"Dame Nature once, while making land,Had refuse left of stone and sand.She viewed it well, then threw it downBetween Coy's Hill and Belchertown,And said, 'You paltry stuff, lie there,And make a town, and call it Ware.'"
"Dame Nature once, while making land,Had refuse left of stone and sand.She viewed it well, then threw it downBetween Coy's Hill and Belchertown,And said, 'You paltry stuff, lie there,And make a town, and call it Ware.'"
"Dame Nature once, while making land,
Had refuse left of stone and sand.
She viewed it well, then threw it down
Between Coy's Hill and Belchertown,
And said, 'You paltry stuff, lie there,
And make a town, and call it Ware.'"
MOUNT HOPE BAY.
On the northeastern verge of Narragansett Bay is Mount Hope Bay, its shores attractive alike in lovely scenery and the most interesting tradition. It is alsoa region of most venerable antiquity in America. Hither came the ancient Norsemen Vikings, who explored it, and sojourned there almost a thousand years ago. These wandering Norsemen, early colonizing Iceland and Greenland, are said to have discovered the mainland of North America in the tenth century, the energetic Leif, a son of Eric the Red, afterwards, in the year 1001, sailing along the American coast, and finding first, Helluland, or the "Flat Land," supposed to be Newfoundland, then Mark Land, or the "Wood Land," now Nova Scotia, and Vinland, or the "Vine Land," being the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and wintering in Narragansett and Mount Hope Bays. The next year Leif's brother, Thorvald, came along these coasts with thirty men, and also passed a winter in Mount Hope Bay. The following season he sent a party of explorers hither, and in the year 1004 he again came personally, and was killed in a skirmish with the Indians, his companions returning to Greenland. There seem to have been subsequent Norsemen visits, and the name of Vinland was given by them on account of the profusion of vines growing on the shores and islands, which was a novelty to these wanderers from the far north.
Mount Hope Bay is the broadening estuary of Taunton Great River, and the elongated peninsula of Bristol Neck divides it from Narragansett Bay to the westward, stretching up to Providence. UponTaunton Great River is a magnificent water-power which has produced the success of Taunton, a busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, where they make locomotives and tacks, bricks, screws and britannia ware, its name coming from Taunton in Somersetshire, its founder having been Elizabeth Pool, a pious Puritan lady of that place. When the first settlers explored the river they made a wonderful antiquarian discovery. Upon the shore, below Taunton, and opposite what are now the gardens and pleasure-grounds of Dighton, was found the famous "Writing Rock," lying partly submerged by the waterside, and when the tide is out, presenting a smooth face slightly inclined towards the river. It is a large greenstone boulder, the color changed to dusky red by the elements, and it now has the faint impression of hieroglyphics on its surface that have been almost effaced by the action of the water. In the early colonial days these marks were very distinct, and even after the beginning of the nineteenth century they could be plainly distinguished from the deck of a passing vessel. These inscriptions on the Dighton rock excited much wonder, and were generally attributed to the Norsemen. Old Cotton Mather described it, saying that among the "curiosities of New England, one is that of a mighty rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high tide covers part of it, there are very deeply engraved, no man alive knows how or when, abouthalf a score lines, near ten foot long and a foot and a half broad, filled with strange characters." Another learned man speaks of them as "Punic inscriptions which remain to this day," made by the Phœnicians. Below, and near Fall River, many years ago, there was exhumed a skeleton in sitting posture, wearing a brass breast-plate and a belt of brass armor. Much marvel resulted from this important discovery, which was thought to have produced a veritable dead Viking, and it is said to have inspired Longfellow's poem of "The Skeleton in Armor":
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!Who, with thy hollow breastStill in rude armor drest,Comest to daunt me!"Wrapt not in Eastern balms,But with thy fleshless palmsStretched, as if asking alms,Why dost thou haunt me?"
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!Who, with thy hollow breastStill in rude armor drest,Comest to daunt me!"Wrapt not in Eastern balms,But with thy fleshless palmsStretched, as if asking alms,Why dost thou haunt me?"
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!Who, with thy hollow breastStill in rude armor drest,Comest to daunt me!
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
"Wrapt not in Eastern balms,But with thy fleshless palmsStretched, as if asking alms,Why dost thou haunt me?"
"Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
Thus he answers:
"I was a Viking old!My deeds, though manifold,No Skald in song has told,No Saga taught thee!"Take heed, that in thy verse,Thou dost the tale rehearse,Else dread a dead man's curse;For this I sought thee."
"I was a Viking old!My deeds, though manifold,No Skald in song has told,No Saga taught thee!"Take heed, that in thy verse,Thou dost the tale rehearse,Else dread a dead man's curse;For this I sought thee."
"I was a Viking old!My deeds, though manifold,No Skald in song has told,No Saga taught thee!
"I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
"Take heed, that in thy verse,Thou dost the tale rehearse,Else dread a dead man's curse;For this I sought thee."
