ALEXANDER WILSON. \ v 



ing through the streets with his book, and visiting all the literary- 

 characters he could meet with. He continues : — " The streets of 

 Boston are a perfect labyrinth. The markets are dirty : the fish- 

 market is so filthy, that I will not disgust you by a description of 

 it. Wherever you walk, you hear the most hideous howling, as if 

 some miserable wretch were expiring on the wheel at every corner ; 

 this, however, is nothing but the draymen shouting to their horses. 

 Their drays are twenty-eight feet long, drawn by two horses, and 

 carry ten barrels of flour. From Boston I set out for Salem ; the 

 country between, swampy, and, in some places, the most barren, 

 rocky, and desolate in nature. Salem is a neat little town. The 

 waters were crowded with vessels. One wharf here is twenty hun- 

 dred and twenty-two feet long. I stayed here two days, and again 

 set off for Newbury Port, through a rocky, uncultivated, sterile 

 country. 



" I travelled on through New Hampshire, stopping at every place 

 where I was likely to do any business; and went as far east as 

 Portland, in Maine, where I stayed three days ; and, the supreme 

 court being then sitting, I had an opportunity of seeing and convers- 

 ing with people from the remotest boundaries of the United States 

 in this quarter, and received much interesting information from them 

 with regard to the birds that frequent these northern regions. From 

 Portland, I directed my course across the country, among dreary, 

 savage glens, and mountains covered with pines and hemlocks, amid 

 whose black and half-burnt trunks the everlasting rocks and stones, 

 that cover this country, ' grinned horribly.' One hundred and fifty- 

 seven miles brought me to Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, on 

 the Vermont line. Here I paid my addresses to the reverend fathers 

 of literature, and met with a kind and obliging reception. Dr 

 Wheelock, the President, made me eat at his table, and the pro- 

 fessors vied with each other to oblige me. 



" I expect to be in Albany in five days ; and, if the legislature 

 be sitting, I shall be detained perhaps three days there. In eight 

 days more, I hope to be in Philadelphia. I have laboured with the 

 zeal of a knight-errant, in exhibiting this book of mine, wherever I 

 went, travelling with it, like a beggar with his bantling, from town 

 to town, and from one country to another. I have been loaded with 

 praises, with compliments, and kindnesses ; shaken almost to pieces 



