The name of the village of Salem is as familiar to Americans as that of
any provincial town in England or France is to Englishmen and Frenchmen;
yet, when uttered in the hearing of Europeans, it carries us back two or
three centuries, and suggests an image, however faint and transient, of
the life of the Pilgrim Fathers, who gave that sacred name to the place
of their chosen habitation. If we were on the spot to-day, we should see
a modern American seaport, with an interest of its own, but by no means
a romantic one. At present Salem is suffering its share of the adversity
which has fallen upon the shipping trade, while it is still mourning the
loss of some of its noblest citizens in the late civil war. No community
in the Republic paid its tribute of patriotic sacrifice more generously;
and there were doubtless occasions when its citizens remembered the
early days of glory, when their fathers helped to chase the retreating
British, on the first shedding of blood in the war of Independence. But
now they have enough to think of under the pressure of the hour. Their
trade is paralyzed under the operation of the tariff; their shipping is
rotting in port, except so much of it as is sold to foreigners; there
is much poverty in low places and dread of further commercial adversity
among the chief citizens, but there is the same vigorous pursuit of
intellectual interests and pleasures, throughout the society of the
place, that there always is wherever any number of New Englanders
have made their homes beside the church, the library, and the school.
Whatever other changes may occur from one age or period to another,
the features of natural scenery are, for the most part, unalterable.
Massachusetts Bay is as it was when the Pilgrims cast their first look
over it: its blue waters--as blue as the seas of Greece--rippling up
upon the sheeted snow of the sands in winter, or beating against rocks
glittering in ice; in autumn the pearly waves flowing in under the
thickets of gaudy foliage; and on summer evening the green surface
surrounding the amethyst islands, where white foam spouts out of the
caves and crevices. On land, there are still the craggy hills, and the
jutting promontories of granite, where the barberry grows as the bramble
does with us, and room is found for the farmstead between the crags, and
for the apple-trees and little slopes of grass, and patches of tillage,
where all else looks barren. The boats are out, or ranged on shore,
according to the weather, just as they were from the beginning, only in
larger numbers; and far away on either hand the coasts and islands,
the rocks and hills and rural dwellings, are as of old, save for the
shrinking of the forest, and the growth of the cities and villages,
whose spires and school-houses are visible here and there.