"Take heed, that in thy verse,
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man's curse;
For this I sought thee."
And then the poet unfolds his weird and romantic history. Despite the Norsemen traditions, however,it is regarded as more probable that both the hieroglyphics and the skeleton were of Indian origin.
KING PHILIP.
Upon the western shore of Mount Hope Bay is the town of Bristol, quiet, with wide, grassy, tree-shaded streets leading down to the waterside, now a pleasant summer-resort, having a ferry over to Fall River. Farther up the peninsula is Warren, with its factories. In Bristol rises the splendid isolated eminence of Mount Hope, which gives the bay its name. Its rounded summit is a mass of quartzite rock, almost covered by grass. It is hardly three hundred feet high, but being the most elevated spot anywhere around, has a grand outlook, every town in Rhode Island being visible from it, and all the islands of Narragansett Bay, while far to the southward, upon distant Aquidneck, Newport gleams in the sunlight. Eastward, across Mount Hope Bay, the city of Fall River, with its rising terraces of huge granite mills, is built apparently into the sloping side of a ledge of rocks. Upon this mountain lived the famous chief, King Philip, and from it, with his warrior band, he sallied forth to carry slaughter and rapine among the Puritan settlements. The eastern side of Mount Hope falls off precipitously to the bay, and when he was finally surprised by the colonists in his lair, he is said to have rolled down this steep declivity like a barrel. The mountain top is now known as "KingPhilip's Seat;" there is a natural excavation in the mountain side, called "King Philip's Throne;" and from the foot the waters of "Philip's Spring" flow away, a little purling brook, out to Taunton River. One disgruntled early colonial annalist described the place as "Philip's Sty at Mount Hope." The greatest tradition of this region tells of the ambush, surprise and death of this famous sachem, the "Last of the Wampanoags."
The name of Wampanoag means "the men of the East Land," or the Indians to the eastward of Narragansett Bay. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the noted Massasoit was the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoags, or Pokanokets, whose territory embraced most of the country from Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod. The tribe had previously numbered thirty thousand, but a pestilence had reduced them to a small figure, barely three hundred, not long before the arrival of the "Mayflower." Massasoit felt his weakness and made friends with the colonists, his treaties of peace being faithfully kept for a half-century. The old sachem lived north of Mount Hope, at Sowamset, now the town of Warren, where his favorite "Massasoit Spring" still pours out its libations. He died in 1661, at the age of eighty, leaving two sons, Mooanum and Metacomet. Shortly after his death, these sons went to Plymouth to confirm the treaties with the whites, and were so much pleased with their reception that they asked to begiven English names. The colonial court accordingly conferred upon them the names of Alexander and Philip. The former was chief sachem, but died within a year, Philip succeeding. During the next decade he lived in comparative friendliness, but was always unsatisfied and restless. He grew to distrust the colonists, and never could be made to comprehend their religion. When John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who converted so many, preached before him, Philip pulled a button off Eliot's doublet, saying in contempt that he valued it more than the discourse, a remark which led pious old Cotton Mather to exclaim, in horror, "the monster!" It was not long before the peaceful relations were broken, and, after 1671, Philip travelled among the tribes throughout New England, exciting them to a crusade against the colonists, and forming a powerful league, including the Narragansetts, who had been friendly. The result was the most desolating Indian war from which the colonies ever suffered. The whites were everywhere attacked, but made heroic defense, and in 1675-6 they defeated all the tribes, the Narragansetts and Wampanoags being practically annihilated.
KING PHILIP'S DEATH.
Defeated, and left without resources, the savage king was then hunted from one place to another, finally seeking refuge in his eyrie on Mount Hope, with a handful of followers. Here Captain Church attackedhim, and on August 12, 1676, he was killed by a bullet fired by an Indian. In Church's annals of that terrible war the story is told of the death of this chief, the last of his line. Philip was ambushed and completely surprised on the mountain, and running away, rolled down its side, the Indians trying to escape through a swamp at the foot. The attacking party was posted around the swamp in couples, hidden from view. Philip, partly clad, ran directly towards two of the ambush, an Englishman and an Indian. The former fired, but missed him; then the Indian fired twice, sending one bullet through his heart and the other not more than two inches from it. Philip fell dead upon his face in the mud and water; most of his companions escaped. In Church's recital is told what followed:
"Captain Church ordered Philip's body to be pulled out of the mire on to the upland. So some of Captain Church's Indians took hold of him by his stockings, and some by his small breeches, being otherwise naked, and drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great, naked, dirty beast he looked like. Captain Church then said that, forasmuch as he had caused many an Englishman's body to lie unburied and rot above ground, not one of his bones should be buried. And, calling his old executioner, bid him behead and quarter him. Accordingly he came with his hatchet and stood over him, but before he struck, he made a small speech, directingit to Philip, and said 'he had been a very great man, and had made many a man afraid of him, but so big as he was, he would now chop him in pieces.' And so went to work and did as he was ordered. Philip having one very remarkable hand, being very much scarred, occasioned by the splitting of a pistol in it formerly, Captain Church gave the head and that hand to Aldermon, the Indian who shot him, to show to such gentlemen as would bestow gratuities upon him, and accordingly he got many a penny by it. This being on the last day of the week, the Captain with his company returned to the island (Aquidneck), tarried there until Tuesday, and then went off and ranged through all the woods to Plymouth, and received their premium, which was 30 shillings per head for the enemies which they had killed or taken, instead of all wages, and Philip's head went at the same price. Methinks it is scanty reward and poor encouragement, though it was better than what had been some time before. For this much they received four shillings and sixpence a man, which was all the reward they had, except the honor of killing Philip."
