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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

OUR WHARVES. 285
RAMBLE CXXXIV.
Our Wharves-Privateering —The Portsmouth Inecord.
OUR wharves afford a depth of water sufficient to float
the first class ships at low tide without grounding. Church
hill is on a bluff of perhaps forty feet above the water. In
former times there were no buildings on the north end of
Chapel street-and where Deacon Day's store and house
was afterwards built, and west of it, there was an abrupt
precipice open by the road side down to the river. It was
about the year 1790 that Stephen, the only son of John
Greenleaf, the keeper of the Bell Tavern, was riding with
full speed in a sleigh from Chapel into Bow street, when
the sleigh slid round over the precipice and down went the
horse, sleigh and rider! Our informant was present, and
saw the horse taken up at the market. Strange to say,
nobody was hurt. We shudder as we now look at the
place.
At the present cay we do not see the busy wharves, the
fleets of West Indiamen, the great piles of bags of coffee,
and the acres of hogsheads of molasses which we used to
see; nor do we see Water street crowded with sailors.
and the piles of lumber and cases of fish going on board
the West Indiamen for uses in the Tropics.
But if that day is gone by, we have other occupations,
and the old town seems as bright and handsome as ever.
The following will recall to our elder men a glimpse of
the stiring scenes which some of our people had a part in
at no very remote day,-and yet how few can say they
"' freshly remember" them!
Here we are, in the ever memorable year 1812, standing
on the old wharf at Point of Graves, beholding the first
privateer fitting out after the declaration of war. That
schooner is the Nancy, and that man with two pistols in his