st. It was only the
other day, then--that is to say, in the month of June, 1603--that one
Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty
tons burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort the
Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
windings of "the brave river" for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object
of the expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal
sassafras-tree, from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors,
could be distilled the Elixir of Life.

It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens
suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network
of strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the crystal
water, must have won the tired mariners.

The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of,
nor did they encounter--what would have been infinitely less to their
taste--and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered ashes
of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they
were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish
abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate
breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the
tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder
sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval solitude. Master Pring
would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.

Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the
Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua--Captain John Smith of famous
memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all sorts
of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his
presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky
selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him
to examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small
boat, a ship's yawl, he skirted the co