ii6 Up the Creek 



ridge has choked the channel where once 

 rode ships at anchor. An obscure back- 

 country creek now, but less than two cen- 

 turies ago the scene of busy industry. Per- 

 haps no one is now living who saw the last sail 

 that whitened the landscape. Pages of old 

 ledgers, a bit of diary, and old deeds tell us 

 something of the place ; but the grassy knoll 

 itself gives no hint of the faft that upon it 

 once stood a warehouse. Yet a busy place it 

 was in early colonial times, and now utterly 

 neglefted. 



It is difficult to realize how very unsub- 

 stantial is much of man's work. As we sat 

 upon the grassy slope, watching the out- 

 going tide as it rippled and broke in a long 

 line of sparkling bubbles, I rebuilt, for the 

 moment, the projefting wharf, of which but 

 a single log remains, and had the quaint 

 shallops of pre-Revolutionary time riding at 

 anchor. There were heard, in faft, the cry 

 of a heron and the wild scream of a hawk ; 

 but these, in fancy, were the hum of human 

 voices and the tramp of busy feet. 



The scattered stones that just peeped above 

 the grass were not chance bowlders rolled 

 from the hill near by, but the door-step and 



