PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM KITTERY BRIDGE.
[CHAPTER X.]
AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE.
"We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates."
Longfellow.
Louis XV. said to Bouret, the financier, "You are indeed a singular person not to have seen Marly! Call upon me there, and I will show it to you."
Our way lies from Old York to Kittery Point.[81] To get from the one to the other you must pass the bridge over York River, built in 1761. It inaugurated in New England the then novel method of laying the bridge super-structure on a frame-work formed of wooden piles driven into the bed of the river. The inventor was Major Samuel Sewall, of York, whose bridge was the model of those subsequently built over the Charles, Mystic, and Merrimac.
Kittery Point is separated from Kittery Foreside by Spruce Creek. It is also divided from Gerrish's Island, the outermost land of the eastern shore of the Piscataqua, by Chauncy's Creek. It is important at Kittery Point to get used to the names of Cutts, Gerrish, Sparhawk, Pepperell, Waldron, Chauncy, and Champernowne. They recur with remarkable frequency.
If coming from Portsmouth, the visitor will first traverse the village, with its quaint little church, built in 1714, its secluded cemetery, and fine old elms. They say the frame of the meeting-house was hewn somewhere about Dover, and floated down the stream. There are few older churches in New England, or that embody more of its ancient homeliness, material and spiritual. Since I was there it has been removed about sixty feet northward, and now fronts the south, entirely changing the appearance of that locality.