vene. There are quarries worked, and the sand and granite are extensively exported, much of the latter coming to Philadelphia for paving. It is among these granite rocks of the cape, deeply indented, about four miles south-west of its extremity, that we find the harbor of the chief New England fishing-port-Gloucester. This well-protected and capacious harbor is safe in all weathers and easy of access, having a sufficient depth to float the largest vessels. Its inmost recesses are guarded by Ten-Pound Island, and it is usually filled with fishing-smacks. There are twenty-five thousand people living here, but the prevalent odor of salt fish has not prevented the fashionable invasion of villas and summerhouses that is such a conspicuous feature throughout the north shore. Yet, unlike so many of the other places, Gloucester has not been led away from the fisheries by the tempting allurements of Massachusetts shoemaking. It sturdily clings to its cod and mackerel trades, and is by far the leading port in the number of its fishermen and vessels and the value of the catch, while its manufactures are almost entirely confined to articles pertaining to the fisheries. It has seventy wharves and six marine railways. In the compactly built and handsome town surrounding the harbor and among the adjacent granite hills are concocted shrewd methods of securing fish despite the international entanglements of the vexing fishery question. But this fascinating trade is full of dangers, and Gloucester loses many lives and vessels every year, so that it has the fatal celebrity of containing the largest population of widows and orphans of any city in the United States. It was here in 1713 was built the first vessel of the favorite American rig known as the schooner, a class of easy navigation now making up the largest portion of our merchant marine. It has always been a great school for the sailor, and the tone and temper of its people show that it hopes to keep on with the fisheries, come what may. Beyond this model GOING DOWN EAST. 223 fishery-town is the extremity of the cape, where the ponderous rocky buttresses have been broken down by the Atlantic to form another small but well-sheltered harbor. Upon its shores, at an elevation of about ninety feet above the sea and standing about six hundred yards apart, are the two fixed lights of Cape Ann, the well-known beacons marking the great headland thrust out into the ocean which makes the northern limit of Massachusetts Bay. XXXI. GOING DOWN EAST. FOR a good while we have been steadily journeying toward the rising sun, and ever on the search for that mythical and elusive region known as "Down East." We of Philadelphia are accustomed to regard the land beyond New York as the veritable "Down East." But when we got among the Connecticut Yankee notions, and inquired if we were in the true locality, the people looked doubtful and pointed farther onward. Likewise in Massachusetts we are still chasing the golden treasures underlying the end of the brilliant rainbow arch, for the natives look wise and tell us the true "Down East" is still farther toward the rising sun. Now we pass beyond the great headland of Cape Ann, yet bent upon the search: it is beyond us. Samuel Adams Drake tells of putting the momentous question to a Maine fisherman who was getting up his sail on the Penobscot: "Whither bound?" Promptly came back the answer: "Sir, to you-Down East." This mythical land we thus ever pursue, and it ever eludes us; but enough has already been learnt on this tour to conclude that the true "Down East" must be far beyond the New England border, and among the "Kanucks" and "Blue Noses" of the Canadian maritime provinces. Resuming the Eastern journey beyond Cape Ann, we cross the broadening North River out of Salem, and pass among the wooden houses and shoe-factories of its ancient suburb of Beverly, with their environment of truck-gardens, and the high reservoir on the hill to the south-east, where Salem stores her water-supply drawn from Wenham Lake. This noted ice-producer, with its capacious icehouses, is near the railway, while upon the ocean front spread the splendid beaches of Beverly, Manchester, and Magnolia. Then we cross the valley of Ipswich River, with the pretty town covering both sloping banks, with scattered cottages among the foliage, and having the graveyard perched on the opposite hill—a region of green fields and prolific orchards, seeming almost like an oasis amid the desert of sands and rocks left behind us. Not far in the interior is the town of Andover, where the thrifty fathers of the Church, having bought the domain from the Indians "for twenty-six dollars and sixty-four cents and a coat," established the noted theological seminary of the Congregational