Upon going out I found that we were in the harbor of Eastport.
I found also the usual tourist who had been up, shivering in his
winter overcoat, since four o'clock. He described to me the
magnificent sunrise, and the lifting of the fog from islands and
capes, in language that made me rejoice that he had seen it. He knew
all about the harbor. That wooden town at the foot of it, with the
white spire, was Lubec; that wooden town we were approaching was
Eastport. The long island stretching clear across the harbor was
Campobello. We had been obliged to go round it, a dozen miles out of
our way, to get in, because the tide was in such a stage that we
could not enter by the Lubec Channel. We had been obliged to enter
an American harbor by British waters.
We approached Eastport with a great deal of curiosity and
considerable respect. It had been one of the cities of the
imagination. Lying in the far east of our great territory, a
military and even a sort of naval station, a conspicuous name on the
map, prominent in boundary disputes and in war operations, frequent
in telegraphic dispatches,--we had imagined it a solid city, with
some Oriental, if decayed, peculiarity, a port of trade and commerce.
The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance,
with the sun shining on its white houses.
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