To the first colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Company , their arrival near the site of modern Salem in 1630 marked a crucial moment in history. Puritans who had decided to leave England before it was engulfed by civil war, saw their purpose, in the words of Governor John Winthrop, as the establishment of a Utopian " City upon a hill ." Their new colony of MASSACHUSETTS was to be a beacon to the rest of humanity, an exemplar of sober government along sound spiritual principles. Not all those who followed, however, shared the same motivation; the story is often told of the preacher who told his congregation that they had come to New England to build a new kingdom of God, only to be challenged by a vociferous parishioner who said he had come to fish.

In their own terms, the Puritans were not successful: as waves of immigration brought all kinds of dissenters and free-thinkers from Europe, society in New England inevitably became secular. However, their influence remained. A clarity of thought and forcefulness of purpose can be traced from the foundation of Harvard College in 1636, through the intellectual impetus behind the Revolution and the crusade against slavery, to the nineteenth-century achievements of writers such as Melville, Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau.

Other traditions, too, have helped shape the state - poor migrants from Ireland and Italy , freed and escaped slaves from the Southern states, Portuguese seamen - even if they have not always been welcome. The anti-immigrant "Know-Nothing" party of the 1850s acquired considerable public support; in 1927, the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti came up against conservative old Massachusetts, and were framed and executed on murder charges. As recently as the 1970s, Boston experienced racial conflicts that matched the bitterness of those erupting throughout the nation. This has been somewhat healed of late, as have any economic doldrums that plagued the city for the latter half of the century, and a new sense of confidence - so emblematic of Boston's storied past - has taken hold.

Boston is East Coast America at its best, and spending a few days there is strongly recommended. It's a place that isn't content to rest on its laurels - the history is visible, but there's a great deal of modern life and energy besides, thanks in part to the presence of Cambridge , the home of Harvard University, just across the river. Several further historic towns are within easy reach - Salem to the north, Concord and Lexington just inland, and Plymouth to the south. Provincetown , a three-hour ferry ride across the bay at the tip of Cape Cod, is great fun to visit, and the rest of the Cape offers historic towns, lovely beaches - and huge crowds. Except for a handful of college towns such as Amherst, inland Massachusetts is much quieter; its settlements are naturally concentrated where the land is fertile, such as along the Connecticut River valley and in the Berkshires to the west.  TOP

Cape Cod and the Islands
Here a man may stand, and put all America behind him.
- Henry David Thoreau

The trouble with standing on Cape Cod these days is that "all America" tends to be a lot closer behind you than you might prefer. Its main tourist haunts are packed in summer, its roads circled by a grim procession of crawling vehicles, searching in vain for some "unspoiled" bit of beach or "undiscovered" old town. Unless you have your own, preferably very secluded, place to stay, it's barely worth turning up at weekends, especially between June and August, and putting yourself through the hassle of trying to find what little available accommodation there is, invariably at premium prices. However, the place is undeniably beautiful and if you find yourself in the region midweek in May or September - when hotel prices are much lower, the crowds have thinned, and the weather usually very pleasant - it's certainly worth a visit.

Cape Cod was named by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, on account of the prodigious quantities of cod caught by his crew off Provincetown. Less than twenty years later the Pilgrims landed nearby; in the few months before moving on to Plymouth, they began the process, continued by generations of Europeans, of stripping the interior of the Cape bare of its original covering of thick woods. Today, much of the land on the Cape - from its salt marshes to its ever-eroding dunes - is considered a fragile and endangered ecosystem, a designation, however, that hasn't especially dampened the persistence of developers.

If you imagine the Cape as an arm, its upper section, the thirty-mile eastward stretch closest to mainland Massachusetts, would be represented by the biceps. Much of the worst beachfront development lies along the southern shore, and Hwy-28 , running from Falmouth via Hyannis to Chatham, gets especially clogged. Only once you get beyond the "elbow" and head north to the Outer Cape or, anatomically speaking, the forearm, past the spectacular dunes of Cape Cod National Seashore , do you get a feeling for why the Cape still has a reputation as a seaside wilderness. Provincetown , right at the end, is the one town on the Cape that can be unreservedly recommended.

Sadly, the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket , off the Cape to the south, are dependent on summer tourism for their livelihood. However, a trip out to Nantucket in particular does still evoke haunting memories of its proud seafaring days. Again, the off-season has a charm all its own, a time when you can sink into the rhythms of life on the island without the distraction of hordes of day-trippers.

Central and Western Massachusetts
The 150 miles of Massachusetts that stretch inland to the west of Boston have always been obliged to play second fiddle to the state capital. Just ten years after the Revolution, the farmers who struggled to make a living from this indifferent soil so resented the imposition of taxes by the prosperous merchants of the east that they rose in Shay's Rebellion ; their pitchforks were no match for the guns of the new nation.

These days the citizens of the west are eager to promote themselves as cultural rivals of the big city, with the Berkshires hosting the celebrated Tanglewood music festival in summer. Amherst , the home of such diverse talents as Emily Dickinson and Dinosaur Jr, is a stimulating little college community, as is its larger neighbor, Northampton ; both have all the cafés, restaurants and bookstores you could want. Another delightful college town is Williamstown in the far northwest corner, set at the end of the incredibly scenic Mohawk Trail.

North Shore
As you head northward out of Boston, you pass through a succession of rich little ports that have been all but swallowed up by the suburbs. The most obvious day-trip from Boston is the half-hour ride out to Salem . Nearby Marblehead , on the other hand, gave us the US Navy : George Washington's first five vessels were built there. If you have the time, the atmospheric old fishing ports of Gloucester and Rockport , further out on Cape Ann , have strong literary and artistic links: T.S. Eliot used to come here for his family vacations, and the Dry Salvages of the third of his Four Quartets are a group of offshore rocks. They're also the best places on the east coast for whale-watching trips: Cape Ann Whale Watch (tel 978/283-5110 or 1-800/877-5110, ) offers three- to four-hour trips for $28 between April and October.

South Shore
It can take a while to get clear of Boston heading south - especially on summer weekends, when the traffic down to Cape Cod can be horrendous. Two historic towns, one north and one west of the Cape, are worth exploring - Plymouth and New Bedford .   TOP