The Blackstone River was named after the recluse Anglican clergyman, Rev. William Blackstone, who, as heretofore stated, first settled Boston about 1625. When he found, after a brief experience, that he could not get on with the Puritan colonists, who came in there too numerously, he sold out and "retired into the wilderness." He wandered for over forty miles into the forests, and during more than forty years made his home on the banks of this stream among the Indians, not far above Pawtucket Falls. He lived there in his hermit home at Study Hill among his books, the river rushing by, and the Providence and Worcester Branch of the New Haven Consolidated Railroad now cuts its route deeply through his hill, running among the dams, and in some cases over them, on its way up the busy valley of this very crooked river. Its waters, which do such good service for so many mills, become more and more polluted as they descend, so that its lower course is a malodorous and dark-colored stream. The river is about forty-five miles long, rising in the hills adjacent to Worcester and flowing in winding reaches towards the southeast, descending over five hundred feet to Providence. The mills, however, have grown vastly beyond its capacity as a water-power, so that auxiliary steam is now largely used. Numerous ponds and other feeders accumulate a vast amount of water for the Blackstone in Southern Massachusetts, and its lower course for nearly thirty miles is a succession of dams, canals and mills, making one of the greatest factory districts in existence. Over a half-million people work and live in this busy valley, the operatives being chiefly French Canadians, Swedes, and the various British races, the French preponderating in some of the towns. The Yankees long ago left, seeking better pay elsewhere, being replaced by a more contented people satisfied to work in mills. Most of the huge factories lining the river are owned by wealthy corporations having their head offices in Boston or Providence, and it is said that, the buildings being without signs or names, many of the operatives actually do not know who they work for. These mills are four and five stories high, often a thousand feet long, with hundreds of windows and ponderous stairway-towers.