Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

by Samuel Adams Drake

STOCKS.

As I never feel quite at home within a prison, I made haste to get into the open air again. I noticed, what is common in the country, that an underpinning of boards had been placed around the foundation at the distance of a foot, the space within being filled with earth. "That," said a whimsical fellow, "is to keep the coarsest of the cold out."

They have a jail at Alfred hardly more secure than the old. I was told of a prisoner who coolly informed the jailer one morning that if he did not supply him with better victuals he would not stay another day. He was as good as his word, making his escape soon after. Wagner, the Isles of Shoals murderer, also broke jail at Alfred, but was recaptured.

I should have liked to devote a few moments to the old court-house, its eminent and distinguished judges and barristers of the provincial courts, not forgetting its crier and constables. I should, I repeat, like to open the court, and marshal the jurors, witnesses, and even the idlers to their places in the king's name. I should like to hear some of those now antiquated, but then oft-quoted, scraps of law from the statutes of Richard II. or Sixth Edward. But it is all past. Bag-wigs, black gowns, and silver buckles are no more seen, except in family portraits of the time, and the learned counsel of to-day no more address each other as "Brother A——" or "B——." There do remain, however, in front of the old court-house four beautifully spreading elms, planted by David Sewall in 1773. To look at them now, it is not easy to fancy they could be grasped with the hand when the battle of Lexington was fought.

I passed on by the old tavern-stand where Woodbridge, in 1770, swung his sign of "Billy Pitt," and underneath, the words "Entertainment for the Sons of Liberty"—a hint to Tories to take their custom elsewhere. I should have enjoyed a pipe with that landlord, as John Adams says he did.

In Old York they have a precinct known as Scotland, said to have been first settled by some of the prisoners of Cromwell's victory at Dunbar, and shipped over seas to be sold as apprentices for a term of years. I was bound thither to see the garrison houses that had withstood the onset of the Indians in King William's war.

It is four miles from the village to Scotland parish, the road passing through broad acres of cleared land or ancient orchards, with now and then a by-way of green turf leading to a farm-house on the river, or a gleam of the stream itself winding through the meadows as you mount the rocky hills in your route.

Cider Hill is a classic locality, which the traveler must pass through. It is well named, I should say, the trees, though old, being laden with apples, fit only for the cider-press. I was struck with the age of the orchards, and indeed with the evidences on all sides of the long occupancy of the land. In going up and down the traveled roads of York the impression is everywhere gained of an old settled country.