When the party brought Philip's head to Plymouth, the Puritan meeting was celebrating a solemn thanksgiving, and quoting, again, the words of old Cotton Mather, "God sent them in the head of a leviathan for a thanksgiving feast." This head was exposed on a gibbet at Plymouth for twenty years, as the arch-enemyof the colony. But things were different afterwards. The "monster" of the seventeenth century became a martyr in the nineteenth century. Irving wrote King Philip's biography; Southey was his bard; and Edwin Forrest nobly impersonated him. Thus the great Metacomet, in the light of history, is regarded as sinned against as well as sinning, for he was trying to drive the invader from his native land. The resistless westward march of the white man overcame him, the first of a long line of famous Indians to fall in front of American colonization.
FALL RIVER.
Across Mount Hope Bay is Fall River, in Massachusetts, now the leading American city in cotton-spinning and the manufacture of print cloths. Its huge granite mills stand in ranks, like the platoons of a marching regiment, upon the successive rising terraces of the eastern shore. Nestling among the hills above the town are the extensive Watuppa ponds, long and narrow lakes, spreading eight or ten miles back upon the higher plateau. These, with other tributary ponds, cover about twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long, but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards distance it descends one hundred and thirty-sixfeet, thus being appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered around this admirable water-power. The mills, however, have grown so far beyond the ability of the water-wheels that they now run chiefly by steam, and Fall River has a population approximating one hundred thousand. The prolific granite quarries in the surrounding hills have furnished the stone for these imposing mills, and also for the chief buildings. Although a New England manufacturing city of the first rank, it is not a Yankee settlement, for the operatives are chiefly English, Irish, Welsh and French Canadians. When the settlement began, it was called Freetown, and afterwards Troy, but the name of the stream finally became so popular that the others were discarded, and Fall River was adopted officially upon its incorporation as a city. The rocky environment enabled it to cheaply construct the grand mill buildings, and thus had much to do with its success.
NEWPORT OF AQUIDNECK.
The eastern side of Narragansett Bay is chiefly occupied by Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, upon which is the queen of American seaside resorts, Newport. Aquidneck is the Indian "Isle of Peace," the word literally meaning "floating on the water," and its southwestern extremity broadens into a wide peninsula of almost level and quite fertile land, making a plateau elevated about fifty feet above the sea. Theisland is fifteen miles long and from three to four miles wide, and this plateau rests upon rock, the strata making cliffs all around it, with coves worked into them by the waters, presenting smooth sand beaches having intervening bold promontories. The southeastern border of this plateau, facing the Atlantic, has an irregular front of little bays and projections, with the waves dashing against the bases of the cliffs and among the rocks profusely strewn beyond them. Behind the western extremity of the island is Brenton's Point, projecting in such a way as to protect the inner harbor of Newport. Here are the wharves, facing the westward, and the ancient part of the town, its narrow streets and older houses covering considerable surface. The harbor is protected by a breakwater, and beyond is Conanicut Island. This was "Charming Newport of Aquidneck," as the colonial histories recorded it, then a leading seaport of New England. Thames Street, fronting it, was, in the eighteenth century, one of the busiest highways of America. Protecting the harbor entrance, upon Brenton's Point, is Fort Adams, which was a formidable fortification before modern-gunnery improvements superseded the old systems, and, next to Fortress Monroe, it is the largest defensive work in the United States, having accommodations for a garrison of three thousand men. It was built during the Presidency of John Adams, and named for him, being then hurried to completion as a defenseagainst French attacks, war with that country seeming to be imminent, and the French particularly desiring to possess Newport. All around the ancient town, and spreading over the plateau, to which the surface slopes upward in gentle ascent from the harbor, is the modern Newport of the American nineteenth century multi-millionaires. From the older town, southward across the plateau, stretches the chief street, Bellevue Avenue, through the fashionable residential district.
