THE LONG TIDAL RIVER.

THE greatest New England river, the Connecticut, was first explored by the redoubtable Dutch navigator, Captain Adraien Blok. When he made his memorable voyage of discovery from New Amsterdam along Long Island Sound, Blok ascended the Connecticut to Enfield Falls. Its source is in the highlands of northern New Hampshire upon the Canadian boundary, at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, and it flows four hundred and fifty miles southward to the Sound. Its Indian title was Quonektakat, or "the long tidal river," from which the name has been derived. It is noted for beautiful scenery and has many cataracts, the chief being Olcott Falls, at Wilder in Vermont, South Hadley in Massachusetts, and Enfield in Connecticut. The soils of its valley are extremely fertile, making a gardenspot in the otherwise generally sterile New England, the most luxuriant crop being the tobacco-plant, known as "Connecticut seed-leaf," used largely for cigar-wrappers, and often yielding two thousand pounds to the acre. Steamboats navigate the river to Hartford, about fifty miles from the Sound. The blazing red beacon of the Cornfield Point Lightship is the outer guide for the mariner entering its mouth, while the white lights of Saybrook guard the inner channel. The lower Connecticut flows through a region of farms, enriched by copious dressings of

manures made from the fish caught in the stream, and it passes picturesque shores and pleasant villages in the domain of Haddam, an extensive tract which the Indians originally sold to Hartford people for thirty coats.

Middletown, the "Forest City," at a great bend in the lower river, has many mills making pumps, tapes, plated wares, webbing and sewing-machines, its shaded streets leading up the hill-slopes, bordering the water, that have in them valuable quarries of rich brown Portland stone. The county Court-house of Middletown is a quaint little miniature of the Parthenon. The Wesleyan Methodist College, having three hundred students, is located here, the chief buildings being the Memorial and Judd Halls, built of the native Portland stone, the latter the gift of Orange Judd. The large buildings of the Connecticut Insane Hospital, also of Portland stone, overlook the river from a high hill southeast of the city, and are in a spacious park. To the northward of Middletown, level green and exceedingly fertile meadows adjoin the river, their product being the noted onion crops of Wethersfield, which permeate the whole country. This was the earliest Connecticut settlement in 1635, and here in the next year convened the first Connecticut Legislature to make the arrangements for the war against the Pequots which annihilated that tribe. In one of its old mansions General Washington had his headquarters, where, in conjunc

tion with the French officers, the plans were prepared for the campaign closing the Revolution by the victory at Yorktown.

To the westward of the river are the famous แ Blue Hills of Southington," the most elevated portion of the State of Connecticut, and nestling under their shadow is Meriden, the hills rising high above its western and northern verge, in the West Peak and Mount Lamentation. Here are gathered over thirty thousand people in an active factory town, the neat wooden dwellings of the operatives forming the nucleus of the city adjacent to the extensive mills, and having as a surrounding galaxy the attractive villas of their owners, scattered in pleasant places upon the steep adjacent hills. They are industrious iron and steel, bronze, brass and tin workers, and the Meriden Britannia and electro-plated silver wares are famous everywhere. The Meriden Britannia Company has enormous mills, and is the greatest establishment of its kind in the world. Meriden and Berlin, a short distance northward, have long been the headquarters of the peripatetic Connecticut tinpedler, who goes forth laden with all kinds of pots and pans, and other bright and useful utensils, to wander over the land, and charm the country folk with his attractive bargains. Berlin began in the eighteenth century the first American manufacture of tinware. There are scores of villages about, cast almost in the same mould. Each has the same beau

tiful central Public Green, the charm of the New England village, shaded by rows of stately elms; the tall-spired churches; the village graveyard, usually on a gently-sloping hillside, with the lines of older white gravestones, supplemented in the modern interments by more elaborate monuments; the attractive wooden houses nestling amid abundant foliage, and surrounded by gardens and flower-beds, that are the homes of the people, and the huge factories giving them employment. Some of these villages are larger than others, thus covering more space, but excepting in size, all are substantially alike.

HARTFORD.

The high gilded dome of the Capitol at Hartford and the broad fronts of the stately buildings of Trinity College surmounting Rocky Hill, above a labyrinth of factories, are seen rising on the Connecticut River bank to the northward. This is the noted city, with about seventy thousand people, which has reproduced in New England the name in the mother country of the ancient Saxon village just north of London at the "Ford of Harts," whence some of its early settlers came. The brave and pious Thomas Hooker led his flock from the seacoast through the wilderness in 1636 to Hartford, to establish an English colony at the Indian post of Suckiang, the Dutch three years before having built a fort and trading-station at a bend of the Connecticut, where

the little Park River flowing in gave a water-power which turned the wheels of a small grist-mill, to which all the country around afterwards brought grain to be ground. Cotton Mather, the quaint historian, described Hooker as " the renowned minister of Hartford and pillar of Connecticut, and the light of the Western churches." Hartford is known as the 66 Queen City," and its centre is the attractive Bushnell Park, fronting on the narrow and winding Park River. An airy bridge leads from the railway station over this little stream, to the tasteful Park entrance, a triumphal brownstone arch with surmounting conical towers, erected as a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the Civil War. A grand highway then continues up the hill to the Connecticut State Capitol, which cost $2,500,000 to build, one of the finest structures in New England, an imposing Gothic temple of white marble, three hundred feet long, the dome rising two hundred and fifty feet, and all the fronts elaborately ornamented with statuary and artistic decoration. The statue of General Putnam, who died at Hartford in 1790, is in the Park, and his tombstone, battered and weatherworn, is kept as a precious relic in the Capitol. The "Putnam Phalanx" is the great military organization of Hartford. In the east wing of the Capitol is the bronze statue of Nathan Hale, whom the British hanged as a spy in the Revolution. It is a masterpiece, the almost living figure seeming animated with