Great Blue Hill (Native Americans called it Massachusett) is a hill of 635 feet (194 m) located within the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton and Canton, Massachusetts 10 miles (15 km) southwest of downtown Boston. It is the highest point in Norfolk County. The modern name for the hill was given by early European explorers who, while sailing along the coastline, noticed the bluish hue of the exposed granite faces when viewed from a distance (due to Riebeckite). The Blue Hills's eastern slopes face the ocean and lie within Quincy. The area attracted quarrying for its "blue granite". The name of the Massachusett Indian tribe and their language (and thus the name of the Bay, Colony, state, etc.) derive from the Massachusett name of the hill: massa-adchu-es-et, where massa- is "large", -adchu- is "hill", -es- is a diminutive suffix meaning "small", and -et is a locative suffix, identifying a place.
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or hill:
“While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.”
—Li Po (701–762)
“headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the
gray sea-smoke
Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the
planet: this dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water,”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)