Boston is a northern port city, the only city of the Massachusetts area: a Puritan stronghold, a site of colonial repression, and the place where the war of independence “was started” with the Boston Tea Party.
| Type | Place (city) |
| Spanish entry | Boston |
Site and layout
Boston lies in the land of the Massachusetts Indians, “where the Puritans settle”, and is recognized by “those old buildings”. Across a river stands a “new college-university that is just beginning”. An earlier stage is called the era of the wall; since then “the city has expanded a little more, not much more”. Old, imposing buildings with inscriptions on their fronts, and maids at their doors, mark a patrician class.
The archive’s image of it is a cool, rainy autumn morning in the time of Scorpio (“the day of Scorpio is October”).
Religion, politics, war
- Religious. It is Puritan territory; “north of the Boston area they saw where there are persecutions”.
- Political. “There were executions by firing squad, there were repressions” in the colonial conflicts and the Revolution.
- Foundational. The Boston Tea Party “was the one that started” the war of independence; then “the war was in different places”, with advances, retreats and beachheads. Boston opens the series followed by Lexington and Saratoga.
- Masonic. “A fraternal, Masonic organization” has its seat there.
The door
From an old building with inscriptions, a stout, full-breasted maid able to nurse comes out, lifts a newborn left on the threshold, looks for a sign, “finds nothing”, and carries it inside: a foundling without papers or name.
The university
The records call the new university Harvard or Cambridge; neither form is fixed.
Open questions
- What the wall was, where it ran, whether it stands and why it was raised.
- The river’s name; the lodge’s name, house, members and relation to the repressions and the Tea Party.
- What the inscriptions say and whose building it is.
- Who was executed, by whom, and when; the city’s size.
- What became of the Massachusetts Indians.