ars),
to sell the twenty-acre pasture for the best price which could be
obtained. After a delay of some time he sold it, in 1796, for eighteen
thousand four hundred and fifty dollars; equivalent to nine hundred
dollars per acre, or _two cents_ per square foot. It is a singular fact
that a record title to only two and a half of the twenty acres could be
found. It was purchased by the Mount Vernon Proprietors, consisting of
Jonathan Mason, three tenths; Harrison Gray Otis, three tenths; Benjamin
Joy, two tenths; and Henry Jackson, two tenths. The barberry bushes
speedily disappeared after the Copley sale. The southerly part of
Charles Street was laid out through it. And the first railroad in the
United States was here employed. It was gravitation in principle. An
inclined plane was laid from the top of the hill, and the dirt-cars slid
down, emptying their loads into the water at the foot and drawing the
empty cars upward. The apex of the hill was in the rear of the Capitol
near the junction of Mount Vernon and Temple Streets, and was about
sixty feet above the present level of that locality, and about even with
the roof of the Capitol. The level at the corner of Bowdoin Street and
Ashburton Place has been reduced about thirty feet, and at the northeast
corner of the reservoir lot about twenty feet, and Louisburg Square
about fifteen feet. The contents of the excavations were used to fill up
Charles Street as far north as Cambridge Street, the parade-ground on
the Common, and the Leverett-street jail lands. The territory thus
conveyed now embraces some of the finest residences in the city. The
Somerset Club-house, the Church of the Advent, and the First African
Church, built in 1807 by the congregation worshiping with the Reverend
Daniel Sharp, stand upon it.

[Illustration: MAP OF BEACON HILL AND WEST END IN BOSTON]

Bounded southerly on Copley's pasture, westerly on Charles River, and
northerly on Cambridge Street, was Zachariah Phillips's nine-acre
pasture, which extended easterly to Grove Street; for which he paid one
hundred pounds sterling, equivalent to fifty dollars per acre. The
northerly parts of Charles and West Cedar Streets, and the westerly
parts of May and Phillips Streets have been laid out through it. The
Twelfth Baptist Church, formerly under the pastorship of the Reverend
Samuel Snowdon, stands upon it. Proceeding easterly was the
sixteen-and-a-half-acre pasture of the Reverend James Allen, before
allu