ENTERING NEW ENGLAND.

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nooks, so that villas are dotted in most favorable localities. From the hills forming the higher portions of the park the view over the sound for miles in both directions, and upon the hazy land beyond, is very fine. Magnificent old oaks and elms adorn the forests that were thrifty young trees before the Dutch came to New York. Most of the estates have been well kept, so that landscapes have been preserved and improved for generations. There is every variety of scenery-hill and woodland, meadow and plain, and splendid water-views bordered with the delicious green that clings around the myriad bays and coves of the sound and its pleasant islands. Thus the metropolis expands, and having learnt, with growing wealth, the charms and benefits of bringing the country into the town, it makes these parks before the rows of city buildings reach them. Such is the grand environment of Nature's loveliness that is being developed around and in the steadily-expanding domain of northern New York City.

XV.

ENTERING NEW ENGLAND.

WE reluctantly leave the attractive environment of the metropolis to extend our journey toward the rising sun. From the Grand Central Station of the Vanderbilt lines, on Forty-second Street in New York City, the New Haven Railroad carries us into New England. The line runs out of town through long tunnels, and then, skirting Central Park, turns north-east across the Harlem River, through Morrisania, Fordham, and a succession of attractive villages among the hills and rocks, until it runs along and finally crosses the pretty little Bronx River on the northern border of Bronx Park. Swiftly rolls the train along the edge

of Woodlawn Cemetery, where Jay Gould has built the magnificent mausoleum for his final home. Traversing a region of market-gardens and patches of forest, sprinkled with outcragging rocks and dotted over with villas, the line passes New Rochelle, where the French Huguenot refugees settled two centuries ago after Richelieu had driven them out of La Rochelle. Here in his declining years lived the noted Tom Paine upon an estate given him by the New York State Government. The most prolific crop borne in the country hereabout is rocks, and the few patient husbandmen who still remain here to battle with Nature have gathered the loose stones into piles for fences, which cross the land in all directions. This rocky development is most profuse at the village of Mamaroneck, which in the Indian tongue means the place of rolling stones." Once in a while a serious effort is made to till this stony land. Over the mazy lines of stone fences and rocks of all kinds, a hundred yards away may be seen a man with a yoke of oxen trying to plough, but scarcely moving, for he has to go slow lest the plough strike a sunken crag and cause a catastrophe. The farther we go the greater the development of rocks, the bright foliage of the trees springing up among them making a pleasing contrast. Thus moving, about twenty-five miles from New York the train crosses Byram River, and we are in New England, which the old saying announces as stretching "from Quoddy Head to Byram River." This original Yankee-land, although the smallest section of the United States, has made the deepest impress upon the American character, and has carried the banner of enterprise and colonization throughout the entire Western country. In ideas and thought, as well as in migration, the New Englanders are usually our leaders, being the people of most advanced views in politics and religion, and usually the pioneers of radicalism. They have not enjoyed the agricultural advantages of other sections, the bleak climate, poor soil, and generous distribution of rocks

THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS.

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and sterility making farming hard work with meagre results, so that the chief Yankee energies have been devoted to developing vast manufacturing industries, literature, commerce, and the fisheries; in short, the Yankees have had to live by their wits, and have most admirably succeeded. All the six New England States are not much larger than New York in surface, while their population is much less; but the indomitable spirit of the Pilgrims and other religious enthusiasts who were the earliest settlers implanted the untiring energy that has carried New-England ideas, methods, and population all over New York and the great West.

THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS.

We have crossed the little Byram River into Connecticut, and in the intervals of rocks the train goes over inlet after inlet thrust up into the land from Long Island Sound, each having its galaxy of little rounded islets set in the entrance, and its sloping shores studded with attractive villas embosomed in foliage. The glimpse along each inlet gives pretty though brief views over the distant waters of the sound, with the sun shining on the whitewinged yachts beyond. Sharp is the contrast between Connecticut and New York City, so recently left behind us. With a population scarcely one-fourth the millions of souls clustering around New York harbor, yet this "Land of Steady Habits" has always made the deeper impress upon the character and policy of the country. The guiding hands and ingenious brains ruling New York business affairs are largely transplants from Connecticut and New England. De Tocqueville pointedly illustrated this subtle influence in a little speech he made after his American visit at a Fourth-of-July dinner in Paris. In his quaint broken English he said:

"Von day I vos in the gallery of the House of Representatives. I held in my hand a map of the Confederation.

Dere vos von leetle yellow spot called Connect-de-coot. I found by de Constitution he was entitled to six of his boys to represent him on dat floor. But when I make the acquaintance personel with the member, I find dat more than thirty (30) of the Representative on dat floor was born in Connect-de-coot. And den ven I vos in de gallery of the House of the Senate, I find de Constitution permit dis State to send two of his boys to represent him in dat legislature. But once there, ven I make de acquaintance personel of the Senator, I find nine of the Senator was born in Connect-de-coot.

"And now for my grand sentiment: Connect-de-coot-de leetle yellow spot dat make de clock-peddler, de schoolmaster, and de Senator; de first give you time, de second tell you what to do with him, and de third make your law and civilization."

This wonderful little State covers only four thousand seven hundred square miles, and, excepting Rhode Island and Delaware, is the smallest in the Union. It is the special land of "Yankee notions." It gave the country the original personation of "Brother Jonathan" in Governor Jonathan Trumbull, who was so useful a coadjutor to Washington. Consulting him in many emergencies, Washington was wont to remark, "Let us hear what Brother Jonathan says"-a phrase finally popularly adopted and making him the national impersonation. It has the great Puritan college of the country-Yale-ruled by the Congregationalists. It has more varied and more productive manufactures than any other people of similar means. Its abundant water-powers contribute to this, and nearly all its inhabitants are engaged in manufacturing of one kind or another. Its machinery and methods are largely the inventions or improvements of its own people, among whom three stand out prominently: Eli Whitney, of the cotton-gin; Samuel Colt, of the revolver; and Charles Goodyear, of India-rubber fame. The inventive talent of the State is

SOME ATTRACTIVE CONNECTICUT TOWNS. 109

such that its people proportionately get more patents than those of any other, one to every eight hundred inhabitants being annually granted. Such is the diversified genius that has made Connecticut the "Wooden Nutmeg State," and De Tocqueville rightly called it the "leetle yellow spot dat make de clock-peddler," for Connecticut has almost monopolized clock-making for all the world. It leads in the production of India-rubber and elastic goods, in hardware and in myriads of ingenious "Yankee notions," and is also very near the front rank in making sewing-machines and arms and war material. Its name comes from the chief New England river-Connecticut meaning the "Long River”. flowing down from the White Mountains to the sound. Its rugged surface is diversified by long ridges of hills and deep valleys, generally running from north to south, the prolongation of mountain-ranges beyond the northern border. Through the western counties the picturesque Housatonic comes down from the Massachusetts Berkshire hills; the centre is crossed by the Connecticut Valley, a region of beautiful scenery and great fertility; while in Eastern Connecticut the Quinnebaug makes a deep valley, and, finally flowing into the Thames, seeks the sea at New London. The many hills make many streams, and wherever one is large enough to make a water-power, there clusters a nest of busy factories.

SOME ATTRACTIVE CONNECTICUT TOWNS.

Our train glides through Greenwich, the south-western town of New England, and as we enter the Yankee-land on a high hill stands the Puritan outpost-the stately graystone Congregational church with its tall spire. The town. stretches up to the wooded slopes north of the railway and away to the edge of the sound on the south. It was here that General Putnam in 1779, to get away from the British dragoons, swiftly galloped down the rude rocky stairway leading from the old church, while their bullets rattled