74. Iron Furnace, Birmingham 180 MAPS Eastern United States _Frontispiece_ New England 4 New York 26 Pennsylvania 64 Southern Appalachian Region 132 FROM TRAIL TO RAILWAY CHAPTER I BOSTON AND THE BERKSHIRES From the time of the settlement of Massachusetts Boston has had a large share of the business of the country. Her natural advantages are great. On the one hand there is her harbor, sheltered by many islands from the storms of the Atlantic; on the other are tidal rivers and level highways leading to the interior of the state. Emerson, who was born in Boston, wrote: Each street leads downward to the sea, Or landward to the west. For generations, as the city has grown, her people have been crowding back the ocean by filling in the shallows, and now her busy streets extend over acres of “made land,” while from the south, the west, and the north, lines of railway connect her with all parts of America. Not many years after the War of the Revolution a Boston merchant ship went around the world. She took on board a native at Hawaii, sold her load of furs in Canton, rounded Cape Horn, and anchored at length in Boston harbor. So great an achievement did this seem that Governor Hancock and the people said fine things and made merry. This little ship was eighty-three feet long, and you could measure off seven or eight times her length on one of the big liners of to-day. Later the same ship set sail again, and on the west coast of America, in one of the roughest seas, her master, Captain Gray, saw the mouth of a great river. He was determined to enter it. Having crossed the breakers, he sailed up the river more than twenty miles, and to-day it bears the name of his ship, the _Columbia_. Boston was reaching out into the wide world. Many years later this discovery had much to do with securing the rights of the United States in the Oregon country against the claims of Great Britain. Young lads often went out on these voyages, and the training made them strong men. There were dangers on the ocean then which to-day we do not fear, for pirates still lay in wait for merchantmen and foreign powers took liberties with American ships. One vessel seen in Boston harbor was named _Catch-me-if-you-can_. Many years later, when Mr. Samuel Cunard of Halifax took a contract to carry the royal mail between Liverpool and America, there was an immediate protest from the Boston merchants against ending the voyage at Halifax. They urged the great commercial advantage of having the ships run westward to Boston after stopping at Halifax, and so powerful were these arguments that the first Cunard liners came steaming into Massachusetts bay.