7 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Manchester and Its Wooded Hill 
Cathedral Pines That Are to Be Conserved for Coming Generations. 
(Article by Alice Shea, Reprinted from Boston Transcript.) 
“POWDER HOUSE HILL”, MANCHESTER, AS IT LOOKED 10 YEARS AGO 
The hill was recently bought by the town to conserve the growth of trees. 
MANCHESTER has recently dedicated to her folk a 
wooded hill. There is a record of sale on the town’s 
books and this lovely natural background of noble trees 
may be thought of, with the strip of woodland reserved 
by the town on either side of the “Essex road,” as a 
guarantee that beauty. will be saved against the years. 
The hill dominates the Essex road and preserves the 
Tyrolese seeming of the village, especially in the purple 
shadowings of quiet country snow. 
These cathedral pines are to be held as sacred as the 
ilex grove of Father Numa. The only axe that will re- 
sound will be that of the town timberman, who will chop 
off dead boughs and cut ripe wood, conserving for coming 
generations. Now the ground is cold and brown. Hard 
rains have washed away the winter's snow, even in the 
gullies and deeper wood of only northern exposure. 
Every root has held out in the frozen earth with a strength 
more mysterious than all the ripe glory of mid-summer. 
Shall a man’s span be less than that of a tree standing at 
his birth, still standing at his death in sweet intimation 
of that which is more than mortal? The call of the trees 
to their votaries is never more compelling than in this 
quiet, forceful interlude when the foolish winter budding 
is over and before “the drought of March has been pierced 
to the root” by the sweet showers of April. Oak and pine, 
they stand waiting for that touch of the coming season 
that “shall set the dead earth’s soul a-burning.” 
Central Pond-in the foreground 
In just such a treedom the Gothic arch must have 
been conceived. Up, up, every pine is an inspiration. 
Stately aisles retreat into mysterious beauty. A nave is 
clearly evident. The north wind all the way from*the 
White Mountains here must pause, caught by whispering 
boughs to be released a changling, incense upon the ‘per- 
fumed air. Little brooks are running once more. The 
thinnest ice, as light as a frozen gossamer caught from 
the flying erigones, no longer shields the bogs and fairy 
marshes. 
One remembers that the first comers “enjoyed the soil 
quietly and peaceably and without molestation for more 
than sixty years for three pounds, nineteen shillings cur- 
rent silver money of New England received by consent 
and approbation by his grandchildren, the surviving and. 
proper heirs of their grandfather Masquenomenit.” So 
runs the old deed. Boundaries were set in the original 
400 acres by four marks.on walnut, pine, black and white 
oak and hemlock. The, character of the woodlands is 
much the same to-day. A boulder marked with the good 
Indian’s name in the town forest would be a fitting re- 
minder of the chief who gave the doughty Manchester 
men a kind welcome to this forest. He helped them to hew 
and build and taught them to sow. Together they resisted 
their mutual foe, the barbarous Tarratines who used to 
throw eastern Massachusetts into such terror. 
With such thoughts I stopped to consider the low mag- 
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