CHAPTER III. 



Portland in Maine. Kennebeo River. Timber Trade. Fossil Shells at 

 Gardiner. Augusta, the Capital of Maine. Legal Profession : Advo 

 cates and Attorneys. Equality of Sects. Religious Toleration. Cal- 

 vinistic Theology. Day of Doom. 



Sept. 25, 1845. HERE we are at mid-day fK-ing along at 

 the rate of twenty-five and occasionally thirty miles an hour, on 

 our way to Portland, the chief city of Maine. It was only yes 

 terday afternoon that we left Boston, and in less than three 

 hours we performed what would have been formerly reckoned a 

 good day s journey of forty-five miles, had seen at Portsmouth 

 some collections of natural history, and afterward gone to a ball. 

 In the forenoon of this day I have made geological excursions 011 

 both banks of the Piscataqua, arid before dark shall have sailed 

 far up the Kennebec. It is an agreeable novelty to a naturalist 

 to combine the speed of a railway and the luxury of good inns 

 with the sight of the native forest the advantages of civilization 

 with the beauty of unreclaimed nature no hedges, few plowed 

 fields, the wild plants, trees, birds, and animals undisturbed. 



Cheap as are the fares, these railroads, I am told, yield high 

 profits, because the land through which they run costs nothing. 

 When we had traversed a distance of about sixty miles, the cars 

 glided along some rails over the wharf at Portland, and we almost 

 stepped from our seats on to the deck of the Huntress steamer, 

 which was ready to convey us to the mouth of the Kennebec river. 



After threading a cluster of rocky islands adorned with fir and 

 birch in the beautiful Bay of Casco, we came to the Sound, and 

 for a short space were in the open sea, with no view but that of 

 a distant coast. As there was nothing to see, we were glad to 

 be invited to dinner, and were conducted to the gentlemen s 

 cabin, a sort of sunk story, to which the ladies, or the women of 

 every degree, were, according to the usual etiquette, taken down 

 first, and carefully seated at the table by the captain, before the 



