Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/18

viii of our matchless prosperity—a few hundred of us, who had survived in the struggle for existence, would be trapping lobsters at the North End to-day. Where the other hundred thou sand people would be, who now inhabit the old peninsula, I do not know—or, indeed, if they would have been at all.

A peninsula it was; but no geographer in his senses would give that name now to the bulging cape which has expanded on either side of the old almost island. At high tides, in gales, the water washed across what was then called the Neck, and is still called so by old-fashioned people. Three hills, of which the highest was 138 feet high from the sea, broke the surface of the peninsula, and of these the top of the highest was broken again by three smaller hills. This highest hill is Beacon Hill. Copp's Hill was at the north, and Fort Hill on the east. For the convenience of trade Fort Hill has been entirely removed, and a little circular bit of greensward marks the place where, in my boyhood, was a hill fifty feet high.

In old days a canal was cut across the town,