[Illustration: FIG. 1. ONE OF THE CUNARD STEAMSHIPS WHICH SAIL FROM BOSTON TO-DAY] This was not pleasant for New York people, who tried to show that theirs was the better port. As if to help in the fight against Boston, the harbor froze over in the winter of 1844, and the Cunard ship, the _Britannia_, could not sail. Determined to hold their own, the Boston people engaged Frederick Tudor, a great exporter of ice, to bring his machinery from the fresh-water ponds and cut a way. He soon made a lane of open water, and the _Britannia_ sailed out for Liverpool. While ocean trade was growing much had been done on the land. Settlements were first made at Plymouth, Salem, and Boston, and as soon as possible the rough forest trails joining these towns were changed into roads. Many ferries and bridges were needed to cross the streams, and roads were carried back into the country as the people settled farther from the sea. After Providence was begun, in the Narragansett country, and the rich lands along the Connecticut were settled, there was need of roads across the hills of Massachusetts, so that the colonists could visit each other, exchange letters, and thus be less exposed to danger from savages in the great American wilderness. The highway leading along the east coast was called Bay Road. A post rider went between Boston and New York in 1704, and a rough path he had to travel. It was thought remarkable, four years later, that a woman, Madam Sarah Knights, made that journey. She afterwards taught school in Boston, and Benjamin Franklin was one of her pupils. Somebody scratched these lines on a window pane in her schoolroom: Through many toils and many frights I have returned, poor Sarah Knights; Over great rocks and many stones, God has preserved from fractured bones. [Illustration: NEW ENGLAND BOSTON AND MAINE RAILROAD (FITCHBURG DIVISION) -+-+-+-+-+- BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯] There is no doubt about the “great rocks and many stones” of New England, but around Boston, at any rate, one usually sees them now at a safe distance. In western Massachusetts is the great Berkshire country. Through most of its length the Housatonic river runs to the southward. At the north the Hoosick river flows from it, across a corner of Vermont, to the Hudson. On the first is beautiful Pittsfield, and on the second is busy North Adams with its mills. In sight everywhere are the mountains, not very high and usually covered with forest, but sometimes bold and rocky. Farther north we should call them the Green mountains, but here we name them the Berkshires. The eastern range, which separates the Housatonic valley on the west from the Connecticut valley on the east, is Hoosac mountain, of which we shall hear again.