Across Mount Hope Bay is Fall River, in Massachusetts, now the leading American city in cotton-spinning and the manufacture of print cloths. Its huge granite mills stand in ranks, like the platoons of a marching regiment, upon the successive rising terraces of the eastern shore. Nestling among the hills above the town are the extensive Watuppa ponds, long and narrow lakes, spreading eight or ten miles back upon the higher plateau. These, with other tributary ponds, cover about twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long, but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards distance it descends one hundred and thirty-six feet, thus being appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered around this admirable water-power. The mills, however, have grown so far beyond the ability of the water-wheels that they now run chiefly by steam, and Fall River has a population approximating one hundred thousand. The prolific granite quarries in the surrounding hills have furnished the stone for these imposing mills, and also for the chief buildings. Although a New England manufacturing city of the first rank, it is not a Yankee settlement, for the operatives are chiefly English, Irish, Welsh and French Canadians. When the settlement began, it was called Freetown, and afterwards Troy, but the name of the stream finally became so popular that the others were discarded, and Fall River was adopted officially upon its incorporation as a city. The rocky environment enabled it to cheaply construct the grand mill buildings, and thus had much to do with its success.
The eastern side of Narragansett Bay is chiefly occupied by Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, upon which is the queen of American seaside resorts, Newport. Aquidneck is the Indian "Isle of Peace," the word literally meaning "floating on the water," and its southwestern extremity broadens into a wide peninsula of almost level and quite fertile land, making a plateau elevated about fifty feet above the sea. The island is fifteen miles long and from three to four miles wide, and this plateau rests upon rock, the strata making cliffs all around it, with coves worked into them by the waters, presenting smooth sand beaches having intervening bold promontories. The southeastern border of this plateau, facing the Atlantic, has an irregular front of little bays and projections, with the waves dashing against the bases of the cliffs and among the rocks profusely strewn beyond them. Behind the western extremity of the island is Brenton's Point, projecting in such a way as to protect the inner harbor of Newport. Here are the wharves, facing the westward, and the ancient part of the town, its narrow streets and older houses covering considerable surface. The harbor is protected by a breakwater, and beyond is Conanicut Island. This was "Charming Newport of Aquidneck," as the colonial histories recorded it, then a leading seaport of New England. Thames Street, fronting it, was, in the eighteenth century, one of the busiest highways of America. Protecting the harbor entrance, upon Brenton's Point, is Fort Adams, which was a formidable fortification before modern-gunnery improvements superseded the old systems, and, next to Fortress Monroe, it is the largest defensive work in the United States, having accommodations for a garrison of three thousand men. It was built during the Presidency of John Adams, and named for him, being then hurried to completion as a defense against French attacks, war with that country seeming to be imminent, and the French particularly desiring to possess Newport. All around the ancient town, and spreading over the plateau, to which the surface slopes upward in gentle ascent from the harbor, is the modern Newport of the American nineteenth century multi-millionaires. From the older town, southward across the plateau, stretches the chief street, Bellevue Avenue, through the fashionable residential district.