32 PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE. [CHAP. II, 



refreshments, so that you may breakfast ; or, if you please, buy 

 newspapers, or pamphlets, or novels. We then flew over rails, 

 supported on long lines of wooden piles, following the coast, and 

 having often the sea on one side, and fresh-water lakes, several 

 miles long, or salt marshes, on the other. In some of the 

 marshes we saw large haycocks on piles, waiting till the winter, 

 when, the mud and water being firmly frozen, the crop can be 

 carried in. We were soon at Lynn, a village of shoemakers, 

 exporting shoes to distant parts of the Union ; and next went 

 through the center of the town of Salem, partly in a tunnel in 

 the main street ; then proceeded to Ipswich, leaving on our left 

 Wenham Lake, and seeing from the road the wooden houses in 

 which great stores of ice are preserved. In some of the low 

 grounds I saw peat cut, and laid out to dry for fuel. We 

 crossed the river Merrimack near its mouth, on a bridge of great 

 length, supported by piles, and then entered New Hampshire, 

 soon coming to the first town of that state, called Portsmouth, 

 which has a population of 8000 souls, and was once the resi 

 dence of the colonial governor. Here I made a short stay, pass 

 ing the evening at the house of Mr. J. L. Hayes, to whom we 

 had letters of introduction, where we found a gay party assem 

 bled, and dancing. 



Next morning I set out on an excursion with Mr. Hayes, to 

 explore the geological features of the neighborhood, which agree 

 with those of the eastern coast generally throughout Massachu 

 setts, and a great part of Maine a low region of granitic rocks, 

 overspread with heaps of sand and gravel, or with clay, and 

 here and there an erratic or huge block of stone, transported 

 from a distance, and always from the north. Lakes and ponds 

 numerous, as in the country of similar geological composition in 

 the south of Norway and Sweden. Here, also, as in Scandina 

 via, the overlying patches of clay and gravel often contain marine 

 fossil shells of species still living in the Arctic Seas, and belong 

 ing to the genera Saxicava, Astarte, Cardium, Nucula, and 

 others, the same which occur in what we call the northern drift 

 of Ireland and Scotland. Some of the concretions of fine clay, 

 more or less calcareous, met with in New Hampshire, in this 



