%96. The Cities.%--If we take a map of our country and run over the great cities of to-day, we find that except along the seacoast hardly one existed, in 1765, even in name. Detroit was a little French settlement surrounded with a high stockade. New Orleans existed, and St. Louis had just been founded, but they both belonged to Spain. Mobile and Pensacola and Natchez and Vincennes consisted of a few huts gathered about old French forts. There was no city, no town worthy of the name, in the English colonies west of the Alleghany Mountains. Along the Atlantic coast we find Portsmouth, Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, Williamsburg, Charleston, Savannah, and others of less note. But the largest of these were mere collections of a few hundred houses ranged along streets, none of which were sewered and few of which were paved or lighted. The watchman went his rounds at night with rattle and lantern, called out the hours and the state of the weather, and stopped and demanded the name of every person found walking the streets after nine o'clock. To travel on Sunday was a serious and punishable offense, as it was on any day to smoke in the streets, or run from house to house with hot coals, which in those days, when there were no matches, were often used instead of flint and steel to light fires. [Footnote 1: From an old loom in the National Museum, Washington.] [Illustration: Colonial mansion in Charleston] Travel between the large towns was almost entirely by sailing vessel, or on horseback. The first stagecoach-and-four in New England began its trips in 1744. The first stage between New York and Philadelphia was not set up till 1756, and spent three days on the road. %97. The Three Groups of Colonies.%--It has always been usual to arrange the colonies in three groups: 1. The Eastern or New England Colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut). 2. The Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware). 3. The Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). Now, this arrangement is good not only from a geographical point of view, but also because the people, the customs, the manners, the occupations, in each of these groups were very unlike the people and the ways of living in the others. [Illustration: New England mansion]