William Coddington, whose name is preserved in various ways, but whose descendants are said to have been degenerate, founded Newport. He led a band of dissenters from the Puritan church in Massachusetts and bought Aquidneck from the Indians, starting his colony in 1639. Most of the earlier settlers, in fact, were people of various religious sects driven out of the strictly Puritan New England towns. Having abandoned England because they objected to a State Church, we are told that the Puritans forthwith proceeded to set up in Massachusetts what was very like a State Church of their own, and soon made it hot for the unbelievers. They drove out both William Blackstone and Roger Williams. Blackstone, when he had to go over the border and establish his hermitage at Study Hill on Blackstone River, said: "I came from England because I did not like the Lords Bishops, but I cannot join with you, because I would not be under the Lords Brethren." AfterBlackstone and Williams, many others came to Rhode Island and settled at Newport, for there they enjoyed the completest liberty of conscience. The Quakers were unmolested and came in large numbers; the Baptists flocked in and built a meeting-house; the Hebrews came, solid business men, originally from Portugal, and established the first synagogue in the United States; the sternest doctrines of the Calvinists were preached; the Moravians held their impressive love-feasts; and orthodox Churchmen fervently prayed for the English King. There were all shades of belief, and dissenters of all ilks, and many having no belief at all, so that the fair town on Aquidneck was pervaded with such an atmosphere of religious toleration and cosmopolitan irregularity that it became famous for its sharp contrast with the stern rigidity of New England. Hence it was not unnatural that at the opening of the nineteenth century President Dwight should have declared that an alleged laxity of morals in Stonington was due to "its nearness to Rhode Island." But despite these peculiarities the Newport colony got on well, so that the growing settlement on the "Isle of Peace" in time came to be designated as the "Eden of America." Dean Berkeley, afterwards Bishop, visited Newport in 1729, remaining several years, and gave the colony an elevated literary tone. An Utopian plan for converting the Indians brought him over from England, but he soon discovered that it was impracticable, andwent back home to become a Bishop. His favorite resort is shown at the part of the Newport Cliffs called the "Hanging Rocks," and it is said he there composed hisAlciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, and the noble lyric closing with the famous verse proclaiming the patriotic prophecy which Leutze made the subject of his grand mural painting in the Capitol at Washington:
"Westward the course of empire takes its way."
"Westward the course of empire takes its way."
"Westward the course of empire takes its way."
NEWPORT DEVELOPMENT.
Newport, before the Revolution, was a most important seaport. When Dean Berkeley was there it had about forty-five hundred inhabitants, and they had grown to twelve thousand when the Revolution began. The preceding half-century was the era of its greatest maritime prosperity, when Newport ships circumnavigated the globe. The salubrity of the climate and advantages of the harbor providing safe anchorage but a few miles from the ocean attracted many merchants and a large trade, and in those days the Quakers and the Hebrews were the leading citizens. In 1770 Boston alone surpassed Newport in the extent of its trade, which then was much greater than that of New York. It was about this time that a visitor to New York wrote back to theNewport Mercurythat "at its present rate of progress, New York will soon be as large as Newport." The Revolutionary War, however, almost ruined the town,and annihilated its commerce. The port was at first held by the English, and afterwards by the French, both battering and maltreating it, so that it emerged from the conflict in a dilapidated condition, with the population reduced to barely five thousand. The French learned to love the attractive island, and sought earnestly after the war to have it annexed to France, in return for the aid given the Americans, but Washington strongly opposed this and prevented it. The trade was gone, never to return, the merchants went away to Providence, New York and Boston, and it existed in quiet and uneventful neglect until the nineteenth century had made some progress, when people began seeking its pleasant shores for summer recreation. In 1840 two hotels were built, and this began therenaissance. The Civil War made vast fortunes, and their owners sought Newport, and it has since become the great summer home of the fashionable world of America, where they can, in friendly rivalry, make the most lavish displays possible for wealth to accomplish at a seaside resort.
Unlike most American watering-places, Newport is not an aggregation of hotels and lodging-houses, but it is pre-eminently a gathering of the costliest and most elaborate suburban homes this country can show. Built upon the extensive space surrounding the older town, and between it and the ocean, south and east, modern Newport is a galaxy of large andexpensive country-houses, each in an enclosure of lawns, flower-gardens and foliage, highly ornamental and exceedingly well kept. Many of them are spacious palaces upon which enormous sums have been expended; and in front of their lawns, for several miles along the winding brow of the cliffs that fall off precipitously to the ocean's edge, is laid the noted "Cliff Walk." This is a narrow footpath at the edge of the greensward that has the waves dashing against the bases of the rocks supporting it, while inland, beyond the lawns, are the noble palaces of Newport. Each is a type of different architecture, and no matter how grand and imposing, each is called a "cottage." The greatest rivalry has been shown in construction, and the styles cover all known methods of building—Gothic, Elizabethan, Tudor, Swiss, Flemish, French, with every sort of ancient house in Britain or Continental Europe, imitated and improved upon, and in some cases widely varying systems being condensed together. Some of these "cottages" have thus become piles of buildings, with all sorts of porticos, doorways, pavilions, dormers, oriels, bow-windows, bays and turrets, towers, chimneys, gambrel roofs and gables, the whole being charmingly elaborated into wide-spreading, imposing and sometimes astonishing houses. Occasionally the villa is elongated into the stable, in an extended house, which includes the family, horses, hounds, domestics and grooms, all living under the same roof.A low and rambling style of architecture, with many gables and prominent colors, is the favorite for various Newport cottages. To the southward of the town are the Ocean Avenue and Ocean Drive, skirting the whole lower coast of the island for some ten miles, and displaying fine marine views.
