PEACEFUL PORTSMOUTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12593, 5 September 1905, Page 5

PEACEFUL PORTSMOUTH

Portsmouth, N.H.; the negotiations preliminary to the signing of a peace .treaty were conducted, is one of tlie^'oldest towns in New England, and itis' shady streets and handsome old houses give it a dignity, a feeling of restfiilnesji and an evidence of culture peculiarly characteristic of the earliest American settlements in the North. Its is a town of high intellectual ideas, la its streets are to be found museums, libraries, and churches unusually large and numerous for a place of such size. For example, it has four times as many books as people. Although its population is hardly more than ten thousand, yet it has two libraries with a total of more than forty thousand volumes.

: Portsmouth was settled in 1623, only threo years later than Plymouth, and is therefore more than two hundred and eighty years old. It is situated on a peninsula which juts out into the deep, commodious bay at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The Atlantic Ocean is three miles away. About ten miles to the south-east are the well known Isles of Shoals, a cluster of eight barren, reeky islands, rising out of the swelling bosom of the Atlantic. The largest 'are Appledore, which has an area of 400 acres, and Star, which contains 150 acres. There aro large hotels on the islands. Portsmouth also contains several buildings of historic interest, including the old homes of Governors Wentworth and Langdon, and the.Portsmouth Ath enr.eum.

New Hampshire's only port has long been the site of a United States navy yard. It is in a new building in this yard that the negotiations were held.