hardy sailors formed most of the crew of the old ship "Constitution" when she fought and captured the "Guerriere," and afterwards the "Cyane" and "Levant." Marblehead was also the scene of "Skipper Ireson's Ride," which Whittier has made historic: "Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart By the women of Marblehead!" He had refused to take some of his townsmen off a drifting wreck, because it would cost too much to feed them on the way home. SALEM AND THE WITCHES. Westward of the Marblehead peninsula, there stretches into the mainland another noted haven of the olden time, Salem harbor, dividing it into two arms, the North and South Rivers, having between them the town, chiefly built upon a peninsula about two miles long. This was the Indian domain of Naumkeag, a name preserved in many titles there, and meaning the "Eel-Land." It was the mother-colony on Massachusetts Bay, the first house being built in 1626, and old John Endicott having got a grant from Plymouth for the colony, he came out and founded the town two years afterwards, calling it Salem, "from the peace which they had and hoped in it." But despite this peacefulness, the people soon developed warlike tendencies. They scourged Philip Ratcliffe, and cut off his ears and banished him soon after the founding, for "blasphemy against the First Church," and when the port had got well under way, an annual trade statement showed imports of $110,000 in arms and cannon, against $90,000 in everything else. The "First Church," formed in 1629, was the earliest church organization in New England, and it still exists. There were then ten houses in the town, besides the Governor's house, which the early history describes as "garnished with great ordnance;" adding, "thus we doubt not that God will be with us, and if God be with us, who can be against us?" John Winthrop was here as Governor, briefly, in 1630, soon migrating to Shawmut, to found Boston for the capital of the colony. After the Revolution, Salem was the leading seaport of New England; but its glory has departed, and the trade has gone to Boston. In 1785 it sent out the first American vessel that doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and during a half century afterwards it held almost a monopoly of the East India and China trade with the United States, having at one time fifty-four large ships thus engaged. The Salem ships also went to the Southern seas, Japan and Africa. This trade gave its people great wealth and influence, and it was said, about 1810, that a Salem merchant was then the largest shipowner in the world. But this has retired into the dim past, and now it is a restful city of about forty thousand people, its leading townsmen, the descendants of the merchants and captains, living in comfortable mansions surrounding the Common and along the quiet elm-shaded streets in the residential section. The rest of the population have gone into shoemaking and other manufactures.