Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
comprehensive powers, and the story is told that when it was being
read in that body one of the members interrupted, saying: "Stop, man,
you are asking more than the Lord's Prayer." The reply was that it was
all necessary, and the more asked, the more would be secured. The
interrupter, convinced, responded: "Right, man; go on." The
corner-stone of the railway was laid July 4, 1828, beginning the route
from Baltimore, up the Potomac and through the Alleghenies to the Ohio
River.
DRUID HILL AND FORT McHENRY.
Baltimore is proud of the great art collection of Henry Walters in
Mount Vernon Place, exhibited for a fee for the benefit of the poor;
and it also has had as a noted resident Jerome Bonaparte, brother of
Napoleon, who married, and then discarded by Napoleon's order, Miss
Patterson, a Baltimore lady. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has remarked
that three short American poems, each the best of its kind, were
written in Baltimore: Poe's _Raven_, Randall's _Maryland, My
Maryland_, and Key's _Star-Spangled Banner_. It is also proud of its
park--"Druid Hill"--a splendid pleasure-ground of seven hundred acres,
owing much of its beauty to the fact that it had been preserved and
developed as a private park for a century before passing under control
of the city. The route to it is by the magnificent Eutaw Place, and
the stately entrance gateway opens upon an avenue lined on either hand
by long rows of flower vases on high pedestals, laid out alongside
Druid Lake, the chief water-reservoir. The Park has an undulating
surface of woodland and meadow, with grand old trees and splendid
lawns, making a scene decidedly English, not overwrought by art, but
mainly left in its natural condition. The mansion-house of the former
owner, now a restaurant, occupies a commanding position, and on the
northern side the land rises to Prospect Hill, with an expansive view
all around the horizon and eastward to Chesapeake Bay.
In this beautiful park the higher grounds are used for
water-reservoirs. Baltimore has the advantage of receiving its supply
by gravity from the Gunpowder River to the northward, where a lake has
been formed, the pure water being brought through a tunnel for seven
miles to the reservoirs, of which there are eight, with a capacity of
2,275,000,000 gallons, and capable of supplying 300,000,000 gallons
daily. These reservoirs appear as pleasant lakes, Montebello and
Roland, with Druid Lake, being the chief. Across the ravine of Jones's
Falls is Baltimore's chief cemetery, Greenmount, a pretty ground, with
gentle hills and vales. Here, in a spot selected by herself, is buried
Jerome's discarded wife, Madame Patterson-Bonaparte, whose checkered
history is Baltimore's chief romance. Here also lie Junius Brutus
Booth, the tragedian, and his family, among them John Wilkes Booth,
who murdered President Lincoln.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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