Church, where its ablest divines have been taught in what has been called "the school of the prophets." Here on "Andover Hill" abstruse theology has been the ruling influence since the opening of this century, and intense religious controversies have been waged, some three thousand clergymen having been graduated. The seminary buildings, the local guide tells us, cause visitors to wonder "if orthodox angels have not lifted up old Harvard and Massachusetts Halls and carried them by night from Cambridge to Andover Hill." Ipswich, too, has its seminary, but it is for the opposite sex, although fully as noted. One reason we are told for the popularity of Ipswich Female Seminary is that it tends to soften the rigors of study, for this is the place "where Andover theological students are wont to take unto themselves wives of the daughters of the CROSSING NEW HAMPSHIRE. 225 Puritans." The shore of noble Ipswich Bay, indented north of Cape Ann, was the ancient Agawam, where the redoubtable Captain John Smith coasted along in 1614, and made a record in his narrative of "the many corn-fields and delightful groves of Agawam," then a flourishing Indian village. CROSSING NEW HAMPSHIRE. But the brief Ipswich oasis is soon passed, and, crossing moors and salt-marshes and among patches of scrub timber with protruding rocks, we reach the Massachusetts eastern boundary at the noted Merrimac River and Newburyport. Rounded hills surround the town, and, tunnelling under these, the train runs into the collection of wooden houses so largely composing it. The Merrimac flows from the westward past the famous factory-towns of Lowell and Lawrence, Nashua and Manchester-a river of frequent waterfalls, furnishing immense power to the mills. It is a narrow stream carrying a powerful current, and broadens into a spacious harbor at its mouth, where Newburyport is built on the southern shore, having its splendid High Street, one of the noted tree-embowered highways of New England, stretching for several miles parallel to the river down toward the sea, bordered with the stately mansions of the olden time. This is a quiet town, standing almost still in the modern march of progress, its decayed foreign commerce and shipbuilding being largely replaced by manufactures, as in most of these New England coastcities. Here lived in the last century the eccentric merchant Timothy Dexter, who is said to have shipped a cargo of warming-pans to the West Indies, and made a fortune out of that and similar odd business ventures. Here also lived Caleb Cushing and John B. Gough, and the noted. preacher George Whitefield is buried in its old South Presbyterian Church, while behind this church is the little wooden house where William Lloyd Garrison was born. We cross the Merrimac on an elevated bridge affording fine views both up and down the river, which sweeps out in a broad curve to the ocean three miles below, seen through the gauzy trusses of a wagon-bridge in front of us. Thus is the State of New Hampshire entered, rocks being thrust up everywhere through the thin covering of soil in its border-town of Seabrook, whose inhabitants are hereabout known as the "Algerines." Salt-marshes, winding streams leading down to the sea (appropriate to the name of Seabrook), forests and rocks, vary the view with long sandy beaches bordering them out on the ocean front, and the foaming line of breakers rolling in as we gaze off at the distant clusters of seaside hotels and cottages, with the exhilarating salt air blowing upon us. The first passed is Salisbury Beach, one of the noted New Hampshire coast resorts, where the people by many thousands congregate on a day late in August to have a good time, thus annually renewing a custom they have observed for more than two centuries. Here Whittier pitched his Tent on the Beach he has so graphically described. Next comes Hampton Beach, and then the famous Rye Beach, the latter being the most fashionable, and their sojourners crowd in and out of the railway-train. It was at the little village of Hampton that occurred in 1737 the parley which resulted in giving the infant colony of New Hampshire its narrow border on the sea-coast. This region had been settled by Massachusetts, and that province was bound to possess it, although the king had made an adverse grant. Into Hampton rode in grand state the governor of Massachusetts at the head of his legislature and escorted by five troops of horse, formally demanding possession of the maritime townships. He met the governor of New Hampshire in the George Tavern, and the demand was refused. The latter governor sent a plaintive appeal to the king, declaring that "the vast, opulent, and overgrown province of Massachusetts was devouring the poor little, loyal, distressed province |