Joel Cook

XVI.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF NARRAGANSETT.

The State of Rhode Island—Narragansett Bay—Point Judith—Aquidneck—Conanicut Island—Jamestown—Beaver Tail Light—Patience, Hope and Despair Islands—The Starved Goat—Durfee Hill—Narragansett Indians—Canonicus—Miantonomoh—The Narragansett Fort Fight—Uncas—Norwich—Sachem's Plain—Nanunteno—Yantic Falls—Narragansett Pier—Commodore Perry—Stuart the Artist—Wickford—Clams—Rocky Point—Blackstone River—Seeconk River—Vinland—Roger Williams—What Cheer Rock—Providence—General Burnside—Malbone's Masterpiece—Brown University—Pawtucket—Samuel Slater—Central and Valley Falls—William Blackstone—Study Hill—Woonsocket—Worcester—George Bancroft—Lake Quinsigamond—Ware—Mount Hope Bay—The Vikings—Taunton Great River—Bristol Neck—Taunton—Dighton Rock—The Skeleton in Armor—Bristol—Mount Hope—King Philip—Last of the Wampanoags—Massasoit—Death of Philip—Fall River—Watuppa Ponds—Newport—Brenton's Point—Fort Adams—William Coddington—Bishop Berkeley—The Cliff Walk—Newport Cottages—The Casino—Bellevue Avenue—Judah Touro—Touro Park—The Old Stone Mill—Buzzard's Bay—Acushnet River—New Bedford—The Whale Fishery—Clark's Point—Fort Taber—Nonquitt—Vineyard Sound—Bartholomew Gosnold—No Man's Land—Elizabeth Islands—Cuttyhunk—Sakonnet Point—Hen and Chickens—Sow and Pigs—Gay Head—Naushon—Penikese—Nashawena—Pasque Island—James Bowdoin—Wood's Holl—Martha's Vineyard—Vineyard Haven—Thomas Mayhew—Cottage City—Edgartown—Chappaquidick Island—Cape Poge—Nantucket—Manshope—Thomas Macy—Wesco—Whaling—Nantucket Sound—Nantucket Shoals—Nantucket Town—Siasconset—Wrecks.

THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.

Narragansett Bay is one of the finest harbors on the New England coast. It stretches thirty miles inland, the rivers emptying into it making the water-power for the numerous and extensive textile factories of Rhode Island, which embraces the shores surrounding and the islands within the bay. It opens broadly, having beautiful shores, lined with pleasant beaches which dissolve into low cliffs and water-worn crags; for the character of the coast gradually changes from the sandy borders of Long Island Sound to the rocks of New England. Its western boundary, stretching far out into the sea, is the famous Point Judith, a long, low, narrow and protruding sandspit thrust into the Atlantic, a headland dreaded by the traveller, to whom "rounding Point Judith" and its brilliant flashing beacon, thus changing the course over the long ocean swells, when voyaging upon a Sound steamer, means a great deal in the way of tribute to Neptune. This headland was always feared by the mariner, and we are romantically told that in the colonial days a storm-tossed vessel was driven in towards this shore, her anxious skipper at the wheel, when suddenly his bright-eyed daughter, Judith, called out, "Land, father, I see the land!" His dim vision not discerning it, he shouted, "Where away? Point, Judith, point!" She pointed; he was warned; and quickly changing the course, escaped disaster. This story was often repeated, so that in time the sailors gave her name to the headland. It is an interesting tale, but there are people, more prosaic, who insist that the Point was really named after Judith Quincy, wife of John Hull, the coiner of the ancient "pine-tree shillings," who bought the land there from the Indians. But, however named, and whoever the sponsor, Judith is usually well-remembered by those circumnavigating the dreaded Point.

Within Narragansett Bay, the chief island is Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, about fifteen miles long and of much fertility, having the best farm land in New England, and at the southern end the noted watering-place of Newport. This island furnishes the first half of the long official title of the little State—"Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." The memory of the old Narragansett chieftain, Canonicus, is preserved in Conanicut Island, west of Rhode Island, and seven miles long, there being between the two islands the capacious anchorage-ground of Newport Harbor. This island in 1678 was named Jamestown in honor of King James, and at its southern end, near the ruins of an old British fort, is the famous Beaver Tail Light, the guide into Newport harbor, the oldest lighthouse in America, dating from 1667. Roger Williams, who founded the "Providence Plantations," distributed various names to the other islands, several of them now popular resorts, among these titles, which represent the varying phases of his early emotions, being Prudence, Patience, Hope and Despair, while some later colonists with different ideas, evidently named Dutch Island, Hog Island, and the Starved Goat. Rhode Island is the smallest State in the Union, though among the first in manufactures, and in wealth proportionately to population. It has barely twelve hundred square miles of surface, of which more than one-eighth is water, and the highest land, Durfee Hill, is elevated only eight hundred feet.

