y years since this house was built, and Knox
was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a
stone's throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and
two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid
out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of the
river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West Indian
vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a lime-kiln.
Little appertains to the mansion, except the tomb and the old
burial-ground, and the old fort.

The descendants are all poor, and the inheritance was merely sufficient
to make a dissipated and drunken fellow of the only one of the old
General's sons who survived to middle age. The man's habits were as bad
as possible as long as he had any money; but when quite ruined, he
reformed. The daughter, the only survivor among Knox's children,
(herself childless,) is a mild, amiable woman, therein totally differing
from her mother. Knox, when he first visited his estate, arriving in a
vessel, was waited upon by a deputation of the squatters, who had
resolved to resist him to the death. He received them with genial
courtesy, made them dine with him aboard the vessel, and sent them back
to their constituents in great love and admiration of him. He used to
have a vessel running to Philadelphia, I think, and bringing him all
sorts of delicacies. His way of raising money was to give a mortgage on
his estate of a hundred thousand dollars at a time, and receive that
nominal amount in goods, which he would immediately sell at auction for
perhaps thirty thousand. He died by a chicken-bone. Near the house are
the remains of a covered way, by which the French once attempted to gain
admittance into the fort; but the work caved in and buried a good many
of them, and the rest gave up the siege. There was recently an old
inhabitant living, who remembered when the people used to reside in the
fort.

Owl's Head,--a watering-place, terminating a point of land, six or seven
miles from Thomaston. A long island shuts out the prospect of the sea.
Hither coasters and fishing-smacks run in when a storm is anticipated.
Two fat landlords, both young men, with something of a contrast in their
dispositions;--one of them being a brisk, lively, active, jesting fat
man; the other more heavy and inert, making jests sluggishly, if at all.
Aboard the steamboat, Professor Stuart of Andover, sitting on