Nathaniel Hawthorne's Salem

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Excerpt from Nathaniel Hawthorne's Salem: Literary Salem in the Early Nineteenth Century, A Walking TourDue to this growth in homegrown manufacturing, by the time Hawthorne was sworn in as Surveyor, the maritime trade of Salem had gone through a reversal. In the early years of the nineteenth century, vessels left port with rum and codfish in their holds and returned with spices, silks, coffee, and other expensive, exotic goods that had high customs duties. By the middle of the century, however, vessels were leaving Salem laden with furniture from Salem shops, cloth from the Naumkeag Mill, and shoes from Lynn. These finished goods were traded for hides from West Africa for the shoe factories, gum copal from Zanzibar for varnish, and lead for paint and piping made in Salem. Items such as these were bulky, but had low customs duties. So, while the number of vessels and weight of cargo coming into the port did not really decrease through the middle of the nineteenth century, the glamorous cargoes, spectacular wealth, and immense customs duties did disappear from Salem's wharves.Hawthorne's description of the empty, dilapidated wharves of the city in The Scarlet Letter is probably more poetic than true. However, as he oversaw the measuring of tons of hides, cot ton, and lead on Derby Wharf to the constant noise of the cotton mill only yards away, he was probably thinking of the romance of the cargoes of his youth. After all, cinnamon and cloves smell better than raw cowhides.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.