market. Beeves were then driven thither and tethered, while each
hungry applicant marked with a piece of chalk upon the creature's
side the desired cut; when a sufficient portion had been thus
secured, the sentence of death was issued. Fancy the chalk a live
coal, or the beast endowed with human consciousness, and no
Indian, or Inquisitorial tortures could have been more fearful.

It is like visiting the houses at Pompeii, to enter the strange
little black warehouses which cover some of our smaller wharves.
They are so old and so small it seems as if some race of pygmies
must have built them. Though they are two or three stories high,
with steep gambrel-roofs, and heavily timbered, their rooms are
yet so low that a man six feet high can hardly stand upright
beneath the great cross-beams. There is a row of these
structures, for instance, described on a map of 1762 as "the old
buildings on Lopez' Wharf," and to these another century has
probably brought very little change. Lopez was a Portuguese Jew,
who came to this place, with several hundred others, after the
Lisbon earthquake of 1755. He is said to have owned eighty
square-rigged vessels in this port, from which not one such craft
now sails. His little counting-room is in the second storey of
the building; its wall-timbers are of oak, and are still sound;
the few remaining planks are grained to resemble rosewood and
mahogany; the fragments of wall-paper are of English make. In the
cross-beam, just above your head, are the pigeon-holesonce
devoted to different vessels, whose names are still recorded
above them on faded paper,--"Ship Cleopatra," "Brig Juno," and
the like. Many of these vessels measured less than two hundred
tons, and it seems as if their owner had built his ships to match
the size of his counting-room.