The Pine-tree coast . alongthe New England coast. Not one of the scoffers whose incredulity is so activelyaroused when the royal ophidian is mentioned has a word to say against theoctopus, —of the two by much the hardest to believe in unless one has had theevidence of his own eyes. The merman is another thing—if it be proper to callit so — about which Josselyn gives us the first precise information. Then Jos-selyn was again the first person to describe the White Mountains by thisentirely felicitous name, and he has added to the opinion that they were raisedby earthquakes, his settled convictio
The Pine-tree coast . alongthe New England coast. Not one of the scoffers whose incredulity is so activelyaroused when the royal ophidian is mentioned has a word to say against theoctopus, —of the two by much the hardest to believe in unless one has had theevidence of his own eyes. The merman is another thing—if it be proper to callit so — about which Josselyn gives us the first precise information. Then Jos-selyn was again the first person to describe the White Mountains by thisentirely felicitous name, and he has added to the opinion that they were raisedby earthquakes, his settled conviction that these awful peaks are hollow, asmay be gviessed by the resounding of the rain upon the level tops. Nordo Ave know that this ingenious theory has ever been actually mountains rose daily to his view, and were, he says, weather signs to])eople at the coast. While searching the country round for curiosities of all sorts, JohnJosselyn laid his hand upon something that he had never seen before. He. HAL15EKI>. FROM SCARBOROUGH TO PORTLAND HEAD. 135 quickly took it off again on finding the thing was alive with hornets/ withoutadding it to his collection. Alexander or Napoleon would have done the samething. Longfellow has somewhere made use of the incident in the descriptive lines: — I feel like Master Josselyn when he foundThe hornets nest, and thought it some strange fruit,Until the seeds came out, and then he dropped it. Josselyn also points out, what would be highly inipro})er to-day, that a mancould drink more brandy in Maine with impunity than in England. If true,this statement would go far to bearout the theory that the climate ischanging. Among other natural,physical, and chyrurgical raritieshe mentions the mineral spring atBlack Point, which he says wouldcolor a spade as if hatcht withsilver. Other glimpses Josselyn gives usof the life and manners of the peopleare generally in a more serious this time Scarborough consisted ofabout fifty d
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