Iron in bars
landing from a vessel, and the weigher's scales standing conveniently.
To stand on the elevated deck or rail of a ship, and look up the
wharf, you see the whole space of it thronged with trucks and carts,
removing the cargoes of vessels, or taking commodities to and from
stores. Long Wharf is devoted to ponderous, evil-smelling, inelegant
necessaries of life--such as salt, salt-fish, oil, iron, molasses,
etc.
Near the head of Long Wharf there is an old sloop, which has been
converted into a store for the sale of wooden ware, made at Hingham.
It is afloat, and is sometimes moored close to the wharf;--or, when
another vessel wishes to take its place, midway in the dock. It has
been there many years. The storekeeper lives and sleeps on board.
Schooners more than any other vessels seem to have such names as
Betsey, Emma-Jane, Sarah, Alice,--being the namesakes of the owner's
wife, daughter, or sweet-heart. They are a sort of domestic concern,
in which all the family take an interest. Not a cold, stately,
unpersonified thing, like a merchant's tall ship, perhaps one of half
a dozen, in which he takes pride, but which he does not love, nor has
a family feeling for. Now Betsey, or Sarah-Ann, seems like one of the
family--something like a cow.
Long flat-boats, taking in salt to carry it up the Merrimack canal, to
Concord, in New Hampshire. Contrast and similarities between a stout,
likely country fellow, aboard one of these, to whom the scenes of a
sea-port are entirely new, but who is brisk, ready, and shrewd in his
own way, and the mate of a ship, who has sailed to every port.
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