There have been lavished upon these palaces of Newport, in construction and decoration, large portions of the greatest incomes of the multi-millionaires of New York and Boston, and hither they hie to enjoy the summer and early autumn in a sort of fashionable semi-seclusion, mingling only in their own sets, and rather resenting the excursions occasionally made by the plebeian folk into Newport to look at their displays. These princes of inherited wealth have made Newport peculiarly their own, and, their expenditures being on a scale commensurate with their millions, the growth and improvement of the newer part of the place have been extraordinary. Land in choice locations is quoted above $50,000 an acre, and a Newport "cottage" costs $500,000 to $1,000,000 to build, with more for the furnishing. Once, when I asked what was the qualification necessary to become a director of one of the great banks of New York, I was told that it was the ownership of ten shares of stock and a cottage at Newport. The sense of newness is sometimes impressive in gazing at these Aladdin palaces, for while the architecture reproduces quaint and ancient forms, the ancestral ivy doesnot yet cling to the walls, and the trees are still young. But there are older sites in Newport, back from the sea-front, where some of the estates, existing many years, have smaller and more subdued houses with signs of maturity, where the ivy broadly spreads and the trees have grown. Some of the foliage-embowered lanes, leading through the older suburbs, are charming in leafy richness and make scenes of exquisite rural beauty.
The Casino is the fashionable centre of Newport, a building in Old English style, fronting on Bellevue Avenue, having reading-rooms, a theatre, gardens and tennis-court, and here the band plays in the season, and there are concerts and balls. During the fashionable period, Bellevue Avenue is the daily scene of a stately procession of handsome equipages of all styles, as it is decreed that the great people of Newport shall always ride when on exhibition, and they thus pass and repass in the afternoons in splendid review. In the earlier times the town's chief benefactor was Judah Touro, who gave it Touro Park. His father was the rabbi of Newport synagogue, which now has no congregation. Judah spent fifty years in New Orleans amassing a fortune, which was bequeathed to various charities. He also liberally aided the fund for building Bunker Hill Monument. The synagogue, with the beautiful garden adjacent, the Jewish Cemetery, is maintained in perfect order. Touro Park is a pretty enclosure in the older town,containing statues of Commodore M. C. Perry and William Ellery Channing, who were natives of Newport, and a statue of the former's brother, Commodore Oliver H. Perry, the victor of Lake Erie, is also at the City Hall, not far away. In Touro Park is the great memorial around which the antiquarian treasures of this famous place are clustered, the "Old Stone Mill," a small round tower, overrun with ivy and supported on pillars between which are arched openings. Its origin is a mystery, and this is the antiquarian shrine at which Newport worships. Longfellow tells weirdly of it in hisSkeleton in Armor, and some of the wise men suggest that it was built by the Norsemen when they first came this way and found Vinland so long ago. But the more practical townsfolk generally incline to the belief that an early colonist put it up for a windmill to grind corn, the weight of the evidence appearing to favor the theory that it was erected by Governor Benedict Arnold, of the colony, who died in 1678, and described it in his will as "my stone-built wind-will." It is, however, of sufficient antiquity and mystery to have a halo cast around it, and is the great relic of the town. The seacoast rocks that make the Newport Cliffs show some wonderful formations of chasms and spouting rocks. A fine fleet of yachts is usually in Newport water, and it is a favorite naval rendezvous, having the Training Station, War College and Torpedo Station, and a new Naval Hospital. This mostfamous of American seaside watering-places has a permanent population approximating twenty-five thousand, considerably increased by the summer visitors.
NEW BEDFORD.
