THE LANDING OF PENN AT THE BLUE ANCHOR TAVERN.

Here memory's spell wakes up the throng

Of past affection-here our fathers trod!

THE general voice of mankind has ever favoured the consecration of places hallowed by the presence of personages originating great epochs in history, or by events giving renown to nations. The landing place of Columbus in our western world is consecrated and honoured in Havana; and the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth is commemorated by festivals. We should not be less disposed to emblazon with its just renown the place where Penn, our honoured founder, first set his foot on the soil of our beloved city. The site and all its environs were abundantly picturesque, and facts enough of the primitive scene have descended to us,

-e'en to replace agen

The features as they knew them then."

Facts still live, to revive númerous local impressions, and to connect the heart and the imagination with the past, to lead out the mind in vivid conceptions of

"How the place look'd when 'twas fresh and young."

Penn and his immediate friends came up in an open boat or barge from Chester; and because of the then peculiar fitness, as "a landing place," of the "low and sandy beach," at the debouche of the once beautiful and rural Dock creek, they there came to the shore by the

side of Guest's new house, then in a state of building, the same known in the primitive annals as "the Blue Anchor tavern."

The whole scene was active, animating and cheering. On the shore were gathered, to cheer his arrival, most of the few inhabitants who had preceded him. The busy builders who had been occupied at the construction of Guest's house, and at the connecting line of "Budd's long row," all forsook their labours to join in the general greetings. The Indians too, aware by previous signals of his approach, were seen in the throng, or some, more reservedly apart, waited the salutation of the guest, while others, hastening to the scene, could be seen paddling their canoes down the smooth waters of the creek.

Where the houses were erecting, on the line of Front street, was the low sandy beach; directly south of it, on the opposite side of the creek, was the grassy and wet soil, fruitful in whortleberries; beyond it was the "Society Hill," having its summit on Pine Street, and rising in graceful grandeur from the precincts of Spruce street,-all then robed in the vesture with which nature most charms. Turning our eyes and looking northward, we see similar rising ground, presenting its summit above Walnut street. Looking across the Dock creek westward, we see all the margin of the creek adorned with every grace of shrubbery and foliage, and beyond it, a gently sloping descent from the line of Second street, whereon were hutted a few of the native wigwams intermixed among the shadowy trees. A bower near there, and a line of deeper verdure on the ground, marked "the spring," where "the Naiad weeps

her emptying urn." Up the stream meandering through "prolixity of shade," where" willows dipt their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink," we perceive, where it traverses Second street, the lowly shelter of Drinker, the anterior lord of Dock creek; and beyond him, the creek disappears in intervening trees, or in mysterious windings.

Penn was so pleased with the site of "the low sandy beach," as a landing place, (the rest of the river side being high precipitous banks) that he made it a public landing place for ever in his original city charter; and the little haven at the creek's mouth so pleased him, as a fit place for a harbour for vessels in the winter, and a security from the driving ice, that he also appropriated so much of it as lay eastward of the Little Dock creek to be a great dock for ever, to be deepened by digging when needful. The waters there were much deeper at first than after years, as the place got filled up by the negligence of the citizens. Charles Thomson, Esq.

told me of his often seeing such vessels as sloops and schooners lading their flour for the West Indies on the sides of the Dock creek near to Second street; and a very aged informant (Mrs. Powell) had seen a schooner once as high as Girard's bank. Charles Thomson also told me of one family of the first settlers whose vessel wintered at the mouth of the creek.

This original tavern, from its location, was at first of first rate consequence as a place of business. It was the proper key of the city, to which all new-comers resorted, and where all small vessels, coming with building timber from Jersey, &c., or with traffic from New England, made their ready landing. The house was

also used as a public ferry, whence people were to cross over Dock creek to Society Hill, before the causeway and bridge over Front street were formed, and also to convey persons over to Windmill island, where was a windmill for grinding their grain, or to cross persons and horses over to Jersey. It was, in short, the busy mart for a few years of almost all the business the little town required.

"The spring," in a line due west from this house, on the opposite bank of the creek, was long after a great resort for taking in water for vessels going to sea, and had been seen in actual use by some aged persons still alive in my time, who described it as a place of great rural beauty, shaded with shrubbery and surrounded with rude sylvan seats.

Little Dock creek, diverging to the southeast, had an open passage for canoes and batteaux as high as St. Peter's church, through a region long laying in commons, natural shrubbery, and occasional forest trees, left so standing, long after the city, northward of Dock creek, was in a state of improvement.

The cottage of the Drinker family, seen up the main or northwestern Dock creek, located near the southwest corner of Walnut and Second street, was the real primitive house of Philadelphia. The father of the celebrated aged Edward Drinker had settled there some years before Penn's colonists came, and Edward himself was born there two years before that time; he lived till after the war of Independence, and used to delight himself often in referring to localities where Swedes and Indians occasionally hutted, and also where Penn and his friends remained at their first landing.