then chiefly
famous for the rafts of admirable timber which it sent down from the
primeval forests above, for the construction of the unsurpassed ships
built near the town, and for the commerce flourishing upon its bosom and
extending to every quarter of the globe. It was idle enough, in
comparison, at a later period.

Early in the present century, and for a long series of years in the past,
no town on the American coast surpassed it in commercial enterprise and
activity. The habits and traditions of the place were well calculated to
nurse a hardy race of seamen, and their reputation for skill and courage
was well known throughout the maritime world. Persons are very apt to
look at some direct circumstance, nearest at hand, for the cause of
events, which may after all result from much more remote contingencies.
So, at first, in the days of the declining trade of the town, they said
the obstruction to its commerce was owing to the sand-bar at the mouth of
the river. But the bar had been there from time immemorial; and though it
is true that modern-built vessels, with their cargoes, could not pass
that barrier, as ships of lesser tonnage were formerly accustomed to do,
yet the main cause for this decay of business was to be found in the
growth of the capital of the State, and the greater facilities for the
transaction of business which exist in larger than in smaller places.

But the bar itself was always of very dangerous passage in boisterous
weather, and often the daring pilots of the station, than whom none upon
the coast were more competent and courageous, were exposed to extreme
peril, in their small craft, in returning to the river, when they had
been on the look-out for inward-bound vessels in the bay.

It so happened that a schooner in which I was a passenger, when a
youngster, was detained outside the bar, and was likely to be detained
for several hours, waiting for the tide to make. A young pilot,
accompanied by his still younger brother, came alongside in their
whale-boat, and having some acquaintance with me invited me to sail with
them to town; and, having been some time absent from home, I gladly
accepted their offer. Their boat was under a single low sail. The breeze
was fresh and the day fair, though I could not but be aware, as we bowled
along towards the bar, that a retreating storm had left some indications
of its past presence in the tossing foam that sprang upwards as the waves
dashed upon that tr