To the eastward of Narragansett another bay is thrust far up into the land of Massachusetts, Buzzard's Bay, which almost bisects the great defensive forearm of Massachusetts, Cape Cod. This bay is thirty miles long and about seven miles wide. Between it and Narragansett are the tree-clad hills of the sparsely-settled regions which the Indians called Aponigansett and Acoaksett, out of which the Acushnet River runs down to its broadening estuary, now the harbor of New Bedford. Originally this city was peopled by Quakers of the English Russell family, of which the Duke of Bedford is the head, so that the colony was named from his title. A numerous Portuguese migration to the early settlements has caused one of the suburbs to still retain the name of Fayal. New Bedford stretches two miles along the western river-bank and far back upon the gradually ascending surface, and the population, including the opposite suburb of Fairhaven, numbers seventy thousand. Early a shipping port, it grew into celebrity with the advance of the whale fishery, which became its chief industry, and it was then said to be the wealthiest city in the country in proportion to population, having in 1854 four hundredand ten whaling ships, with ten thousand sailors, its fleets patrolling the remotest seas. When this fishery died out, the people went to manufacturing, and now they have numerous large mills busily spinning cotton, its noted product being the Wamsutta muslins. There still remain a few of the little bluff-bowed and flush-decked old whalers rotting at the wharves, with huge overhanging davits, and still redolent of oil—the relics of an almost obsolete industry. The ample fortunes originally gathered in the fishery enabled the marine aristocracy of the town to build their stately and comfortable old mansions which now enjoy an honorable repose in ample grounds along the quiet streets on the higher plateau back from the river.
When Samuel de Champlain came into the St. Lawrence River, he wrote that whales were killed by firing cannon-balls at them, and later explorers described how the Indians captured them. The colonists early began the fishery along the New England coasts, and New Bedford sent out its first ships in 1755. The period of greatest success in whaling was between 1820 and 1857. The advent of gas and petroleum, financial reverses, the gradual extermination of the whales, which had been pursued to the remotest regions, the substitution of steel for whalebone, and the use of hard rubber, all contributed to the decline of the business, and it was given its death-blow by the ravages of the Confederate privateers among the Pacific whaling fleets. Itsmemory is kept alive, however, by many romances of the sea, it having furnished an extensive and interesting literature. Not long ago it was related that the unfortunate sculptor who had carved the figure-heads for the whaleships was since compelled to earn a precarious livelihood by chopping out rude wooden idols for the South Sea islanders. Acushnet River is dammed in its upper waters, making an immense reservoir, furnishing power to the extensive mills. The harbor gradually broadens as it opens into Buzzard's Bay, and Clark's Point stretches far into the bay, having on the extremity an old-time square stone fort, with bastions at the corners, formerly the trusted defender of the harbor and the town, Fort Taber. Now, its only use is to furnish, on the outer corner, a foundation for a lighthouse lantern. The whaling fleet it formerly guided is all gone, but now it is the beacon for an enormous trade in coal, landed here for distribution by railway throughout New England. Another little stone fort is also built on the opposite side of the harbor, on a rock at the lower end of Fairhaven. Outside is the broad surface of the bay, a noble inland sea, with irregular and generally thinly populated shores, but with attractions that have drawn to it, in various localities, a large summer population, with many ornate villas of modern fashion. Just below Clark's Point is villa-studded Nonquitt, upon an upland among the undulating hills, where lived GeneralPhilip Sheridan, and to which he was brought home in a United States warship to die, in July, 1888. They tell us that when the venturesome Norsemen came along here, the bay was given the name of the Straum Fiord, but the antiquary is at a loss to find a satisfactory derivation for the present name of Buzzard's Bay. Far over its waters, as seen from Clark's Point, is the low, dark, gray forest-clad eastern shore, stretching down to the distant strait of Wood's Holl, leading out of the bay into Vineyard Sound. Spread across the bay entrance to the southward, and protecting it from the open sea, are the Elizabeth Islands.
VINEYARD SOUND.
After Captain Bartholomew Grosnold had discovered Cape Cod in May, 1602, he coasted along its shores, and coming down into what is known as Vineyard Sound, found himself in an archipelago of islands. He halted at the one called "No Man's Land," and gave it the name of Martha's Vineyard, which is now applied to the largest of these islands. Who his favorite Martha was, and why she should have been immortalized, old Bartholomew never told, thus disappointing many industrious people who have vainly sought the lady's personal history. "The Vineyard," as it is familiarly called, lies southeast of Buzzard's Bay, across which is the extended and narrow range of the Elizabeth Islands, trending far away to the southwestward, and ending with Cuttyhunk,where the first English spade was driven into New England soil. It was upon this, the outermost island, that Gosnold landed and planted his colony, naming it Elizabeth, in honor of his queen, a title afterwards given the entire range. The island had a pond in which was a rocky islet, and here, as they feared the Indians, the colonists built a fort and resided while they gathered a cargo of sassafras for their ship, that being then a much-prized specific in Europe. The settlement was brief; frightened by savage threats and rent by quarrels, they soon abandoned the place, loading their ship and returning to England disheartened. This settlement antedated by eighteen years the arrival of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth.
