6 July: At five thirty in the morning, we departed for Bunker Hill in a good, closed carriage drawn by two good horses. In the city everything was already alive and astir. Near the harbor we passed the fine meat market, a long, very elegant building. Large numbers of wagons from the country were already in the streets: farmers’ wagons with four wheels surrounded by poles, others with tops. Further, there were many stylish light cabriolets lets hitched to single horses, sometimes more, sometimes less elegant. Here almost every gentleman tries to maintain one, if he possibly can, and this type is also very comfortable. The planters from the countryside in lightweight white suits—practically all of them with white straw hats on their heads, which, incidentally, are generally worn even by the fashionable world; almost all use a brown bear rug, which here is worth about eight to ten dollars, as a seat cover on the coachman’s seat. I have not seen black bear hides used for this purpose anywhere.

On the highway near the city, the dust was very heavy. In order to settle it, a very practical sprinkler is used. A wagon frame carries a water barrel and is provided in back with a broad, rounded disk, which sprinkles water along its entire perimeter, as the attached figure [fig.5], seen from above, shows. In Providence these sprinklers were arranged differently, like the one shown on the side [fig. 2.6]. The water flows out along nearly the entire width of the road or highway and moistens the sand very thoroughly so that the dust at once completely disappears.

Boston is connected to the mainland by just a narrow tongue of land, on both sides of which are bays that extend into the land and have tides. Across the bays long wooden drawbridges have been constructed, one of which leads in a northwest direction to the city of Charlestown, an attractive town located nearby, and the second one, more southwesterly, toward Cambridge, half an hour away, where there is a university or college (see Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s Travels). On the other side of Charlestown, we traveled past the navy yard, a large area enclosed by walls, where there are many isolated buildings designed for the navy.

In the immediate vicinity, a hill called Breed’s Hill rises on which the monument for the battle of Bunker Hill is being built. The battle was fought at Breed’s Hill and at Bunker Hill, scarcely 300 paces away. Driven back, the Americans lost their leader, a doctor. The monument was begun on the foremost, or Breed’s Hill. The granite for it, M3Quincy Granite of which I took samples, comes from the vicinity of Boston. Until now the plan for this monument has been to set it at a height of 180 feet; initially it was intended to be 213 feet high. No work was being done on it now, but the cut and uncut blocks lay about in the vicinity. (See Mr. Bodmer’s sketch.) The monument itself is now perhaps fifty to sixty feet high. A pyramid (probably), smooth, rectangular, elevated, decreasing [in perimeter], provided with a temporary roof. From the small windows of this roof, to which a convenient stone stairway [Page 1:28]in the interior of the building leads, one has a truly incomparable view of Boston, Charlestown, the dividing channels, the long bridges, the Bay of Boston, the variety of islands lying in it, Long Island, the Citadel, and toward the lighthouse, of the arriving and departing ships with their white sails, into the mainland, where green hills alternate with dark woodlands and hospitable towns; all of this is richly and indescribably picturesque. Near the monument, several very nice, big cows grazed on the green hill. A pleasant, well dressed boy was busy milking one. I approached and was able to touch the beautiful cow as I pleased. It stood very patiently while it was being milked. The oxen and the cattle in the area of Boston and Providence in general are big and beautiful; the former, especially, are frequently very large and fleshy. They have horns almost as large as in the Campania di Roma in Italy, often inclined forward a little, and usually a round ball is placed on the tips of them, probably to prevent goring. The color of these cattle is generally brown, often very glossy, and beautifully yellowish or dark brown, too, often with a few white spots, somewhat as in Germany. Frequently four oxen are hitched together with a horse in front of them.

From the monument we returned to an inn not far away and, in the custom of this country, had coffee, meat, eggs, and the like for breakfast. Here, in yesterday's newspaper from Boston, I found an announcement of Cuvier’s death, which I deeply deplored. The arrival of our ship, Janus, was also announced in today’s newspaper. At seven thirty we drove up the highway to Cambridge. Here I had my first view of open fields. Meadows, some of them with grass resembling reeds or rushes, fields, and European-style orchards alternate with small thickets and woodlands. The fruit trees stood exactly as in Europe. The apples are said to be yellow and not especially good; usually cider is made from them. On most of these trees I saw caterpillar webs of enormous size; often they were a foot or more in diameter. The butterflies [— —] that cause them must be extremely numerous on the fruit trees, and I am greatly surprised that they are not destroyed.