THE LAND OF THE NARRAGANSETTS.

The region back of Point Judith and around Narragansett Bay was the home of the Narragansett Indians, who were early made, by Roger Williams, the friends of the white man. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, there were said to be thirty thousand of them, but they were afterwards wasted by pestilence, and when Williams fled to Providence and was received by them, he said they had twelve towns within twenty miles, and five thousand warriors. They fought the Pequots, to the westward, but were friendly with the tribes of Massachusetts, to which they really gave the name, for, living in a comparatively flat country, they described these tribes as belonging "near the great hills or mountains," which is the literal meaning of the word, they telling Williams it meant the many hills of that State, including the "blue hills of Milton." Canonicus and Miantonomoh were the great chiefs of the Narragansetts, described by the early colonists as wise, brave and magnanimous. The former made the grant of the lands at Providence to Roger Williams, and was his firm friend. The latter, the nephew and successor of Canonicus, joined the Puritans under Mason at Pequot Hill in the attack and defeat of the Pequots. In their original theology they looked forward to a mystic realm in the far southwest where the gods and pure spirits dwelt, while the souls of murderers, thieves and liars were doomed forever to wander abroad. Their friendship with the whites ended in 1675, however, when King Philip incited them to join in his war, and the colonists attacked them on a hill in a pine and cedar swamp near Kingston, west of Narragansett Bay, where scanty remains still exist of their fortifications. It was in December, amid the winter snows, and after a furious struggle their wigwams were fired, and in the most blinding confusion a band of warriors dashed out and covered the retreat of fully three thousand of their people, leaving the whites in possession. Both sides had heavy losses, but the result was the scattering and final annihilation of the tribe. This was the famous "Fort Fight in Narragansett," of which the memorial of the Connecticut Legislature says, "The bitter cold, the tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numerous and stubborn enemy they contended with for their God, King and country, be their trophies over death."

To the westward, beyond the Rhode Island border, lived Uncas, the enemy of Miantonomoh. His domain extended to the river Thames, and he had been a chief of the Pequots, who revolted in 1634 against the Sachem Sassacus and joined the Mohicans, being chosen their chief sachem. He was friendly to the colonists, and by sagacious alliances with them increased the power of his tribe, which had previously been in a relatively subordinate position. He helped defeat the Pequots, and became so strong that he was described as the "most powerful and prosperous prince in New England." He sold the shores of the Thames River to the whites, reserving a small tract on the river bank, and in 1660 disposed of the present site of Norwich, Connecticut, to a nomadic church from Saybrook, for £70. He held his people friendly to the colonists, even in King Philip's war, frequently visited their capitals at Hartford and Boston, and after reigning nearly fifty years, died in 1683. He is described as crafty, cruel and rapacious, but, as the head of a savage people, far-sighted and sagacious; skillful and fearless as a military leader. His holding aloof from the Indian alliances adverse to the colonists and fighting with the whites against the powerful hostile tribes, are regarded as having really saved colonial New England. His quarrel with Miantonomoh resulted in the battle of Sachem's Plain, on the outskirts of Norwich, in 1643. This was then a Mohican village, and Miantonomoh marched to attack it with nine hundred Narragansetts, Uncas defending with five hundred warriors. By a preconcerted plan, Uncas invited him to a parley, and while it was going on, and the Narragansetts were off their guard, the Mohicans made a sudden onslaught, defeating and pursuing them for a long distance. Hundreds of the Narragansetts were slain, and Miantonomoh, being captured, was taken prisoner to the English at Hartford. He was ultimately surrendered back to Uncas, who took him again to the Sachem's Plain, where he was put to death, the historian says, "by the advice and consent of the English magistrates and elders." A monument marks the place of execution, inscribed "Miantonomoh, 1643." His son, Nanunteno, who succeeded, led the tribe into King Philip's war, as he hated the colonists, and being captured, he declined to treat with them for a pardon, saying, when threatened with death, "I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft or I have spoken anything unworthy of myself," whereupon he was shot. He was "acting herein," says old Cotton Mather, "as if, by a Pythagorean metempsychosis, some old Roman ghost had possessed the body of this Western Pagan, like Attilius Regulus."

