New Hampshire

One way of killing time when you are a kid and you have a piece of paper and a pen or pencil is to draw a map of the United States. You start with Maine and then you drawn Vermont and New Hampshire over Massachusetts, with Connecticut and Rhode Island tucked underneath before you get to New York. What you probably forget, assuming you even knew it in the first place, is that a bit of New Hampshire actually comes down to the Atlantic in between Maine and Massachusetts. New Hampshire has a port city, Portsmouth no less. If you drive along I-95 from Maine to Massachusetts you will drive through Portsmouth and see that New Hampshire is a seafaring state. Therefore, when you see that the state seal, which appears on the state flag, is dominated by a ship, the "Raleigh," you will not be greatly surprised. Having started with Maine as our first stop in the From Sea to Shining Sea series, we now visit New Hampshire, with Terry Miller Shannon as our tour guide. The short opening chapter introduces us to the Granite State, the seventh smallest of the state with an abundance of valuable natural resources. Shannon emphasizes the interesting places in the state, from Mount Monadnock (the most-climbed mountain in the world) to Mystery Hill in North Salem (home to some of the oldest buildings in North America). Chapter Two, The Land of New Hampshire covers the basic geography of the state, looking at the three distinctive land regions (Seaboard Lowland, New England Upland, and the White Mountains), the 1,300 lakes and rivers, and the climate (expect snow on Mount Washington during the summer). Chapter Three, New Hampshire Through History, begins with the nomad wanderers who came to North America 12,000 years ago, continues through the Algonquian tribes in the area, and the Early European Explorers (including John Smith). Shannon focuses on the establishment of the colony and the question of setting New Hampshire's boundaries, and its contributions during the American Revolution. The state's history continues through the Civil War and into this century, making it the largest chapter in the book. Chapter Four Governing New Hampshire, talks about the oldest constitution in the United States and the three branches of government before taking a tour of Concord, the state capital. In these volumes you will find a down top map of the capital, which will show you where the state house stands in relationship to the Museum of New Hampshire History and other buildings of interest. Chapter Five, The People and Places of New Hampshire, looks at what it means to be working in New Hampshire and takes a tour of the various regions to give you an idea of what there is to see there. This is also the chapter where you get the book's recipe, which is the Use-It-Up, Make-It-Do, Franco-American Toast (a thrifty way to use leftover bread, which adds vanilla and cinnamon to the eggs and milk in which you dip the day-old bread). The book is filled with contemporary col