68
��A DAY AT OLD KITTERY
��A BAT AT OLD KITTERY.
��BY FRED MYRON COLBY.
��Two distinct and breathing worlds lie open for the sojourner in this fleeting life; the world of the present and the world of the past. Those who love the present derive most enjoyment in visiting- great cities and centres of fashion, pic- ture galleries, and splendid libraries. They are enraptured by the pageantry and grandeur of imperial palaces, the giitter and show of courtly ceremonies, and all the gay dissipations of fashiona- ble life. The devotees of the pust prefer racher to dream away the hours on the spot where great meu fought for a wor- thy cause, or linger among the ruined halls of greatness. The eloquent voices of enother age, though only in imagina- tion, speak greater truths to them than the loudest ntterances of the present.
To those who possess this secset, Kit- tery Point, in Maine, possesses many points of deep interest. Whittier, in his sweet verse, has often mentionrd some of them, yet the traveller has to carefully seek for them, for like Hamlet, they dread to be " too much i' the sun." Once found, however, and they reward the ex- plorer with suggestive and noble pictures of the past. In an article like this, too little space is granted for more than a brief mention of its chief attractions.
Kittery lies' opposite to Portsmouth, the Piscataqua river flowing between, and the visitor to the latter place usually visits the former. You cross by a long bridge set upon piles, where the water is more than thirty feet deep. On either hand lies the loveliest scenery in New Hampshire. Blue as the interior of a hare-bell the broad, romantic river, sanc- tified by John Smiths wanderings and Whittier's lays, flows southward to the sea, which you can discern in the dis- tance through the soft violet haze. Be- hind you lies Portsmouth, its spires ris- ing in the air ; old Fort Constitution tow-
��ers at your right, seaward are White Isl- and, Boar Island, Great Island, and Whale's Back, the whole coast clothed with villages as far as the eye can reach. Fronting you is the famous navy yard, with its arsenals and its shop-houses. A long undulating highway runs in a sinu- ous line before the eye, hedged in by green orchards and clustering farm-hou- ses, reminding the English traveller of those emerald lanes that lead down into Kent and Sussex. Three miles on you view a little hamlet, the spire of a small church rising above the roofs, and near- er you behold mouldering old docks upon which boys sit with their feet over the water, fishing. Groups of sail boats and fishing schooners ride in the harbor, their broad white sails flapping listlessly in the breeze. This is the outline of the scene that is spread before you.
There is a suggestion of the antique, and of quiet decay in the general aspect of the town. The stranger is reminded by a hundred evidences that he is look- ing upon the seat of past prosperity and vanished splendor. Distinct and widely separated indeed is the present with its quiet, half mournful life, and that famous past when Kittery was a commercial and social centre, when the activity of trade made it a new world Tyre, and ships sailed from its decks to India and the Southern seas — ships that circumnaviga- ted the globe.
On the whole Atlantic coast there is no better harbor than that afforded by the widening of the Piscataqua below Ports- mouth and Kittery, and in the colonial period it was a great channel of com- merce. At Kittery and Portsmouth were mercantile centres which vied with Sa- lem and Boston, Newport and New York. Some of their merchants had a hundred veesels at their command, engaged in commerce and fisheries, and largh trad
�� �
