Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Glooscap -- Chignecto Ship Railway -- Windsor -- Sam Slick
-- The Flying Bluenose -- Halifax -- Chebucto -- Seal
Island -- Tusket River -- Guysborough -- Cape Canso --
Sable Island -- Truro -- Pictou -- Prince Edward Island --
Charlottetown -- Summerside -- Canso Strait -- Cape Breton
Island -- The Arm of Gold -- Isle Madame -- St. Peter's
Inlet -- The Bras d'Or Lakes -- Baddeck -- Sydney --
Spanish Bay -- Cape Breton -- English Port -- Louisbourg --
The Great Acadian Fortress -- Its Two Surrenders -- Its
Destruction -- Magdalen Islands -- Gannet Rock -- Deadman's
Isle -- Tom Moore's Poem.
NEWBURYPORT TO PORTSMOUTH.
We will start on a journey towards the rising sun, searching for the
elusive region known as "Down East." Most people recognize this as the
country beyond New York, but when they inquire for it among the
Connecticut Yankees they are always pointed onward. Likewise in
Boston, the true "Down East" is said to be farther along the coast.
Pass the granite headland of Cape Ann, and it is still beyond. Samuel
Adams Drake tells of asking the momentous question of a Maine
fisherman getting up his sail on the Penobscot: "Whither bound?"
Promptly came the reply: "Sir, to you--Down East." Thus the mythical
land is ever elusive, and finally gets away off among the "Blue Noses"
of the Canadian maritime provinces. We cross the Merrimack from
Newburyport in searching for it, and enter the New Hampshire coast
border town of Seabrook, where the people are known as the
"Algerines," and where salt-marshes, winding streams, forests and
rocks vary the view with long, sandy beaches out on the ocean front,
having hotels and cottages scattered along them. Here are noted
resorts--Salisbury Beach, Hampton Beach and Rye Beach--all crowded
with summer visitors. For over two centuries on a certain day in
August, the New Hampshire people have visited Salisbury Beach by
thousands, to keep up an ancient custom. Here Whittier pitched his
_Tent on the Beach_ he has so graphically described. It was at Hampton
village in 1737, that occurred the parley which resulted in giving the
infant colony of New Hampshire its narrow border of seacoast.
Massachusetts had settled this region, and that powerful province was
bound to possess it, though the King had made an adverse grant. Into
Hampton rode in great 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 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 of New Hampshire." The royal
heart was touched and the King commanded Massachusetts to surrender
her claim to two tiers of townships, twenty-eight in number, thus
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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