Along the highway, trees are planted, as is done nearly everywhere here. Much Celtis occidentalis; Lombardy poplars, some pollarded and not of tall growth. The thickets consisted of oaks, whose leaves were deeply incised in various ways and often beautifully shiny; the long catkins, just recently withered, still dangled from some of them. Various kinds of Juglans, Fraxinus, and tall elms, which here always exhibit tall and beautiful growth and usually are covered with leafy branches on the trunk down to the ground. The effect of these low thickets was a unified, very vivid green; on the nearby, partly somewhat swampy meadows, grew plants seemingly completely European, [including] Ranunculus, Pyrethrum, and other white-flowered plants of the Syngenesia. Everywhere in the grass a white-flowered Trifolium. The red, common in our country, also seemed to be cultivated here frequently, as well as potatoes, corn, and grain. In general the region has a European character, but like England, it is more wooded, and the population is distributed differently. It also differs somewhat in appearance because of several varieties of coniferous trees.

In one of the dense thickets along the road, I saw my first American bird in the countryside: a very beautiful, yellow Sylvia (probably aestiva), which flew over the road and disappeared into the bushes. On the fence along the highway sat a small songbird with a golden crown (Sylvia calendula), and a Baltimore troupial (Icterus baltimore) flew off toward the taller thicket. I recognized very well its beautiful, colorful yellow-and-black plumage. These things delighted us strangers very much indeed, and we only regretted that we could not immediately follow these birds into their haunts.

On the top of the gentle hills that make up this region, one reaches the university, or college, buildings of the city of Cambridge. They are very pleasantly located on fresh green lawns, shaded by trees and surrounded by shady lanes of elms, white pine, maple, ash, Platanus, and other trees. The buildings, which [Page 1:29]stand separately from one another, are constructed mostly of red brick, the one in the center of gray cut stones. In all the gardens of the neat, pretty homes one sees mostly European trees, Syringa, roses, flowers, but American ones too, such as catalpa, which was not yet in bloom here. M4The trunks of several fruit trees are painted white, here and there, perhaps because of the harmful insects; frequently, however, for the sake of symmetry. From Cambridge we took the other road back to the city. Here the meadows were mowed entirely in European fashion with scythes; the whetstone that is used was very long. Horses and cattle grazing everywhere. Very many horses are raised here. The sheep appear to be of a very large race [breed]; I have not yet looked at them close up.

Having returned to Boston, we visited the New England Museum, which is an undignified hodgepodge of all kinds of objects. Very Many rooms and crannies in a building full of corners, connected by numerous steps. The rooms are stuffed with many, mostly bad, paintings, small copperplate engravings, such as Parisian caricatures, disgustingly ugly wax figures, natural history specimens, and the like. An elephant, an alligator, a poorly stuffed but huge specimen of the wapiti, or elk (Cervus canadensis), with huge antlers of eighteen points, [and] a collection of Brazilian and North American birds, partially consumed by insects and dust, including several interesting species such as Ampelis cotinga, maynana or cayana, carnifex, etc., Calao ramphastes, and Trochilus, etc.

I did not remain here long but went to the public promenade (Commons), past one of the two theaters and the inn opposite it—recently built, really very fine, luxurious and large—to a circus with wild animals. A very nice lion, a lioness, a pair of Brazilian jaguars, a panther, a bear, wolves, a dromedary, a vicuña, and several monkeys were to be seen. Three native, so-called panthers (Felis concolor Linn.), two young ones and an old one, interested me most of all, because I wished to study them here in their homeland.

From here we went to the stagecoach office of J. Barker at the Marlboro Hotel. Here we had to wait a long time, while many stages passed by, until our turn finally came at eleven thirty. The coaches that are used have been described by His Highness, Duke Bernhard. There were five of us in a spacious coach for nine, a situation that was very pleasant in view of the heat. The coachman drives from a coach box; has four horses of moderate, sometimes good, quality, which are often of the same color, often with docked tails; and he stays behind with the relais, that is, not as in England. Furthermore, the coachman never receives a tip. The road from Boston to Providence, where one boards the steamships to New York, amounts to 41 miles. The highway is in part a paved and stone road. In part it appears not to be, but it is always a level, broad, sometimes somewhat sandy and dusty road, which crosses only gentle hills but never mountains. At first one sees pretty, stylish country homes in large numbers. Gradually they become more and more infrequent, though there are habitations everywhere along the entire highway, all lightly constructed from wood and boards and covered with ash-gray shingles. In the case of poor or rather poor people, the color of the natural wood; in the case of the well-to-do, very attractively painted and decorated. Often the buildings rest on the ground without any foundation, partly supported by stones and blocks. Near Boston we saw a large building like this being constructed, the walls of which were extraordinarily thin. One would think that such buildings must be very cold in a country with such severe winters, especially since one sees only iron fireplaces, at least in the inns. Even in the country, the trade and name of the owner are always inscribed on the houses, often beautifully and colorfully painted, with large letters, as in England and France.

