Ecclesiastical Reminiscences of the United States

iles brought us to the village of Middletown, like every part of this island, very English in its aspect. At Portsmouth, four miles further on, a stone bridge crosses the strait (about a thousand feet in width at this point) to the main land. The face of the country was now changed for a stony sandy soil, which appearance continued nearly till the coach reached New Bedford, where we found dinner prepared for us at a comfortable hotel in the principal street of the town, to which we did ample justice. New Bedford deserves a fuller notice than the plan of my notes will allow, or than it has yet received from any English tourist. It is altogether one of the handsomest built, and in point both of its fine situation, and the superior character of its society, one of the most attractive towns in the United States. Buzzard's Bay, which indents Massachusetts from the south for about thirty-five miles, is remarkable for receiving no river properly so called. New Bedford, situated near the mouth of a cove or estuary called Acushnet River, is the entrepot of this bay. The whale oil business has broughta great deal of wealth to this place, which is seen in the style of many of the private residences, which, from the position of the town on a bank declining to the water's edge, appear to great advantage from the river's surface, or the opposite bank, where another town of about a third of the size stands, called Fairhaven. The wealthy citizens of New Bedford manifest ...