But there are still good days in store for the town. Though the
Great Eastern has not gone there, other ships from Europe, more
profitable if less in size, must eventually find their way thither.
At present the Canada line of packets runs to Portland only during
those months in which it is shut out from the St. Lawrence and
Quebec by ice. But the St. Lawrence and Quebec cannot offer the
advantages which Portland enjoys, and that big hotel and those new
wharves will not have been built in vain.

I have said that a good time is coming, but I would by no means
wish to signify that the present times in Portland are bad. So far
from it that I doubt whether I ever saw a town with more evident
signs of prosperity. It has about it every mark of ample means,
and no mark of poverty. It contains about 27,000 people, and for
that population covers a very large space of ground. The streets
are broad and well built, the main streets not running in those
absolutely straight parallels which are so common in American
towns, and are so distressing to English eyes and English feelings.
All these, except the streets devoted exclusively to business, are
shaded on both sides by trees, generally, if I remember rightly, by
the beautiful American elm, whose drooping boughs have all the
grace of the willow without its fantastic melancholy. What the
poorer streets of Portland may be like, I cannot say. I saw no
poor street. But in no town of 30,000 inhabitants did I ever see
so many houses which must require an expenditure of from six to
eight hundred a year to maintain them.

The place, too, is beautifully situated. It is on a long
promontory, which takes the shape of a peninsula, for the neck
which joins it to the main-land is not above half a mile across.