Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
The southwestern town of Connecticut is Greenwich, and in front
Greenwich Point is thrust out into the Sound, while, as the Yankee
land is entered by railway, on a high hill stands the Puritan outpost,
seen from afar--a stately graystone Congregational Church with its
tall spire. The ancient Greenwich village was built on the hillside at
Horse Neck, and it was here, in 1779, that General Putnam swiftly
galloped down the rude rocky stairway leading from the old church, to
get away from the British dragoons, on what has since been known as
"Old Put's Hill," and they were too much astonished either to chase or
shoot him. Beyond is Stamford, a busy factory town, where lived in the
eighteenth century Colonel Abraham Davenport, described as "a man of
stern integrity and generous benevolence." He was a legislator, and
when, on May 19, 1780, the memorable "Dark Day" came in New England,
some one, fearing it was the day of judgment, proposed that the House
adjourn. Davenport opposed it, saying, "The day of judgment is either
approaching, or it is not; if it is, I choose to be found doing my
duty; I wish therefore that candles may be brought." This scene has
been immortalized by Whittier. The town of Norwalk is beyond, another
nest of busy mills, spreading upward on the hill-slopes from the
Sound. The original settlers bought from the Indians in 1640 a tract
extending "one day's north walk" from the Sound, and hence the name.
Fine oysters are gathered in the spacious bay, and the people make
shoes and hats, locks and door-knobs. On the lowlands to the eastward
the Pequot Indian nation, once ruling all this part of New England,
the name meaning "the destroyers," was finally overpowered in 1637 by
the Colonial troops in the Sasco Swamp, now a cultivated farm, with
almost the only highly fertile land seen in the immediate region. Most
of the Pequots were captured and sold as slaves in the West Indies.
Beyond is tranquil Fairfield, embowered in trees and introduced by a
rubber-factory, its green-bordered streets lined with cottages, and
church-spires rising among the groves, while along the shore it has
the finest beach on Long Island Sound.
BRIDGEPORT, OLD STRATFORD AND MILFORD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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