t
either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same
level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light--the
building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an
inch to a foot--was in the United States Government Building at the
Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite
tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in
a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those
who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Cohasset. A
famous Cohasset rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to
raise the stones; the massive granite blocks were teamed by one whose
proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to shift a stone
twice; a Cohasset man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to
the ledge, and another assisted in the selection of the stone.

It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from the spectacular beauty of
the Cohasset shore, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering
with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid
surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of
Colonial and pioneer life.

One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open
land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests
pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front
of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham
settlement at Bare Cove (Cohasset was part of Hingham originally) found
the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.
Cohasset to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her
borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find
that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying
within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.
These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant
pasturage for neighboring cattle and brought the Hingham settlers
quickly to Cohasset meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of
Cohasset is the history of this common pasturage--"Commons," as it was
known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among
the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole
settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any
townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conohasset wi