A few miles south of Norwich is the ancient fortress of Uncas on a hill, and a handful of weak half-breeds are all that remain of his famous people. In the city, on Sachem Street, near the Yantic Falls, is a little cemetery in a cluster of pine trees. This, centuries ago, was the burial-place of the Mohican chiefs, and the whole line of sachems is here interred, down to the last of them, Mazeen, buried in 1826 in the presence of a small remnant of the tribe. Ancient stones mark their graves, and in the centre is an obelisk in memory of Uncas, of which President Andrew Jackson laid the foundation-stone. The Yantic and Shetucket Rivers unite at Norwich to form the Thames, and the town has arisen around their admirable water-powers, which serve many mills. The city has about twenty thousand people, being in a beautiful situation between and on the acclivities adjoining the two rivers. The praises of the Yantic Falls were sung by Mrs. Sigourney and others, but their glory has departed, for the stream has been diverted into another channel, leaving a deep cutting in the hard rock, the bottom filled with curiously-piled and water-worn boulders.

ASCENDING NARRAGANSETT BAY.

On the western shore of Narragansett Bay, just inside of Point Judith, stood the little fishing village of Narragansett Pier, originally named from its ancient, sea-battered and ruined pier, built for a breakwater in early times, which has since become one of the most fashionable New England coast resorts, having many large hotels spreading in imposing array along the shore. The smooth sands of its bathing-beach look out upon Newport far over the bay and behind Conanicut Island in front. Upon the southern border of this beach there are precipitous cliffs against which the Atlantic Ocean breakers dash, the last rocks on the coast of the United States until the Florida reefs are reached. The famous Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry was a native of this town, born in 1785, a midshipman in the war with Tripoli, and the victor in the naval battle on Lake Erie in 1813. His brother, Commodore M.C. Perry, born in Newport in 1794, commanded the noted expedition to Japan in 1852-54, and concluded the treaty with that country, cementing the friendly relations with the United States ever since existing. The celebrated portrait painter Gilbert Stuart was also a native of this place, born in 1755, his portrait of Washington being regarded as the best existing. The western shores of the bay north of the Pier are lined with coast resorts. Here is quaint old Wickford, on Coweset Bay, which has a ferry twelve miles across to Newport, and still exhibits the "Rolling Rock," where Canonicus and Roger Williams are said to have signed their compact, and the old Blockhouse built for a defense in 1641. Farther northward is the ancient Shawomet, whither Samuel Gorton came, changing its name to Old Warwick in honor of his friend and patron, the Earl of Warwick. It appears that Gorton, a layman, who had a penchant for theological disputation, made himself obnoxious to the Plymouth Puritans in the early colonial time, and they banished him in 1637. He went to Newport and expressed his opinions too freely, and was banished thence in 1641. Wandering to Providence, he was driven from there to Cranston, nearby, the next year, and again expelled from Cranston a few months later, and he finally settled at Shawomet. But they still pursued him, and in 1643 a detachment of troops came from Boston and took him and ten others back as prisoners, and they were tried and sentenced as "damnable heretics" to banishment from America. Gorton sought Warwick's protection, and the Earl sent him back to Shawomet, where he lived undisturbed, but, after changing its name, spent the rest of his life in publishing pamphlets attacking Massachusetts and Rhode Island, among them being the "Antidote Against Pharisaic Teachers" and "Simplicitie's Defence against Seven-Headed Policy." The next thing of note occurring in Warwick was the disfranchisement, in 1652, of the clerk of the unfortunate town on seven charges: first, calling the officers of the town rogues and thieves; second, calling all the town rogues and thieves; third, threatening to kill all the mares in town, etc. In 1676 the Indians attacked and burnt it, and since, it has had little history. General Greene was a native of Warwick, born in 1742.

