Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 21).djvu/33

1832] tween it and the National Navy Yard at Charlestown, which is so near to the city of Boston as to be connected to it by a bridge; for wherever you sink a well, between the body of water just mentioned, you strike a pelucid vein of it at from nineteen to twenty-two feet depth from the surface. With the aforesaid Lake or Pond is connected another not quite so large, but equally beautiful. Around these bodies of inosculating waters, are well cultivated farms and a number of gentlemen's country-seats, forming a picture of rural beauty and plenty not easily surpassed in Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and when winter has frozen the lakes and all the rivers, this sport has another and singular advantage; for our adventurer sold the water of this pond; which was sent to the West-Indian Islands, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other places south of this; which is so much of singularity as to require explanation.

In our very coldest weather, January and February, the body of water we spoke of is almost every year frozen to the thickness of from eighteen inches to two feet,—sometimes less, and very rarely more. It is then sawed into cubes of the size just mentioned, and deposited in large store-houses, and carted thence every month in the year, even through the dog-days, in heavy teams drawn by oxen and horses to the wharves in Boston, and put on board large and properly constructed vessels, and carried into the hot climates already [7] mentioned. The heavy teams five, or six, or more, close following each other, day and night, and even through the hottest months, would appear incredible to a stranger. Here was a traffic without any drawback, attended with no other charge than the labor of cutting and transporting the article; for the pond belonged to no man, any more than the air which hung above it. Both belonged to mankind. No one claimed any personal property in it, or control over it from border to border. A clearer profit can hardly be