As you near Newburyport, coming down from Amesbury, you see the river widened into an estuary, and bordered by wide and intensely green salt-meadows. Numerous large vessels lie at the wharves, a "gundelow," with lateen sail, creeps slowly down the current; the draw of the railroad bridge is perhaps opening for the passage of a tug, and out at sea athwart the river's mouth-- "Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, A stone's toss over the narrow sound." _Prophecy of Samuel Sewall._ Far off to the left lie Salisbury and Hampton beaches, celebrated by Whittier in his poems "Hampton Beach," "Snow-Bound," and "The Tent on the Beach":-- "Where Salisbury's level marshes spread Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; Where merry mowers, hale and strong, Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along The low green prairies of the sea." _Snow-Bound._ Standing on the sand-ridge by the beach, you have before you the washing surf, and miles on miles of level sand, rimmed with creeping, silver water-lace, overhung here and there by thinnest powdery mist. Out at sea the waves are tossing their salt-threaded manes, or flinging the sunlight from their supple coats--(aeonian roar; white-haired, demoniac shapes)--while at evening you see far away to the northeast the revolving light of the Isles of Shoals. "Quail and sandpiper and swallow and sparrow are here; Sweet sound their manifold notes, high and low, far and near; Chorus of musical waters, the rush of the breeze, Steady and strong from the south,--what glad voices are these!" So sings the poet of the Isles of Shoals, Celia Thaxter, who, it is said, was discovered and introduced to the world by Whittier,--her rocky home being still one of his favorite summer resorts. Landward, your gaze sweeps the beautiful salt-meadows and rests on the woods beyond, or reaches still farther to the steeples of Newburyport rising sculpturesquely in the pellucid atmosphere, and often at evening filling the air with faint silver hymns that chime with the liquid undertone of the pouring surf. The valley of the Merrimack with the surrounding region, is, or was until recently, full of legends of the marvellous and the supernatural, which, in this remote and isolated corner of the State, have come down in unbroken tradition from earlier times. One of the distinguishing peculiarities of Whittier's genius is his story-telling power, and since he has not only written many poems about the legends of his native province, but also published in his youth two small collections of those legends in prose form, it will be proper to give the reader a taste of them, both here and elsewhere in the volume, and thus assist him to an understanding of our poet's early environment. The following extracts from his "Supernaturalism of New England," published in the year 1847, are germane to the subject in hand:--