To the westward of Brighton is the extensive and wealthy suburban city
of Newton, a favorite place of rural residence for Bostonians. Here
rises, near Newton Corner, the ancient Nonatum Hill, where the
Apostle Eliot first preached to the Indians, the name being now
classically modernized into Mount Ida. Eliot converted these Indians,
who became the Christian tribe of Nonatum and formed their system of
government after the plan set forth in the Book of Exodus, with rulers
of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. For them the Bible was
translated into the Indian language by Eliot and printed at Cambridge
in 1663. They removed nearer to Charles River, where there were better
soils, at Natick, their village consisting of three streets lined with
little huts and gardens, a large circular fort, and a building for a
church and school, at the same time having a rude bridge constructed
over the river. Natick is now a busy shoemaking town, with about ten
thousand people, and in South Natick is the old Indian cemetery and
Eliot's Oak. To the northward of Natick is Cochituate Lake, the chief
source of Boston's water supply, over three miles long, and having
with tributary ponds nearly a thousand acres area when full of water
in the spring. To the eastward of Natick is Wellesley, where the
famous Wellesley Female College, with seven hundred students, has its
spacious buildings located in a beautiful park. To the northward is
the valley of Sudbury River, into which Lake Cochituate discharges,
and here at Sudbury was the old colonial tavern which Longfellow has
given renown in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn":
"One autumn night in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with firelight through the leaves
Of woodbine hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
"As ancient is this hostelrie
As any in the land may be.
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality.
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
"A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!"
Here Longfellow located his modern Canterbury tales by the landlord,
the student, the theologian, the poet, the musician, and other
sojourners, which have become interwoven so attractively with our
better American literature.