In sailing up Narragansett Bay, one is struck with the universality of the prolific crop of these waters,—the clam. Many of the inhabitants seem to spend much of their time gathering them; men and boys in boats are dredging all the coves and shallows for the clams, seizing enormous numbers by the skillful use of their handy double rakes. These people are proud of their home institution, the Rhode Island "clam-bake," which is a main-stay of all the shore resorts, and is considered a connecting link, binding them to the Narragansetts, who originated it. To properly conduct the "clam-bake" a wood fire is built in the open air, upon a layer of large stones, and when these are sufficiently heated, the embers and ashes are swept off, the hot stones covered with sea-weed, and clams in the shells, with other delicacies, put upon it, being enveloped by masses of sea-weed and sail-cloths to keep in the steam. The clams are thus baked by the heated stones, and steamed and seasoned by the moisture from the salt sea-weed. The coverings are then removed, the clams opened, and the feasting begins. With appetite whetted by the delicious breezes coming over the bright waters of the bay, the meal is relished beyond description. There are millions of clams thus consumed, but their growth is enormous, and the supply seems perennial. The chief of these places is Rocky Point, a forest-covered promontory, the favorite resort of the population of the Rhode Island capital, where the "clam-bakes" have acquired great fame.

ROGER WILLIAMS.

There flows southeastward out of Massachusetts the Blackstone River into Rhode Island, and going over Pawtucket Falls it then becomes for a brief space the Pawtucket River, and finally, at its mouth, the Seeconk River, making part of Providence harbor and one of the heads of Narragansett Bay. The shores of this river swarm with industrial operatives, for its valley is one of the greatest regions of textile mills in the world, and half the people of Rhode Island live in the chief city on its banks, Providence. Nine centuries ago the Norsemen are said to have sailed up into this region, which they called Vinland, but the first settlement was not made until 1636. The brave and pious Welshman, Roger Williams, the heretical Salem preacher whom the Puritans in 1635 banished from Massachusetts, went afoot through the forest to the Seeconk Plains along the lower Blackstone River, and halting there, lived with the Narragansetts, who were always his firm friends. But the wrathful Puritans would not long permit this, and ordered him to move on, so that in the spring of 1636, with five companions, he embarked in a log canoe and floated down the Seeconk River, his movements being watched by Indian groups upon the banks. He crossed over the stream finally, and landed on what has since been called "What Cheer Rock," on the eastern edge of Providence, thus named because, when Williams stepped ashore, some of the Indians saluted him with the pleasant greeting, "What cheer, Notop?" (friend)—words that are still carefully preserved throughout Providence and the State in the names of banks, buildings, and various associations. He regarded this as a decidedly good omen, and started a settlement, calling it Providence, "in grateful acknowledgment of God's merciful providence to him in his distress." His exalted piety was beyond question, and not only is the religious spirit in which the city was founded indicated by its name, but even in the titles of the streets are incorporated the cardinal virtues and the higher emotions, as in Joy Street, Faith Street, Happy Street, Hope Street, Friendship Street, Benefit Street, Benevolent Street, and many more. We are told that his early colonists adopted the Indian foods, such as parched corn, which the aborigines called "anhuminea," from which has come the name of hominy, and the famous Narragansett mixture of corn and beans, the "m'sickquatash," which has become succotash.

Roger Williams in Rhode Island, in 1639, became a Baptist, and the "Society of the First Baptist Church," which he founded that year in Providence, claims to be the oldest Baptist organization in America. But Williams seems to have been somewhat unstable, for he only remained with this church as pastor four years, then withdrawing, as he had grave doubts of the validity of his own baptism. It appears that when this church was started, a layman, Ezekiel Holliman, first baptized Williams, and then Williams baptized Holliman and the others. When he withdrew, it was not only from the pastoral relation, but he ceased worshipping with the brethren, and his conscientious scruples finally brought him to the conclusion that there is "no regularly constituted church on earth, nor any person authorized to administer any church ordinance, nor could there be until new apostles were sent by the great Head of the Church, for whose coming he was seeking." During many years thereafter he held his religious meetings in a grove. This venerable Baptist society which Roger Williams founded built a new church in 1726, and in its honor they had a "grand dinner." The elaborate banquet of those primitive days consisted of the whole congregation dining upon one sheep, one pound of butter, two loaves of bread, and a peck of peas, at a cost of twenty-seven shillings. Their white wooden church, with its surmounting steeple, overlooks the city from a slope rising above Providence River.

THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE.

