I CALL it an old town, but it is only old. When one reflects on the centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this crust of earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on its surface seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the other day, then—that is to say, in the month of June, 1603—that one Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty tons burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for the Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the of “the brave river” for twelve miles or more, the two turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object of the expedition, which was to obtain a of the medicinal sassafras-tree, from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors, could be the of Life.  
It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four miles from the mouth of the river, that Master Pring probably effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network of strawberry vines, and sloping to the lip of the crystal water, must have won the tired .
 
The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak, , , and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of, nor did they encounter—what would have been less to their taste—and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the ashes of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish at that season. The soft June breeze, with the delicate breath of wild-flowers and the odors of spruce and pine, the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval . Master Pring would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.
 
Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua—Captain John Smith of famous memory. After Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all sorts of deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper , led him to examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small boat, a ship&r............