[p. 26] toward his boyhood home.
Mr. Hooper has answered in these pages many of Mr. Stetson's queries, and is carefully and diligently working on others.
We commend a re-reading of ‘The Ford at Mistick,’ and venture the opinion that the ‘bulky red nose’ will be located by the reading of the present paper.
editor.
BEGINNING in the northerly part of the city of Medford, near the boundary line between said city and the town of Stoneham, and running in a southwesterly direction in a slightly curved line, is a ledge of darkcolored rock, strongly impregnated with iron, which is familiarly known as Medford granite.
In its course across the city there are several places elevated above the surrounding plain, where, at the time of the great upheaval, the bed rock was split into fragments of greater or less extent, and in the ages that followed, the rain filtering through the earth into the fissures of the rock caused it to oxidize or rust.
This disintegrated rock or granite is the so-called red gravel, or, as it is sometimes called, Pasture hill gravel, Pasture hill being the place from which it was first excavated.
There are two elevations that have yielded most of the granite that has been quarried and the red gravel that has been excavated.
Pine hill, the larger of the elevations, is the point spoken of as being near the Stoneham line.
It is supposed to take its name from the pine trees that grew upon it. This hill and the surrounding district furnished a large amount of stone and gravel in former years.
The last stone quarried there was used in the construction of Cradock bridge, in the year 880. Pine hill was a part of the Charlestown wood lots, and became a part of Medford in the year 1754.
It is now included in the Middlesex Fells Reservation.
Following along the course southwesterly, there are traces of granite and red gravel through nearly the whole distance, until a small elevation is reached just north of Pasture hill and a short distance therefrom, where there was once a granite quarry, then across Hall road to Pasture
