We will start on a journey towards the rising sun, searching for the elusive region known as "Down East." Most people recognize this as the country beyond New York, but when they inquire for it among the Connecticut Yankees they are always pointed onward. Likewise in Boston, the true "Down East" is said to be farther along the coast. Pass the granite headland of Cape Ann, and it is still beyond. Samuel Adams Drake tells of asking the momentous question of a Maine fisherman getting up his sail on the Penobscot: "Whither bound?" Promptly came the reply: "Sir, to you--Down East." Thus the mythical land is ever elusive, and finally gets away off among the "Blue Noses" of the Canadian maritime provinces. We cross the Merrimack from Newburyport in searching for it, and enter the New Hampshire coast border town of Seabrook, where the people are known as the "Algerines," and where salt-marshes, winding streams, forests and rocks vary the view with long, sandy beaches out on the ocean front, having hotels and cottages scattered along them. Here are noted resorts--Salisbury Beach, Hampton Beach and Rye Beach--all crowded with summer visitors. For over two centuries on a certain day in August, the New Hampshire people have visited Salisbury Beach by thousands, to keep up an ancient custom. Here Whittier pitched his _Tent on the Beach_ he has so graphically described. It was at Hampton village in 1737, that occurred the parley which resulted in giving the infant colony of New Hampshire its narrow border of seacoast. Massachusetts had settled this region, and that powerful province was bound to possess it, though the King had made an adverse grant. Into Hampton rode in great state the Governor of Massachusetts at the head of his Legislature, and escorted by five troops of horse, formally demanding possession of the maritime townships. He met the Governor of New Hampshire in the George Tavern, and the demand was refused. The latter sent a plaintive appeal to the King, declaring that "the vast, opulent and overgrown province of Massachusetts was devouring the poor, little, loyal, distressed province of New Hampshire." The royal heart was touched and the King commanded Massachusetts to surrender her claim to two tiers of townships, twenty-eight in number, thus giving New Hampshire her present scant eighteen miles of coast-line. Rye Beach is the most popular of these seashore resorts, and not far beyond is Piscataqua River, the New Hampshire eastern boundary.