, can have but
little idea of its appearance then. But, though the large brick
stores that line its wharves, and the costly mansions of modern
times, clustering one above the other on the hill-sides, and its fine
churches of granite and Portland stone, were not to be seen, yet, it
was even then a place that could not fail to attract attention.

The situation is one of exceeding beauty. Two bright streams--the
Wootuppocut, whose name indicates its character, its meaning being
"clear water," and the Yaupaae, or "margin of a river," which, why it
should be so called it is not as easy to explain, unite their waters
to form the noble Severn. It is a pity that the good taste which
preserved the original names of the two first, had not also retained
the title of the last--the Sakimau, or Sachem, or chief, by which it
was known to the Indians. It is possible the first settlers in the
country thought, that allowing two rivers to retain their aboriginal
appellations was a sufficient tribute to good taste, while they made
the change of name of the third an offering to affection, many of them
having drawn their first breath on the pleasant banks of the English
river Severn. It was on the tongue of land, or promontory, formed by
the confluence of the two rivers that composed the Severn, that the
principal part of the town was situated.

On the promontory facing the south, and rising boldly from the water,
the white-painted village ascended half-way up its sides, its two
principal streets sweeping away, in curving lines, round the base,
upward to a piece of level land, into which the north side of the
hill gently declined. At the most northern part of this level, the
two streets united, at a distance of a mile from the wharves, into one
which thence winded a devious course two or three miles further along
the Yaupaae. Above the highest roofs and steeples, towered the green
summit of the hill, whose thick-growing evergreens presented, at all
seasons, a coronal of verdure. One who stood on the top could see come
rushing in from the east, through a narrow throat, and between
banks that rose in height as they approached the town, the swift
Wootuppocut, soon to lose both its hurry and its name in the deeper
and more tranquil Severn, of which it is the principal tributary,
while on the west he beheld, gliding like a silver snake through green
meadows, the gentle Yaupaae, lingering, as if it loved the fields
through which it wandered, unt