pered.

Chapter IV

When the pathfinders came into the territory which is now called the
Empire State, they carried muskets and tripods under one arm and Greek
dictionaries under the other. They surveyed all day and scanned all
night, skirmishing intermittently with prowling redskins. They knew
something about elementary geometry, too, and you will find evidences
of it everywhere, even in the Dutch settlements. The Dutchman always
made the beauty of geometry impossible. Thus, nowadays, one can not
move forward nor backward fifty miles in any direction without having
the classic memory jarred into activity. Behold Athens, Rome, Ithaca,
Troy; Homer, Virgil, Cicero; Pompey and Hannibal; cities and poets and
heroes! It was, in those early days, a liberal education to be born in
any one of these towns. Let us take Troy, for instance. When the young
mind learned to spell it, the young mind yearned to know what Troy
signified. Then came Homer, with his heroic fairy-story of gods,
demigods and mortals. Of one thing you may be reasonably sure: Helen
was kept religiously in the background. You will find no city named
after her; nor Sappho, nor Aspasia. The explorer and the geographer
have never given woman any recognition; it was left to the poets to
sing her praise. Even Columbus, fine old gentleman that he was,
absolutely ignored Isabella as a geographical name.

The city of Herculaneum (so called in honor of one Hercules) was very
well named. To become immortal it had the same number of tasks to
perform as had old Hercules. The Augean Stables were in the City Hall;
and had Hercules lived in Herculaneum, he never would have sat with
the gods. The city lay in a pleasant valley, embraced by imposing
wooded hills. There was plenty of water about, a lake, a river, a
creek; none of these, however, was navigable for commercial purposes.
But this in nowise hindered the city's progress. On the tranquil bosom
of the Erie Canal rode the graceful barges of commerce straight and
slowly through the very heart of the town. Like its historic namesake,
the city lived under the eternal shadow of smoke, barring Sundays; but
its origin was not volcanic, only bituminous. True, year in and year
out the streets were torn up, presenting an aspect not unlike the
lava-beds of Vesuvius; but as this phase always implies, not
destruction, but construction, murmurs were only local and few. It was
a prosperous and busy city. It grew, it grows, an