The highway was frequently fenced in or bordered with walls of granite blocks, later on with other varieties of stone. On them and beside them grew thickets of Platanus, Sambucus canadensis, Rhus typhinum (the so-called staghorn); on swampy meadows, varieties of Salix, a Typha or cattail, cotton grass (Eriophorum), rushes; and in the water, a plant with large arrow-shaped leaves [— —]. Not far from the highway were brush-covered and wooded hills, which in some areas gradually increased in number. These were covered with pine and spruce forest intermingled with deciduous trees; one variety of spruce could be distinguished by the umbrella-shaped arrangement of its leaves and the gradual rise of its branches. In all these thickets and woods along the road grew tall juniper trees fifteen, or perhaps morefeet high, often with very thick trunks. Often such stands were almost forests. Directly beside the highway appeared thickets of Platanus that were merely stump sprouts. In damp lowlands, vividly dark green thickets of various oaks, ashes, walnut trees partially with large leaves, chestnuts (Castanea), which were in bloom, and many other kinds, which we see in our gardens [Page 1:30]; for example, Prunus padus virginiana, several beautifully blooming Andromedae, Azalea, and a thousand other interesting bushes, which, unfortunately, I could admire only from the coach. In the low thickets grows an intensely pink rose with whitish silver-colored foliage, which we cultivate much in Europe (Rosa nitida); here it is seen everywhere. In some places wild grapevines (Vitis), including a species with leaves that were whitish underneath, entwined the brushwood; they were, however, not high.

All these thickets alternate with more open regions where the farmers, tanned and with straw hats on their heads, were making hay. Even though they had such small houses, scarcely twenty feet in length, we nevertheless saw the female residents, very elegantly dressed, busily working at the window. Some of the men appeared less elegant, but this, too, varies according to the prosperity of the owner. Everywhere one came upon cabriolets driven by gentlemen or farmers’ wagons of various kinds.

Fields with corn and potatoes—the former was just being hoed and hilled, and the stalks were two to two-and-a-half feet tall—frequently interrupted the meadows. Grain fields, too, were not uncommon, but I saw oats at only [a] very few places in the vicinity of the highway. Horses and cattle in large numbers grazed in the pastures; here one saw black, oriole-like birds (blackbirds) flying about and, especially in orchards and in fields intermingled with thickets, robins (Turdus migratorius), which were common here. Some regions were heavily covered with forest. Here I saw some very beautiful forest scenes. Several pure oak forests, densely uniform, where the beautiful, shiny, often very large leaves, deeply indented, are almost pinnate. Other trees of various interesting varieties. Then forests of nothing but Pinus strobus (white pine), where the trees were old and thick but not especially tall. From amid them numerous dead trees always projected upward; others were hung with long braids of beard moss. In short, even though they were in fully cultivated regions and close to human habitation, they had more the character of primeval forests than forests in Europe. Only in one place did I see black locusts (Robinia pseudoacacia) as a small copse. Platanus (buttonwood), some of them with very sturdy, tall old trunks. Coniferous and deciduous trees were nearly always intermingled on the gentle ridges of the hills, something that provides a pleasing view. Several regions were covered with dark forests far into the distance. Here and there one had very picturesque glimpses into gentle valleys. Here a small lake or river where white buildings stand out nicely against the dark woods and the green meadows.

Mr. Bodmer, whose artistic eye eagerly searched here for Brazilian tree forms, was not entirely content with the character of these landscapes; but, as a matter of fact, in this temperate zone, one should look mainly for varieties of plants similar to those of Europe. In many some areas one saw large numbers of rocks in the pastures, just as in the Westerwald not far from the Rhine in Germany; but in all these areas the smaller stones had been collected, and enclosures had been constructed with them along the roads and around the meadows and fields. In most places one saw fields and pastures enclosed with wood, often in a zigzag, often in a straight line, too.

On one of the stone enclosures bordering the road I saw a pretty, striped chipmunk (Sciurus striatus) sitting crouched on a stone. All its positions and movements closely resembled those of a mouse, but it looked very nice with its yellow stripes bordered with black. The beautiful, black troupial with the bright red shoulders (Icterus phoeniceus) was flying not far from the highway, and we were delighted to see it.

We had changed horses at three different places and had eaten lunch at the first of these. I believe this town was called Dedham. At seven o’clock we were at Attleboro, a village in the area of which much woodland consisting of coniferous and deciduous trees soon appeared. Then we reached the pleasant little town of Pawtucket. From here on, the highway was completely filled with coaches, stages, and elegant cabriolets with finely attired ladies. Even the farmers’ wives go about very elegantly dressed, and frequently we see such a lady with a large straw or feather hat and a large veil, very skillfully driving her cabriolet at a most rapid trot. In a short time we reached the pretty, busy city of Providence, located on the river on a narrow inlet of the ocean extending here approximately into the mainland.