The town of Barhampton--or rather, that town which it suits me so to denominate--is one of no great importance in point of size, and of no great commerce, for railroads have not yet reached it; and the nearest point which had been attained by any of those strange contrivances for hurrying man through life and through a country, lay at the distance of nearly fifty miles at the time of which I speak. Nevertheless, it was a sea-port; and had it been near the capital, near any important town, or situated in a thickly-populated district, it possessed several considerable advantages, which would have secured to it, in all probability, an extensive and lucrative trade. It had a very nice small harbour, for which man had done something and nature much. The water was deep therein; and had there been room for one of the unwieldy monsters of the deep, a three-decker might have lain at anchor there with six fathom under her keel. But the harbour was very small, and had a line-of-battle ship attempted it, her boom would probably have knocked down the harbour-master's office at the end of the little jetty, while her bowsprit entered the Lord Nelson public-house by the windows of the first floor. Boats and coasters, of from thirty to ninety tons, could come in at all times of tide, but nothing larger was seen in the harbour of Barhampton. Outside the harbour, however, in what was called the bay, especially when the wind set strong from the southwest, a very different scene was displayed, for there nature seemed to have laboured alone on a far grander scale. Two high and rocky promontories, at some points about a mile and a half apart, stretched forth from the general line of the coast into the sea, like two gigantic piers. One, following the line of the high ridge which crowned it, was nearly straight; the other swept round in the arc of a large circle, projecting considerably farther into the ocean than the other, but gradually approaching, in its sweep, the opposite promontory; so that, at the entrance of this magnificent bay, the passage was not more than half a mile in width. Few winds, of all those to which mariners have given name, affected in any great degree the deep still waters within that high and mountainous circle; and there, when tempests were raging without, might be seen riding, in calm security, the rich argosie and the stately ship of war. No cargoes, however, were now disembarked at Barhampton, except those of the small vessels which entered the harbour, and which supplied the town and the neighbouring country with a variety of miscellaneous articles of ordinary use.