Providence is beautifully situated on the hills at the head of Narragansett Bay, and its centre is a fine new Union Railway Station, completed in 1897. Near by is the massive City Hall, one of the chief public buildings in Rhode Island, a granite structure costing $1,500,000. In high relief upon its front is a medallion bust of the founder of the little State, Roger Williams, wearing the typical sugar-loaf hat. A feature of this impressive building is the magnificent stair-hall, lighted from above; and from the surmounting tower there is a wide view over the city and suburbs, and far down the bay towards the ocean. In front is the public square, with a stately Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument of blue Westerly granite, bearing the names of nearly seventeen hundred men of Rhode Island who fell in the Civil War, and guarded by well-executed bronze statues representing the different arms of the service. Facing it is a statue in heroic bronze of the Rhode Island General Burnside, who died in 1881. These works are artistic, but the priceless art gem in Providence is the exquisite little picture of "The Hours," painted on a sheet of ivory six by seven inches, in London, by the great portrait and miniature painter, Edward Greene Malbone, of Newport—the three Grecian nymphs, Eunomia, Dice and Irene, representing the Past, Present and Future. The President of the Royal Academy said of it, "I have seen a picture, painted by a young man of the name of Malbone, which no man in England could excel." This is his masterpiece, one of the most admired paintings in America, and is kept carefully in the AthenÆum (to which it was presented by a public subscription in 1853), a solid little granite house built on the hillside, not far from the Baptist church.

Farther up this hill are the campus and rows of buildings of Brown University, the great Rhode Island Baptist College with seven hundred students, founded in 1764, and bearing the name of one of the leading families of the wealthy manufacturing house of Brown & Ives. The campus is shaded with fine old elms, and some of the newer buildings are handsome and elaborate structures. Around this university, and all through the extensive suburbs, are the splendid homes of the capitalists and mill-owners of the State, who have made this hill, rising between the Providence and Seeconk Rivers, the most attractive residential section. Benefit Street, on the hill, is lined with the palaces of these textile millionaires. Providence is, in fact, a city of many hills, and its houses are mostly of wood. Extensive sections can be traversed without seeing a single brick or stone building. There is a large railway traffic, but only a small trade by sea, beyond bringing coal and cotton, though the city formerly enjoyed an extensive China trade. Like all the Rhode Island towns it has many mills and much wealth, and there are thirty or forty banks to take care of its money. Besides textiles, its mills make locomotives and Corliss steam-engines, silverware and jewelry, cigars, rifles and stoves, gimlet-pointed wood-screws, tortoise-shell work and cocoanut dippers, cottonseed and peanut oils, and many other things, not overlooking the famous "Pain-killer," for the ills of humanity, which is consumed by the hundred thousand gallons in all parts of the world. The "Pain-killer" factory was always one of the lions of the town, although now the new Rhode Island State House, finished in 1898, also commands great public admiration. This is a huge dome-surmounted building in Renaissance, constructed of Georgia marble and pink granite. But Providence, above everything else, reveres the memory of Roger Williams, who died in 1683, and is interred in the old North Burying Ground. On Abbott Street is carefully preserved, as a precious relic, a small old house with quaint peaked roof, built in the seventeenth century, and reverenced as the place where he held some of his religious meetings. His bronze statue ornaments the Roger Williams Park to which Broad Street leads, a beautiful tract of about one hundred acres, surrounding the quaint gambrel-roofed house in which lived his great-great-granddaughter, Betsy Williams, for many years, who gave this domain to the city in 1871, as her tribute to his memory. Here are refreshments served at "What Cheer Cottage." But the most treasured memorial of the founder is his original landing-place of "What Cheer Rock," where the Indians greeted him alongside the Seeconk River,—a pile of slaty rocks, enclosed by a railing, near the foot of Williams Street, down by the waterside.

PROVIDENCE TO WORCESTER.

We ascend the Seeconk River to Pawtucket, about five miles distant, a busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, noted as the place where Samuel Slater introduced the cotton manufacture into the United States in 1790, the original Slater mill still standing. The Pawtucket Falls of fifty feet give the valuable water-power which has made the place, and here are some of the greatest thread factories in the world. The town extends up into the villages of Central and Valley Falls, and the enormous power furnished by the river is drawn upon at different levels from several dams. All sorts of cotton textiles, muslins and calicoes are made, and the slopes running up from the valley, with the plateaus above, are covered with the operatives' houses. This town has the most attractive situation on the Blackstone River, which here changes its name to the Pawtucket, and finally to the Seeconk. Samuel Slater, who started it, was a native of Belper, in Derbyshire, England, having worked there for both Strutt and Arkwright, the fathers of the textile industries. Learning that American bounties had been offered for the introduction of Arkwright's patents in cotton-spinning, he crossed the ocean, landing at Newport in 1789. Here he heard that Moses Brown had attempted cotton-spinning by machinery in Rhode Island. He wrote Brown, telling what he could do, and received a reply in which Brown said his attempt had been unsuccessful, and added: "If thou canst do this thing, I invite thee to come to Rhode Island and have the credit and the profit of introducing cotton manufacture into America." Slater went to Pawtucket, and on December 21, 1790, he started three carding-machines and spinning-frames of seventy-two spindles. He afterwards became very prominent, building large mills at Pawtucket and elsewhere, and the impetus thus given the place made it the leading American manufacturing centre for a half-century. The Indian name of the falls was retained by the city.

