. 
From some projecting headlands I had immense prospects of 
the surrounding countries, every where clothed in pine, hem- 
lock, and scrubby oak. 
‘‘It was late in the evening when I entered Boston, and, 
whirling 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 Hampshire; 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 Charlestown 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 revolution 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 Charles- 
town, which he said was the place. I explored pay way thither 
