Identifier: historicfieldsm00drak (find matches)
Title: Historic fields and mansions of Middlesex
Year: 1874 (1870s)
Authors: Drake, Samuel Adams, 1833-1905
Subjects: Middlesex County (Mass.)--History Middlesex County (Mass.)--Description and travel
Publisher: J.R. Osgood and Company
Contributing Library: Thoreau Society Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods
Digitizing Sponsor: Federally funded with LSTA funds through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners

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s by the rowsof cannon gleaming in the sunshine, or the pyramids of shotand shell, without wondering how many they are destined todestroy. We have not yet learned to dispense with war, andthe problem How to kill yet taxes the busiest brain, themost inventive genius. Somehow, too, there is a certain consciousness the momentyou set foot within any little strip of territory over whichUncle Sam exercises exclusive authority. The trig, pipe-clayedmarine paces stiffly up and down before the entrance, hugginghis shining musket as if it were a piece of himself, and lookingstraight before him, though you would feel yourself more atease if he would look at you. The officer you see coming, inthe laced cap, and to whom you would fain address yourself,never allows your eye to meet his own, but marches straighton, as he would do if he were going to storm a battery. Theworkmen, even, pursue their labor without the cheerful cries andchaffing which enliven the toil of their brethren outside. The ■hL
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wm< mWmm !:;.;«;! ,j:i AN HOUR IX THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARD. 27 calkers mallets seem to click in unison, the carpenters chipthoughtfully away on the live-oak frame. Everything is syste-matic, orderly, and precise, but rather oppressive withal. In the first years of the nations existence the governmentwas obliged to make use of private yards, and that of EdmundHartt, in Boston, may be considered the progenitor of this.Several vessels of the old navy, among them the famed Con-stitution, were built there, under supervision of officers ap-pointed by the government. Henry Jackson, formerly colonelof the Sixteenth Continental Eegiment, was appointed navalagent by his bosom friend, General Knox, when the latter wasSecretary of War, and Caleb Gibbs, first commander of Wash-ingtons famous body-guard, was made naval storekeeper, with anoffice in Batterymarch Street, Boston. The yard at the bottomof Milk Street was also used for naval purposes by the govern-ment. When Admiral Montague of the r

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