The Blackstone River was named after the recluse Anglican clergyman, Rev. William Blackstone, who, as heretofore stated, first settled Boston about 1625. When he found, after a brief experience, that he could not get on with the Puritan colonists, who came in there too numerously, he sold out and "retired into the wilderness." He wandered for over forty miles into the forests, and during more than forty years made his home on the banks of this stream among the Indians, not far above Pawtucket Falls. He lived there in his hermit home at Study Hill among his books, the river rushing by, and the Providence and Worcester Branch of the New Haven Consolidated Railroad now cuts its route deeply through his hill, running among the dams, and in some cases over them, on its way up the busy valley of this very crooked river. Its waters, which do such good service for so many mills, become more and more polluted as they descend, so that its lower course is a malodorous and dark-colored stream. The river is about forty-five miles long, rising in the hills adjacent to Worcester and flowing in winding reaches towards the southeast, descending over five hundred feet to Providence. The mills, however, have grown vastly beyond its capacity as a water-power, so that auxiliary steam is now largely used. Numerous ponds and other feeders accumulate a vast amount of water for the Blackstone in Southern Massachusetts, and its lower course for nearly thirty miles is a succession of dams, canals and mills, making one of the greatest factory districts in existence. Over a half-million people work and live in this busy valley, the operatives being chiefly French Canadians, Swedes, and the various British races, the French preponderating in some of the towns. The Yankees long ago left, seeking better pay elsewhere, being replaced by a more contented people satisfied to work in mills. Most of the huge factories lining the river are owned by wealthy corporations having their head offices in Boston or Providence, and it is said that, the buildings being without signs or names, many of the operatives actually do not know who they work for. These mills are four and five stories high, often a thousand feet long, with hundreds of windows and ponderous stairway-towers.

Ascending the river, the factory settlements of Lonsdale, Ashton, Albion and Manville are passed, and we come to Woonsocket Hill, one of the highest in Rhode Island. Here the river goes around various bends admirably arranged for conducting its waters through the mills, and the town of Woonsocket is built where twenty thousand people make cotton and woollen cloths, the noted "Harris cassimere" having been long the chief manufacture at the Social Mills. To the northward, Woonsocket spreads into the towns of Blackstone and Waterford, also industrial hives; and finally, having followed the river up to its sources, the route leads to Worcester, the second city of Massachusetts, forty-five miles west of Boston, styled the "heart of the Commonwealth," with a population of over one hundred thousand people. Its chief newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, is noted as having actually started as a spy upon the royalists in the exciting times preceding the Revolutionary War, and is still a prosperous publication. It was at a Worcester banquet in 1776 that the "Sons of Freedom" drank the noted toast: "May the freedom and independence of America endure till the sun grows dim with age and this earth returns to chaos; perpetual itching without the benefit of scratching to the enemies of America!" Worcester is a great manufacturing city, but has almost lost its New England population from the steady Yankee migration westward, they being replaced in its numerous mills by French Canadians, Swedes and Irish, the latter predominating. It has a noble Soldiers' Monument, a splendid railway station, and the fine buildings of the Massachusetts Lunatic Asylum standing on the highest hill in the suburbs. Its new white marble City Hall, completed in 1898, is an imposing edifice. The huge Washburn & Moen Wire Works are on Salisbury Pond, in the outskirts. Among the interesting old dwellings is the Bancroft House, where the historian, George Bancroft, was born, in 1800, dying in 1891. The great attraction of Worcester is Lake Quinsigamond, on the eastern verge, a long, deep, narrow loch, stretching among the hills four miles away, with little gems of islands and villa-bordered shores. Scattered over the distant rim of enclosing hills are several typical Yankee villages, with their church-spires set against the horizon. Worcester had a chequered colonial career, the Indians repeatedly driving out the early settlers, until they built a fortress-like church on the Common, where each man attended on the Sabbath, carrying his musket. These resolute colonists were Puritans, bent on enforcing their own ideas, for when a few Scotch Presbyterians came in 1720, and built a church of that creed, it was declared a "cradle of heresy" and demolished. A considerable number of the French Acadians, exiled from Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century, came to Worcester, and their descendants are now among its prominent people.

