Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/17

Rh

The first certain description of the place is that in Bradford: "We came into the bottom of the bay; but being late we anchored and lay in the shallop, not having seen any of the people. The next morning we put in for the shore. There we found many lobsters that had been gathered together."

This camping ground is Copp's Hill at the very northern end of the peninsula. The lobsters were taken near the landing of the ferry, which afterward took men to Charlestown. If Tom, Dick, and Harry had been left to their own devices, if no paternal or fraternal government had protected their industries and done better for them than nature did, if successive generations had been left to do what nature bade, as is now the theory of the "let alones," making head again in the midst