An Old Town By the Sea

An Old Town By the Sea

Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey
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Title: An Old Town By The Sea
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1861]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OLD
TOWN BY THE SEA ***

Produced by Susan L. Farley and David Widger

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
PISCATAQUA RIVER
Thou singest by the gleaming isles, By woods, and fields of corn, Thou

singest, and the sunlight smiles Upon my birthday morn.
But I within a city, I, So full of vague unrest, Would almost give my
life to lie An hour upon upon thy breast.
To let the wherry listless go, And, wrapt in dreamy joy, Dip, and surge
idly to and fro, Like the red harbor-buoy;
To sit in happy indolence, To rest upon the oars, And catch the heavy
earthy scents That blow from summer shores;
To see the rounded sun go down, And with its parting fires Light up the
windows of the town And burn the tapering spires;
And then to hear the muffled tolls From steeples slim and white, And
watch, among the Isles of Shoals, The Beacon's orange light.
O River! flowing to the main Through woods, and fields of corn, Hear
thou my longing and my pain This sunny birthday morn;
And take this song which fancy shapes To music like thine own, And
sing it to the cliffs and capes And crags where I am known!

CONTENTS
I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE III. A
STROLL ABOUT TOWN IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH
PROFILES VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
INDEX OF NAMES

AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects
on the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this crust
of earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on its
surface seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the
other day, then--that is to say, in the month of June, 1603--that one
Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty
tons burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort
the Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
windings of "the brave river" for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object of the
expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal sassafras-tree,
from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors, could be
distilled the Elixir of Life.
It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens
suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a
network of strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the
crystal water, must have won the tired mariners.
The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of,
nor did they encounter--what would have been infinitely less to their
taste--and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered
ashes of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring;
they were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where
fish abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the
delicate breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and
pine, ruffled the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped
pleasantly in the tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had
gone mad. No ruder sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval
solitude. Master Pring would scarcely recognize the spot were he to
land there to-day.

Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of
the Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua--Captain John Smith
of famous memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and
doing all sorts of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the
globe with his presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries
on the rocky selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps