In the old days, when Eastboro amounted to something as a fishing port, the mackerel fleet unloaded its catch at the wharves in the Back Harbor.
Then Pounddug Slough was kept thoroughly dredged and buoyed.

Now it was weed-grown and neglected.

Only an occasional lobsterman's dory traversed its winding ways, which the storms and tides of each succeeding winter rendered more difficult to navigate.

The abandoned fish houses along its shores were falling to pieces, and at intervals the stranded hulk of a fishing sloop or a little schooner, rotting in the sun, was a dismal reminder that Eastboro's ambitious young men no longer got their living alongshore.

The town itself had gone to sleep, awakening only in the summer, when the few cottagers came and the Bay Side Hotel was opened for its short season.
Behind the lighthouse buildings, to the west--and in the direction of the village--were five miles of nothing in particular.