New England, as is well known, was forced to adopt manufacturing, because the inhabitants could not extract a living from the soil. It is difficult to say where is the most sterile region, but in Massachusetts it seems to be generally agreed that the town of Ware, on the Ware River, northwest of Worcester, is hard to beat in this respect. It is a picturesquely located mill-village, with a soil that is stony and sterile. The original grant of the land was made to soldiers as a reward for bravery in King Philip's War. They thankfully accepted the gift and went there, but after examination left, and sold all their domain at the rate of about two cents an acre. President Dwight, of Yale College, rode through the town, but never wanted to see it again, saying regretfully, in describing the land: "It is like self-righteousness; the more a man has of it, the poorer he is." Someone wrote a poem describing the creation of the place, of which this a specimen stanza:

"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 also a 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. Upon Taunton 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, about half 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 Phoenicians. 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":

Thus he answers:

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 "King Philip'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 be given 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 attacked him, 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, directing it 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-enemy of 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-six feet, 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. The island 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 defense against 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." After Blackstone 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, and went 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 his Alciphron, 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:

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 the Newport Mercury that "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 the renaissance. 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 and expensive 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 does not 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 his Skeleton 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 most famous 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 hundred and 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. Its memory 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 General Philip 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 often tortuous 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 small harbor 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 miles broad 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 in the 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 told by 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:

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, and afterwards 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:

Nantucket is southeast of Martha's Vineyard and south of Cape Cod, the sea between them being known as Nantucket Sound. The island is an irregular spherical triangle, sixteen miles long and three to four miles wide, the outer coast bent around like a bow, as the Gulf Stream currents wash the shores. To the south and east are the great Nantucket Shoals, dangerous to the navigator, but acting as a breakwater, preventing the island being entirely washed away by the sea, which makes constant encroachments. The harbor of Nantucket town presents sandy beaches and bluff shores, rising with some boldness from the water, the sand dunes stretching away in regular lines behind them. The town is snugly located at the bottom of a deep and secure harbor, having a breakwater outside, and its chief daily event is the arrival of the steamboat from the mainland, from which it is frequently cut off for days together by winter ice and stormy weather. There are various ancient and dilapidated wharves, fronting a collection of strange-looking old gabled houses, many having raised platforms on top of the peaked roofs, where the former inhabitants used to go up to watch for vessels. It is a healthy place, with modern hotels, tree-lined, pleasant streets, many gardens, and a magnificent climate, the winter rigors corrected by the closeness of the Gulf Stream. The surrounding country, outside the town, is almost everywhere a flat prairie-land, with the one horizon all around, of the distant blue sea. A narrow-gauge railroad leads over to the southeastern coast at Siasconset, the quaint original gem of the island, familiarly called 'Sconset, a curious little village of fishermen's huts, existing now about the same as in the primitive days. Its outlook is over the South Shoals, but not a sail is to be seen, for these shoals are the grave of every vessel getting upon them. It is a dismal reminder of vanished maritime prestige to see about the Nantucket coasts the gaunt ribs of the old hulks, half sunken in the sands where they have been cast ashore, as year by year they gradually break up in the great storms and slowly disappear. In the Boston Daily Advertiser a poet plaintively mourns the fate of these marine skeletons seen "at midnight off the coast":

"Half-tombed in drifting sands upon the shore

Are ye, and heedless lashed by angry seas,

As through your blackened ribs the breeze

Exultant plays, and crested breakers roar,

And screeching sea-gulls round thee, prostrate, soar.

Wert thou allured by sighs of moaning trees,

As sirens sought to charm with songs like these

Ulysses and his brave companions o'er

To reefs deep hidden, silent, save in storm?

The rolling thunder of the sullen surge,

The mournful sobbing of the gathering gale,

Plain answer make, as round the spectre form

Of these gaunt skeletons they ceaseless scourge

The giant's battered coat of oaken mail!"