The men I saw about the wharves, in woolen "jumpers" and heavy fishing boots, had the true "guinea-stamp" of the old Ironsides of the sea. To see those lumberings fishermen in the streets you would not think they could be so handy, or tread so lightly in a dory. I saw there an old foreign-looking seaman, one of those fellows with short, bowed legs, drooping shoulders, contracted eyelids, and hands dug in their pockets, who may be met with at all hours of the day and night hulking about the quays of a shipping town. This man eyed the preparations of amateur boatmen with the contemptuous curiosity often vouchsafed by such personages in the small affair of getting a pleasure-boat under way. One poor fellow, who kept a little shop where he could hear the wash of the tide on the loose pebbles of the cove, told me he had lost his leg by the cable getting a turn round it. Though they have a rough outside, these men have hearts. His skipper, he said, had put about, though it was a dead loss to him, and sailed a hundred miles to land his mutilated shipmate. [Illustration: TUCKER'S WHARF--THE STEPS.] How did Marblehead look in the olden time? Its early history is allied with that of Salem, of which it formed a part until 1648. Francis Higginson, who came over in 1629, says, in that year, "There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred, whereof two hundred of them are settled at Nehumkek, now called Salem; and the rest have planted themselves at Masathulets Bay, beginning to build a town there which wee do call Cherton or Charles Town." His New England's "Plantation" is curious reading. I have observed in my researches that these old divines are often fond of drawing the long bow, a failing of which Higginson, one of the earliest, seems conscious when he asks in his exordium, "Shall such a man as I lye? No, verily!" William Wood, describing the place in 1633, says of it: "Marvil Head is a place which lyeth 4 miles full south from Salem, and is a very convenient place for a plantation, especially for such as will set upon the trade of fishing. There was made here a ship's loading of fish the last year, where still stand the stages and drying scaffolds." In 1635, the court order that "there shal be a Plantacion at Marblehead." [Illustration: GREGORY STREET.] John Josselyn looked in here in 1663. "Marvil, or Marblehead," he says, is "a small harbour, the shore rockie, on which the town is built, consisting of a few scattered houses; here they have stages for fishermen, orchards, and gardens half a mile within land, good pastures, and arable land." It had now begun to emerge from the insignificance of a fishing village, and to assume a place among the number of maritime towns. In 1696 a French spy makes report: "Marvalet est composé de 100 ou 120 maisons pescheurs où il peut entrer de gros vaisseaux."