It is not universally known that the battle of Bunker Hill is so called because it was fought on Breed’s Hill. The latter is near Bunker’s Hill, and it is on Breed’s Hill that the monument now stands—and always has stood since it was built, (for they never moved it.) The reason the battle was called the battle of Bunker Hill, and, consequently, that the monument is styled the “Bunker Hill Monument,” is, that the engagement _should have been_ fought there. Colonel Prescott was sent with a thousand men to throw up earthworks on Mr. Bunker’s Hill, which overlooked Charlestown Neck; but either mistaking his instructions, or not being acquainted with the vicinity, he took possession of Breed’s Hill instead, and threw up an earthwork there in rather unpleasant proximity to the British fleet in the harbor. The monument is built of granite, is about twenty-five feet square at the base, and about twelve or fifteen at the top; which top is accessible by means of an interior winding stone stairway, dimly lighted with rather small jets of gas that are too few and too far between. At intervals of about twenty feet there are narrow apertures to let in air; and that cold morning they let in too much. During the previous night, too, the rain had blown in and frozen on the stone steps, so that fully one half of them were perfectly enameled with ice. To ascend these with a crutch under such circumstances was no less than a dangerous undertaking. The superintendent advised me not to try it, but I could not act upon his advice, from the fact that I had “made up my mind” to go up. (It’s a wonder I didn’t “go up,” in another way.) If there had not been a small iron railing to cling to, I could never have reached the head of that almost interminable staircase. As it was, I came near falling backward, and only saved myself by clutching this railing. Should one start to fall down these steps, nothing would save him. They wind around and around, with here and there only a narrow landing, not more than twice the width of a stair, and too narrow to arrest the progress of a descending form. One might as well leap down from the top, either outside or within the circular shaft around which the stairs wind, as to go tumbling around and around, down, down, down, the solid spiral stairway, thumped and beaten by the edges of two or three hundred stone steps; for in either case I suppose that brandy and water wouldn’t save him. I reached the top pretty tired, after having ascended two hundred and ninety-five icy steps; and from this height of two hundred feet, had a good view of Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, and the harbor.