Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

THE ECCENTRIC JOSIAH SHACKFORD. 221
man to accompany him, who becoming fearful when he put
to sea, jumped on board the pilot's boat, and left Capt.
Shackford with no other companion than his dog. He was
a man of too stern materials to turn about, so he undertook
the voyage of three thousand miles alone. What a resolute
spirit! See him on the boisterous mid-ocean alone in his
littie-bark a thousand miles from any land-without a
human being to consult when awake, or to aid in keeping
watch while he slept; without a hand to aid when the
storm beat about him, and his little boat is hid between the
mountain swells! With an eye on the compass, a hand on
the helm, and a firm trust in Providence, on he goes for five
long weeks, witnessing the moon pass into its full, its several quarters, and fulling again before he came in sight of
the land for which he was steering!
This unparalleled feat he successfully accomplished-the
statement of which, however, was not readily believed by
the South Americans. To prove his statement, he was
required to take his vessel down the harbor of Surinam
alone, and bring it in again. This exhibition was so satisfactorily made, that his story received credit., but the government was not fully satisfied until a return was made from
Europe confirming his statement.
Some years after, he returned to Portsmouth, put up at a
hotel, and in the afternoon called on his wife, took tea with
her, in the evening returned to his hotel, and the next
morning left again never to return.
He was next heard of in Ohio, where he purchased a
large tract of land when that State was almost a wilderness,
laid out a township, and in commemoration of the place of his
birth called it Fortsmor.ou.th. He erected mills andl stores, and
built several houses. He lived alone, excepting a boy, and
never would suffer a woman to enter his house, having his
washing and sewing sent out and brought home by his boy.
His wife, after her mother's death, offered to go and live