The Elizabeth group is a range of sixteen islands, stretching in a long line from the Cape Cod shore for eighteen miles southwest to the extremity of Cuttyhunk. It makes the southeastern boundary of Buzzard's Bay, with Martha's Vineyard beyond, there being between them the long and rather narrow channel of Vineyard Sound. The mariner going eastward out of Long Island Sound passes Sakonnet Point at the eastern verge of Narragansett Bay, and finds in front a chain of beacons posted across the route. Two of these are lightships, marking reefs to which are given the bucolic names of the "Hen and Chickens" and the "Sow and Pigs." If the shipmaster wishes to enter Buzzard's Bay for New Bedford,he sails between these two unromantic shoals, passing a lightship on either hand, and being further guided by a lighthouse on the extremity of Cuttyhunk. But if he wishes to follow the great maritime route to the eastward around Cape Cod, he gives the "Sow and Pigs" a wide berth to the northward and passes between it and the splendid flashing red and white beacon on Gay Head, the western extremity of Martha's Vineyard, south of Cuttyhunk. Gosnold was the first Englishman who saw the brilliant and variegated coloring of this remarkable promontory when the sun shone upon it, and appropriately called it the Gay Head. Its magnificent Fresnel lens, the most powerful in this region, is elevated one hundred and seventy feet above the sea, and is thirty miles east of Point Judith. The breadth of the entrance to Vineyard Sound from this lighthouse across to the lightship is about seven miles.
The northeastern extremity of the Elizabeth Islands is Naushon, and between it and the main land of Cape Cod are the strait and harbor formerly known to the sailor as Wood's Hole, but now refined into Wood's Holl, just as "Holmes's Hole," another popular harbor over on "the Vineyard," has since become Vineyard Haven. Both of these "holes," and particularly the latter, have always been favorite places for schooner skippers to run into and avoid adverse winds. The Elizabeth group has four large islands, the others being small. Narrow and oftentortuous channels separate them. Cuttyhunk is about two and one-half miles long, and the present successor of Gosnold's ill-starred colony is a club from New York who have a seaside establishment there. Not far away, to the northward, is Penikese Island, covering about one hundred acres, which was formerly the location of Professor Agassiz's "Summer School of Natural History." East of Cuttyhunk is Nashawena, three miles long, and next comes Pasque Island, also the abiding-place of an attractive club comfortably housed. Naushon is the largest island, eight miles long, stretching from Pasque almost to Wood's Holl, and having opposite each other, on its northern and southern shores, two noted harbors of refuge, the Kettle and Tarpaulin Coves. Upon Naushon, early in the nineteenth century, lived James Bowdoin, the diplomatist and benefactor of Bowdoin College in Maine, which was named for his father. Naushon is a very pretty island, and was described in those days by a distinguished English lady traveller as "a little pocket America, a liliputian Western world, a compressed Columbia." Clustering around its northeastern extremity are some of the smaller islets of the group—the Ram Islands, and Wepecket, Uncatina and Nonamesset. The strait at Wood's Holl forms a rocky gateway leading from Buzzard's Bay into Vineyard Sound, and just beyond, on the Cape Cod shore, is its guiding beacon on the point of Nobska Hill. Wood's Holl has but a smallharbor on the edge of the contracted and tortuous passage, which is full of rocks, difficult to navigate, and generally having the tide running through like a millrace. The settlement is small, displaying attractive cottages on the adjacent shores, and here are located the station and buildings of the United States Fish Commission and the Marine Biological Laboratory.
MARTHA'S VINEYARD.
Between the Elizabeth Islands and Martha's Vineyard is the great route of vessels passing to and from New England waters, and the lighthouse keeper at the entrance has counted more than a thousand of them passing in a single week. Aquatic birds skim the waters, and all about the Sound are islands great and small, their granite coasts contrasting with the blue waters they protect from the severity of ocean storms. A tale is told of the origin of the names of some of the islands, which is original, if apocryphal. The story comes as a tradition from the "oldest inhabitant" of these parts, who is said to have been the owner of all these islands, and who determined, before he died, to bestow the chief ones upon his four favorite daughters. Accordingly, Rhoda took Rhode Island; Elizabeth took hers; Martha was given "the Vineyard;" and there was left for Nancy the remaining large island—so "Nan-took-it."
