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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

372 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
latest dates by arrivals at Portsmouth. But the regular
ten-days trips of the steamers are now put in the distance
by another discovery of the day, the Telegraph, which will
make a circuit round the world in less than the " forty
minutes" of Shakspeare's fanciful imagination.
Fifty years ago our golden fields in California, then belonging to Mexico, were unexplored-and the present fuel
of our whole country laid in its undisturbed beds in Pennsylvania-the " great unknown,"-as was the author of
Waverly, then at work on that array of novels which long
after were acknowledged the productions of Sir Walter
Scott.
In 1818, Napoleon Bonaparte who had been a terror in
Europe, and was still the lion of the day, was yet alive, held
in St. Helena. His brother Joseph was in Philadelphia,
Louis in Rome, and Jerome in Austria; their mother was
also alive in Italy. Lafayette and his son were also then in
France, and six years after came to America. All have
since departed and passed into history.
Turnpikes were the only internal improvements made
previous to 1818. There had been but two inconsiderable
canals constructed in the whole country previous to that
timee —the Middlesex canal, connecting the Merrimac river
with Boston, 27 miles; and the Santee and Charleston
canal of 22 miles. The Champlain canal was constructed
in 1824, the great Erie canal of 365 miles in 1826, the Ohio
canal of 300 miles in 1832, and twelve otlier large canals
Were constructed in the country up to 1832-when Railroad facilities took the place of many of them, and stopped
this mode of internavigation. The project of connecting
lake Winnipisseogee with the tide water of the Piscataqua
was also abandoned when the steam horse promised to do
the labor better and more speedily. These improvements
have all been broughlt forth in the country while the writer
has been quietly noting their progress from his "loop hole
of retreat."