Standing on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court
Street, a stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the
ocean. A little observation, however, would show him that he was in a
seaport. The rich red rust on the gables and roofs of ancient buildings
looking seaward would tell him that. There is a fitful saline flavor in
the air, and if while he gazed a dense white fog should come rolling in,
like a line of phantom breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.

It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the river,
though few of the notable houses that remain are to be found there. Like
all New England settlements, Portsmouth was built of wood, and has been
subjected to extensive conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick
building that is not shockingly modern. The first house of the kind was
erected by Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.

Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the fateful
hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town,
especially as you saunter along the streets down by the river. The
worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of
grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient
to satisfy a moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers
and these long rows of empty barracks, with their sarcastic cranes
projecting from the eaves, rather puzzle the stranger. Why this great
preparation for a commercial activity that does not exist, and evidently
had not for years existed? There are no ships lying at the pier-heads;
there are no gangs of stevedores staggering under the heavy cases of
merchandise; here and there is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with
coal, and here and there a square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered
with fragrant planks and clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at
the end of the wharf, a ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect