Across Mount Hope Bay is Fall River, in Massachusetts, now the leading
American city in cotton-spinning and the manufacture of print cloths.
Its huge granite mills stand in ranks, like the platoons of a marching
regiment, upon the successive rising terraces of the eastern shore.
Nestling among the hills above the town are the extensive Watuppa
ponds, long and narrow lakes, spreading eight or ten miles back upon
the higher plateau. These, with other tributary ponds, cover about
twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small
stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall
River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long,
but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards
distance it descends one hundred and thirty-six feet, thus being
appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered
around this admirable water-power. The mills, however, have grown so
far beyond the ability of the water-wheels that they now run chiefly
by steam, and Fall River has a population approximating one hundred
thousand. The prolific granite quarries in the surrounding hills have
furnished the stone for these imposing mills, and also for the chief
buildings. Although a New England manufacturing city of the first
rank, it is not a Yankee settlement, for the operatives are chiefly
English, Irish, Welsh and French Canadians. When the settlement began,
it was called Freetown, and afterwards Troy, but the name of the
stream finally became so popular that the others were discarded, and
Fall River was adopted officially upon its incorporation as a city.
The rocky environment enabled it to cheaply construct the grand mill
buildings, and thus had much to do with its success.