Martha's Vineyard is shaped much like a triangle, and is twenty-three miles long and about ten milesbroad in the widest part. Vineyard Haven, its chief harbor, is deep and narrow, opening like a pair of jaws at the northern apex of the triangle, the entrance being guarded by the pointed peninsulas of the East Chop and West Chop, each provided with a lighthouse. Within is one of the most fairly constructed natural harbors ever seen, a spacious haven of protection, often crowded with vessels, which run in there to escape rough treatment outside. Here is the pleasant village of Vineyard Haven, prettily located upon the sloping banks of a small cove inside, and having down at the end of the harbor a Government Marine Hospital. "The Vineyard's" famous western promontory of Gay Head is composed of ponderous cliffs, falling off steeply to the water, and presents an interesting geological study. The inclined strata rise about two hundred feet above the sea, being gaily colored in tints of red, white, yellow, green, and black. About forty-five hundred people reside on this island, including fishermen, sailors and farmers, but mostly gaining a livelihood by ministering to the wants of the large population of summer visitors. The first colonist was Thomas Mayhew, a Puritan from Southampton, who came in 1642, being then the grantee both of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Cottage City is the chief settlement, built upon the eastern ocean shore of "the Vineyard," a wonderful place attracting twenty to thirty thousand people inthe summer. The bluff shore rises precipitously for thirty feet from the narrow beach forming the verge of the sea, and there are myriads of cottages, many hotels, and a complete summer town spreading over a large surface. Here are held the great Camp Meetings which are the attraction in August—one Methodist and the other Baptist. The former is the "Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association," first established and meeting in the Wesleyan Grove, back from the sea. The other is the "Oak Bluffs Association," out by the ocean's edge. This place, thoroughly alive in summer, is dormant, however, for nearly nine months of the year. From it a railroad runs several miles southward along the shore to the little village of Edgartown, the place of original colonization, and the county-seat of Dukes County, Massachusetts, which is composed of all these islands. Towards the southeast, out of sight, is the distant island of Nantucket. Nearer is seen the misty outline of old Chappaquadick Island, called "the Old Chap," for short, with its long terminating extremity of Cape Poge. To the northward is the hazy mainland of Cape Cod, a streak upon the horizon, whence, long ago, these islands are supposed to have been sliced off during the glacial epoch, and going adrift, were thus anchored out in the ocean.
NANTUCKET.
The island of Nantucket, dropped in the Atlantic, everyone has heard of, but few visit. We are toldby tradition that it was originally formed by the mythical Indian giant, Manshope, who, when he was tired of smoking, emptied here into the sea the ashes from his pipe. It was also the smoke from this pipe which created the fogs so plentifully abounding around the place. These fogs are very dense, and it is said of a certain noted Nantucket skipper going away on a long voyage that he marked one of them with his harpoon, and returning to the harbor three years later, at once recognized the same fog by his private mark. Old Manshope, the giant, was the tutelary genius of all the Indian tribes on the islands of Vineyard Sound and the adjacent mainland, and his home was on the cliffs of Gay Head, in an ancient extinct volcanic crater, now called the Devil's Den. He feasted here on the flesh of whales, which he broiled on live coals, obtaining fuel by uprooting huge trees. His firelight, thus made, is said to have been the earliest beacon seen by superstitious sailors passing the headland, and as it flickered in his midnight orgies, they solemnly shook their heads, saying, "Old Manshope is at it again." This powerful giant seems to have waded around Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds and regulated all the affairs of the neighborhood. But finally the sailors and colonists became so numerous that he waxed very wroth. With a single stroke of his ponderous club he separated "No Man's Land" from "the Vineyard," and then transformed his children into fishes. His wife lamented this cruelty,and he seized and threw her over to the mainland on Sakonnet Point, where she still lies, a misshapen rock. Then the disgusted giant vanished forever.
The Norsemen first named the island Nautikon, appropriately meaning the "Far Away Land." From this, on an early map, it appears as Natocko, then as Nantukes, and finally it became Nantucquet, from which the present name is derived. When Gosnold came along in 1602, he first saw its great eastern promontory, Sankaty Head, describing the island as covered with oak trees and populous with Indians. After the original grant was made to Thomas Mayhew, he sold it in 1659 to the "ten original purchasers" for £30 and two beaver hats, one for himself and one for his wife, he reserving one-tenth. These purchasers colonized the island, Thomas Macy, a Quaker who fled from Puritan persecution in New England, beginning the first settlement, and Peter Foulger, who came there somewhat later, had a daughter, who was the mother of Benjamin Franklin. John G. Whittier, the good Quaker poet, thus sings of Macy's flight to the island:
"Far round the bleak and stormy capeThe vent'rous Macy passed,And on Nantucket's naked isleDrew up his boat at last."
"Far round the bleak and stormy capeThe vent'rous Macy passed,And on Nantucket's naked isleDrew up his boat at last."
"Far round the bleak and stormy cape
The vent'rous Macy passed,
And on Nantucket's naked isle
Drew up his boat at last."
Macy landed at the site of the town of Nantucket, then the Indian village of Wesco, or the "White Stone," which lay on the shore of the harbor, andafterwards had a wharf built over it. The whale fishery, which made Nantucket's prosperity, began early, in boats from the island, and the population had increased by the Revolution to about forty-five hundred, Sherburne, as it then was called, being the chief whaling port in the world, with one hundred and fifty whale ships. The island was covered with trees, but they were all destroyed during the Revolution, and it was then made almost a desert, losing also the greater part of its population and much of the fishery fleet. There was a revival subsequently, and Nantucket reached its maximum prosperity in 1840, with nearly ten thousand population. Afterwards came the final decline of whaling, and the sandy, almost treeless island now has about three thousand people, who depend for a living chiefly on the summer visitors. It is without a whaleship, but it has many snug cottages, and those going for health and rest can well say, with Whittier: