CHAPTER XI.

THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

"O warning lights, burn bright and clear, Hither the storm comes! Leagues away It moans and thunders low and drear-- Burn 'til the break of day!"

CELIA THAXTER.

On the 15th of July, 1605, as the sun was declining in the west, a little bark of fifteen tons, manned by Frenchmen, was standing along the coast of New England, in quest of a situation to begin a settlement. The principal personage on board was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a noble gentleman, and an officer of the household of Henry IV. His commission of lieutenant-general bore date at Fontainebleau in the year 1603. He was empowered by it to colonize Acadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth parallel, in virtue of the discoveries of the Tuscan, Verazzani. It recited, in quaint old French, that Du Guast had already made several voyages to these and other neighboring countries, of which he had knowledge and experience.[97] The commission likewise conferred authority to make war or peace with the peoples inhabiting the country of Acadia, with sole power to traffic in skins and furs for ten years in the Bay of St. Clair and the river of Canada. The broad autograph of Henry and the great seal of yellow wax are appended to the parchment.

On board the bark, besides the leader of the expedition, were a few gentlemen adventurers and twenty sailors. The name of De Monts's pilot was Champdoré.[98] The geographer of the expedition was Samuel Champlain. Accompanying De Monts, as guides and interpreters, were two natives, Panounias and his wife.

Since the 15th of June De Monts had been minutely examining the New England coast from St. Croix, where he had wintered, to near the forty-third parallel, in the hope of finding "a place more suitable for habitation and of a milder temperature" than the inhospitable region he had first pitched upon. The greater part of De Monts's colony remained at the Isle of St. Croix.

After leaving the mouth of the Saco, and looking in at the entrance of Kennebunk River, De Monts, still keeping as close in as was prudent with the land, which Champlain describes as flat and sandy (_platte et sabloneuse_), found himself on that July afternoon in presence of three striking landmarks.[99] Cape Ann bore south, a quarter east, six leagues distant. To the west was a deep bay into which, the savages afterward told him, a river emptied; and in the offing they perceived three or four islands of fair elevation. These last, historians agree, were the Isles of Shoals.

Notwithstanding the isles are not identified on either of Champlain's maps (1612 and 1632), it is no longer doubtful that De Monts made them out nine years before Smith saw them, though the latter has first given them on a map a locality and a name. But I take Pring to have been the first to mention them, when, two years before De Monts, he sighted a multitude of small islands in about forty-three degrees, and anchored under the shelter of the greatest.[100] Gosnold must have seen the isles, but thought them hardly worth entering in his log. Prince Charles, afterward Charles I., graciously confirmed the name Smith had, in 1614, given the isles. Yet he has little or no title to be considered their discoverer, and has left no evidence that he ever landed upon them. The French, Smith relates, had two ships forty leagues to the westward (of Monhegan) that had made great trade while he was on the coast. Beyond all these, the Basque shallop seen in these waters by Gosnold remains a nut for historians to crack.

De Poutrincourt's expedition of 1606 into Massachusetts Bay was the sequel to that of 1605. De Monts, a heretic, through the jealousy of rivals and Jesuit intrigue, was soon deprived of the privileges with which he had been endowed by his fickle monarch. In this his experience was not unlike that of Gorges and the Council of Plymouth. De Monts was really the head of a commercial company, organized by Chauvin, governor of Dieppe.[101] The detail of his voyage along the New England coast in 1605 is the first intelligible record to be found. Shall we not, at last, have to do the tardy justice of acknowledging him the chief and guiding spirit of the expedition, now universally referred to as Champlain's? The latter has become the prominent figure, while Du Guast is not even mentioned in some of our so-called school histories.

Christopher Levett is the first Englishman to give an account of the isles worthy of the name. Its brevity may be advantageously contrasted with later descriptions, though the natural features remain, in many respects, the same. He says, writing seven years after Captain Smith:

"The first place I set my foot upon in New England was the Isle of Shoals, being islands in the sea about two leagues from the main.

"Upon these islands I neither could see one good timber-tree nor so much good ground as to make a garden.

"The place is found to be a good fishing-place for six ships, but more can not well be there, for want of convenient stage room, as this year's experience hath proved."

The year 1623 is the earliest date I have seen of the islands being occupied as a fishing station. Monhegan was earlier known, and more frequented by English vessels for this purpose. A word or two about the fishery of those days.

Cabot notices the cod under the name of "bacalo;" Jean Alfonse speaks of the "bacaillos;" Captain Uring calls it "baccalew;" the Indian name was "tamwock." Smith says the fish on our coast were much better than those taken at Newfoundland, which he styles "poor John," a nickname ever since current up the Mediterranean. One of his ships, in 1614, loaded with dry fish for Spain, where the cargo brought "forty ryalls," or five dollars, the quintal. Fifteen or eighteen men, by his relation, took with the hook alone sixty thousand fish in a month.

Charlevoix believed this fish could turn itself inside out, like a pocket. He says they found bits of iron and glass, and even pieces of broken pots, in the stomachs of fish caught on the Banks of Newfoundland; and adds that some people believed they could digest them. Josselyn says the fishermen used to tan their sails and nets with hemlock-bark to preserve them.

Allusion has been made to the number of fishermen frequenting the Grand Banks in 1578. Without the evidence few would be willing to believe the fishery had attained such proportions at that early day, on a coast we have been accustomed to regard as almost unknown. It certainly goes very far toward dispelling illusions respecting the knowledge that was had of our own shores by those adventurous "toilers of the sea."

In Captain Richard Whitbourne's relation of his voyages and observations in Newfoundland (Purchas, vol. iv., p. 1882), he says:

"More than four hundred sail of fishing ships were annually sent to the Grand Banks by the French and Portuguese, making two voyages a year, fishing winter and summer.

"In the year 1615, when I was at Newfoundland," he adds, "there were then on that coast of your Majestie's subjects two hundred and fiftie saile of ships, great and small. The burthens and tonnage of them all, one with another, so neere as I could take notice, allowing every ship to be at least three-score tun (for as some of them contained lesse, so many of them held more), amounting to more than 15,000 tunnes. Now, for every three-score tun burthen, according to the usual manning of ships in those voyages, agreeing with the note I then tooke, there are to be set doune twentie men and boyes; by which computation in these two hundred and fiftie saile there were no lesse than five thousand persons."

De Poutrincourt, writing to Paris in 1618 from Port Royal, estimates the fishery to be then worth a "_million d'or_" annually to France. He declares he would not exchange Canada for Peru if it were once seriously settled; and foreshadows the designs of the English on New France as soon as they should have made themselves strong in Virginia. By a royal edict of 1669 the French fishermen of New France were allowed to land their fish in all the ports of the mother country, except Havre, free of duty.

The advantages possessed by the Isles of Shoals were deep water, with a reasonably secure haven for ships, free from molestation by the savages, while the crews were engaged in taking and curing their fish. To this ought to be added their nearness to the best fishing grounds. All along shore the islands were, as a rule, earlier frequented than the main-land. Levett says (and he thought it a fatal objection) the ships that fished at Cape Ann in 1623 had to send their boats _twenty miles_ to take their fish, and the masters were in great fear of not making their voyages. "I fear there hath been too fair a gloss set upon Cape Ann," writes Levett.

La Hontan, writing from Quebec in 1683, says of the cod-fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland: "You can scarce imagine what quantities of cod-fish were catch'd there by our seamen in the space of a quarter of an hour; for though we had thirty-two fathom water, yet the hook was no sooner at the bottom than the fish was catch'd; so that they had nothing to do but to throw in and take up without interruption. But, after all, such is the misfortune of this fishery that it does not succeed but upon certain banks, which are commonly past over without stopping. However, as we were plentifully entertain'd at the cost of these fishes, so such of 'em as continued in the sea made sufficient reprisals on the corpse of a captain and of several soldiers who died of the scurvy, and were thrown overboard three or four days after."

It is worthy of note that the _Trial_, the first vessel built in Boston, took a lading of fish to Bilboa, in 1643, that were sold to good profit. From thence she took freight for Malaga, and brought home wine, oil, fruit, iron, etc. She was then sent to trade with La Tour and Acadia. The _Trial_ was of about a hundred and sixty tons burden.[102] In the year 1700 there were two hundred New England vessels loaded in Acadia with fish. The cargoes were taken to Boston, and there distributed to different parts of the world.

After the isles became permanently inhabited the fishery continued prosperous, and by 1730 three or four vessels were annually loaded for Bilboa. Before the Revolution seven or eight schooners hailed from the islands, but from this period the fishery dates its decay. In 1800 only shore-fishing was pursued, which employed thirteen whale-boats similar to those now in use, and the best of all boats in a sea.

Besides the fish itself, the liver of the cod, as is well known, is saved for the oil it contains. Hake sounds are of greater value than the fish, being extensively used in the manufacture of isinglass. The efficacy of the cod's liver was early known. "Their livers and sounds eaten," says an old writer, "is a good medicine for to restore them that have melted their grease."

The interest with which the obscure lives of these islanders and the cluster of inhospitable rocks on which they dwell are invested is remarkable enough. It may be in a measure owing to the irregular intercourse formerly held with the main-land, and to the consequently limited knowledge of them. And it is heightened in no small degree by the mystery of a residence in the midst of the sea, where all ties with the adjacent continent would seem to be dissevered. But if the open Polar Sea be a fact and not a myth, the continents are themselves but larger islands with more expanded horizons.

I happened one day to be in Portsmouth. _Entre nous_, if you want to be esteemed there you must say "Porchmouth," as even the lettered of that ilk do. The morning air had been freshened and sweetened by copious showers; little pools stood in the streets, and every blade of grass was tipped with a crystal rain-drop. Old Probabilities had foretold clearing weather. Every thing seemed propitious, except that it continued to rain "pitchforks," with the tines downward, and that the wind was steadily working round to the eastward. As the struggle between foul and fair seemed at length to incline to the latter, I went down to the wharf to find the packet for the Shoals had already unmoored, and was standing across the river. Unloosing a dory that was lying conveniently near, I boarded the _Marie_ as she came about, thus putting myself _en rapport_ with the Shoals by means of this little floating bridge, or island, as you may please to have it.

It being the first day of summer, the passengers were so few as to be easily taken in at a glance. They were chiefly workmen employed on the great hotel at Star Island, or, as they chose to style themselves, convicts going into servitude on a desert rock: so cheaply did they hold the attractions of the isles. Perhaps one or two of the passengers had no more business at the islands than myself.

It is not easy to have a more delightful sail than down the Piscataqua, or to find a more beautiful stream when its banks are clothed in green. It has often been described, and may again be, without fear of exhausting its capabilities. The movement of shipping to and fro; the shifting of objects as you glide by them, together with the historic renown with which its shores are incrusted, fill the eye while exciting the imagination. A few miles above Portsmouth the river expands into a broad basin, which receives the volume of tide, and then pours it into the sea between narrow banks.

We gained the narrows of the river with Peirce's Island on the right and Seavey's on the left, each crowned with grass-grown batteries thrown up in the Revolution to defend the pass. Here the stream is not a good rifle-shot in breadth, and moves with increased velocity within the contracted space, the swirl and eddying of the current resembling the boiling of a huge caldron. Its surface is ringed with miniature whirlpools, and at flood-tide the mid-channel seems lifted above the level of the river, as I have seen the mighty volume of the Missouri during its annual rise. It is not strange the place should have received the anathemas of mariners from immemorial time, or boast a name so unconventional withal as Pull-and-be-d--d Point.

Clearing the narrows, we left behind us the city steeples, the big ship-houses, lazy war ships, and tall chimneys on Kittery side. The wind being light, the skipper got up a stay-sail from the fore-hatch. As it was bent to the halyards, a bottle labeled "ginger ale," but smelling uncommonly like schnapps, rolled out of its folds. We were now slowly forging past Newcastle, or Great Island. The sun came out gloriously, lighting up the spire of the little church at Kittery Point and the masts of vessels lying at anchor in the roads.

Glancing astern, I remarked four wherries coming down at a great pace with the ebb. They kept directly abreast of each other, as if moved by a single oarsman, while the rowers talked and laughed as they might have done on the pavement ashore. I could see by the crates piled in the stern of each boat that they were lobstermen, going outside to look after their traps. As they went by they seemed so many huge water-spiders skimming the surface of the river.

Fort Constitution, with its dismantled walls and frowning port-holes, is now passed, and Whale's Back, with twin light-houses, shows its ledges above water. We open the mouth of the river with Odiorne's Point on the starboard and Gerrish's Island on the port bow, the swell of ocean lifting our little bark, and making her courtesy to the great deep.

The islands had appeared in view when we were off Newcastle, the hotel on Star Island, where it loomed like some gray sea-fortress, being the most conspicuous object. As we ran off the shore, the "cape of the main-land" and the "_cul-de-sac_" of Champlain came out, and fixed themselves where he had seen them. One by one the islands emerged from the dark mass that involved the whole, and became individuals. The wind dying away off Duck Island, I was fain to take an oar in the whale-boat towing astern. We rowed along under Appledore into the little haven between that island and Star, with no sound but the dip of our oars to break the stillness, and beached our boat as the evening shadows were deepening over a stormy sea.

There had been a striking sunset. Great banks of clouds were massed above the western horizon, showing rifts of molten gold where the sun burst through, which the sea, in its turn, reflected. As I looked over toward White Island, the lamps were lighted in the tower, turning their rays hither and thither over a blackness that recalled Poe's sensuous imagery of lamp-light gloating over purple velvet. The weather-wise predicted a north-easter, and I went to bed with the old sea "moaning all round about the island."

I passed my first night, and a rude one it was, on Star Island. When I arose in the morning and looked out I fancied myself at sea, as indeed I was. The ocean was on every side, the plash of the waters being the last sound heard at night and the first on waking. I saw the sun rise over Smutty Nose through the same storm-clouds in which it had set at evening. I am an early riser, but even before I was astir a wherry crossed the little harbor my window overlooked.

The islands lie in two States, and are seven in number. Duck Island, the most dangerous of the group; Appledore, sometimes called Hog Island; Smutty Nose, or Haley's, and Cedar, belong to Maine; Star, White, and Londoner's, or Lounging Island, are in New Hampshire. Appledore is the largest, and Cedar the smallest. In one instance I have known Star called Staten Island, though it was formerly better known as Gosport, the name of its fishing village, whose records go back to 1731. Counting Malaga, a little islet attached to Smutty Nose by a breakwater, and there are eight islands in the cluster. They are nine miles south-east of the entrance of the Piscataqua and twenty-one north-east from Newburyport Light. The harbor, originally formed by Appledore, Star, and Haley's Islands, was made more secure by a sea-wall, now much out of repair, from Smutty Nose to Cedar Island. The roadstead is open to the south-west, and is indifferently sheltered at best. Between Cedar and Star is a narrow passage used by small craft, through which the tide runs as in a sluice-way. The group is environed with several dangerous sunken rocks. Square Rock is to the westward of Londoner's; White Island Ledge south-west of that isle; Anderson's Ledge is south-east of Star Island; and Cedar Island Ledge south of Smutty Nose.[103]

The name of the Isles of Shoals is first mentioned by Christopher Levett in his narrative of 1623. The mariners of his day must have known of the description and the map of Smith, but they seem to have little affected the name he gave the islands. It would not be unreasonable to infer that the group was known by its present name even before it was seen by Smith, and that his claims were of little weight with those matter-of-fact fishermen. Some writers have made a difficulty of the meaning of the name, attributing it to the shoals, or schools, of fish seen there as everywhere along the coast at certain seasons of the year. East of the islands, toward the open sea, there is laid down on old charts of the Province an extensive shoal called Jeffrey's Ledge, named perhaps for one of the first inhabitants of the isles, and extending in the direction of the coast from the latitude of Cape Porpoise to the southward of the Shoals. On either side of this shallow, which is not of great breadth, are soundings in seventy fathoms, while on the ledge the lead brings up coarse sand in thirty, thirty-five, and forty-five fathoms. The presence of this reef tends to strengthen the theory that these islands, as well as the remarkable system of Casco Bay, once formed part of the main-land. The earlier navigators who approached the coast, cautiously feeling their way with the lead, soon after passing over this shoal came in sight of the islands, which, it is believed, served to mark its presence. Jeffrey's Ledge has been a fishing-ground of much resort for the islanders since its first discovery.[104]

To whatever cause science may attribute the origin of the isles, I was struck, at first sight, with their resemblance to the bald peaks of a submerged volcano thrust upward out of the waters, the little harbor being its crater. The remarkable fissures traversing the crust of the several members of the group, in some cases nearly parallel with the shores, strengthens the impression. In winter, or during violent storms, the savagery of these rocks, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic, and surrounded by an almost perpetual surf, is overwhelming. You can with difficulty believe the island on which you stand is not reeling beneath your feet.

After exploring the shore and seeing with his own eyes the deep gashes in its mailed garment, the basins hollowed out of granite and flint, and the utter wantonness in which the sea has pitched about the fragments it has wrested from the solid rock, the futility of words in which to express this confusion comes home to the spectator. Mr. Hawthorne's idea greatly resembles the Indian legend of the origin of Nantucket. "As much as any thing else," he says, "it seems as if some of the massive materials of the world remained superfluous after the Creator had finished, and were carelessly thrown down here, where the millionth part of them emerge from the sea, and in the course of thousands of years have become partially bestrewn with a little soil."

The old navigators stigmatized Labrador as the place to which Cain was banished, no vegetation being produced among the rocks but thorns and moss. What a subject White Island would make for a painting of the Deluge!

A Finlander with whom I parleyed told me his country could show ruder places than these isles, and that the winters there were longer and colder. Parson Tucke used to say the winters at the Shoals were "a thin under-waistcoat, warmer" than on the opposite main-land. Doubtless the Orkneys or Hebrides equal these islands in desolateness and wildness of aspect, but they could scarce surpass them.

The islands are so alike in their natural features that a general description of one will apply to the rest of the cluster; and hence the first explored, so far as its crags, sea-caverns, and galleries are in question, is apt to make the strongest impression. But after closer acquaintance each of the seven is found to possess attractions, peculiarities even, of its own. They grow upon you and charm away your better judgment, until you find sermons, or what is better, in stones, and good health everywhere. The change comes over you imperceptibly, and you are metamorphosed for the time into a full-fledged "Shoaler," ready to climb a precipice or handle an oar with any native--I was about to say of the soil--but that would be quite too strong a figure for the Shoals.

The little church on Star Island is usually first visited. When I was before here, it was a strikingly picturesque object, surmounting the islands, and visible in clear weather twenty miles at sea. It is now dwarfed by the hotel, and is perhaps even no longer a sea-mark for the fishermen. Such quaint little turrets have I seen in old Dutch prints. The massive walls are of rough granite from the abundance of the isle. Its roof and tower are of wood, and, being here, what else could it have but a fish for its weather-vane? The bell was used, while I was there, to call the workmen to their daily labor; but its tones were always mournful, and vibrated with strange dissonance across the sea.

The whitewash the interior walls had received was plentifully bespattered upon the wooden benches. In a deeply recessed window one of the tiny sea-birds that frequent the islands was beating the panes with its wings. I gave the little fellow his liberty, but he did not stay for thanks. The church is not more than ten paces in length by six in breadth, yet was sufficient, no doubt, for all the church-goers of the seven islands. Its foundations are upon a rock, and it is altogether a queer thing in an odd place.

After the desertion of Appledore, a meeting-house was erected on Star Island, twenty-eight by forty-eight feet, with a bell. Mr. Moody, of Salisbury, Massachusetts, was, in 1706, called to be the first minister there. In 1730 he was succeeded by Rev. John Tucke.

Mather relates many anecdotes of Rev. John Brock, one of the early ministers at the islands, in illustration of the efficacy of prayer. The child of one Arnold, he says, lay sick, so nearly dead that those present believed it had really expired; "but Mr. Brock, perceiving some life in it, goes to prayer, and in his prayer uses this expression, 'Lord, wilt thou not grant some sign before we leave prayer that thou wilt spare and heal this child? We can not leave thee 'til we have it.' The child sneez'd immediately."

Going round the corner of the church, I came upon a coast pilot, peering through his glass for the smoke of a steamer, cable-freighted, that had been momentarily expected from Halifax for a week. His trim little boat lay in the harbor below us at her moorings. It was, he said, a favorite station from which to intercept inward-bound vessels. The pilot told me, with a quiet chuckle, of a coaster, manned by raw Irish hands, that had attempted in broad day to run into the harbor over the breakwater from Haley's to Cedar island. They did not get in, he said; but it being a full tide and smooth sea, the mole only knocked off the cut-water of their craft.

Behind the meeting-house is the little school-house, in as dire confusion when I saw it as any bad boy could have wished. The windows were shattered, chairs and benches overturned, and a section of rusty stove-pipe hung from the ceiling, while the fragment of a wall map, pressed into service as a window-curtain, was being scanned through the dingy glass by an urchin with a turn for geography.

East of the church is a row of cottages, the remnant of the fishing village, serving to show what it was like before modern innovations had swept the moiety of ancient Gosport from the face of the island. Each had a bird-house on the peak of its gable. There was the semblance of regularity in the arrangement of these cottages, the school-house leading the van; but they were nearly or quite all unpainted, these homely abodes of a rude people.

On looking around, you perceived walled inclosures, some of them containing a little earth patched with green grass, but all thickly studded with boulders. Is it possible, you ask, that such a waste should ever be the cause of heart-burnings, or know the name of bond, mortgage, or warranty? Little did these impoverished islanders dream the day would come when their sterile rocks would be eagerly sought after by the fortunate possessors of abundance.

Star Island formerly afforded pasturage for a few sheep and cows. There is a record of a woman who died at Gosport in 1795, aged ninety. She kept two cows, fed in winter on hay cut by her in summer with a knife among the rocks. The cows were taken from her by the British in 1775, and killed, to the great grief of old Mrs. Pusley. Formerly there was more vegetation here, but at odd times the poor people have gathered and burned for fuel fully half the turf on the island. It is written in the book of records that the soil of the islands is gradually decreasing, and that a time would come when the dead must be buried in the sea or on the main-land.

From the year 1775 until 1820, the few inhabitants who remained on the islands lived in a deplorable condition of ignorance and vice. Some of them had lost their ages for want of a record. Each family was a law to itself. The town organization was abandoned. Even the marriage relation was forgotten, and the restraints and usages of civilized life set at naught. Some of the more debased, about 1790, pulled down and burned the old meeting-house, which had been a prominent landmark for seamen; but, says the record, "the special judgments of Heaven seem to have followed this piece of wickedness to those immediately concerned in it." The parsonage-house might have fared as ill, had it not been floated away to Old York by Mr. Tucke's son-in-law.

Rev. Jedediah Morse has entered in the record two marriages solemnized by him during the time he was on the islands, with the following remarks: "The two couples above mentioned had been published eight or ten years ago (but not married), and cohabited together since, and had each a number of children. ---- had been formerly married to another woman; she had left him, and cohabited with her uncle, by whom she has a number of children. No regular divorce had been obtained. Considering the peculiar deranged state of the people on these islands, and the ignorance of the parties, it was thought expedient, in order as far as possible to prevent future sin, to marry them."[106]

It is perhaps as well the visitor should be his own guide about the islands, leaving it to chance to direct his footsteps. After an inspection of the more prominent objects, such as may be taken in at a glance from the little church, I wandered at will, encountering at every few steps some new surprise. Some one says, if we seek for pleasure it is pretty sure to elude our pursuit, coming, oftener to us unawares, and the more unexpected the higher the gratification. It was in some such mood I stumbled, to speak literally, on the old burial-place of the islands. I am aware that one does not, as a rule, seek enjoyment in a grave-yard; but I have ever found an unflagging interest in deciphering the tablets of a buried city or hamlet. These stones may be sententious or loquacious, pompous or humble, and sometimes grimly merry.

Our German friends call the church-yard "God's Field." Here are no inscriptions, except on the horizontal slabs of Tucke and Stephens. There is no difference between the rough stones protruding from the ground and the fragments strewn broadcast about the little house-lots. So far as this inclosure is concerned, the annals of the hamlet are as a closed book. The instinct which bids you forbear treading on a grave is at fault here. It requires sharp eyes and a close scrutiny to discover that some effort has been made to distinguish this handful of graves by head and foot stones; that some are of greater and some of lesser length; or that the little hollows and hillocks have their secret meaning.

The two shepherds lie at the head of their little fold, in vaults composed of the rude masses found ready at hand. For fear their inscriptions might one day be effaced, I transcribed them:

In Memory of THE REV. JOSIAH STEPHENS, A faithful Instructor of Youth, and pious Minister of Jesus Christ. Supported on this Island by the Society for Propagating the Gospel, who died July 2, 1804. Aged 64 years.

* * * * *

Likewise of MRS. SUSANNAH STEPHENS, his beloved Wife, who died Dec. 7, 1810. Aged 54 years.

* * * * *

Underneath are the Remains of THE REV. JOHN TUCKE, A.M. He graduated at Harvard College, A.D. 1723, Was ordained here July 26, 1732, And died Aug. 12, 1773. Æt. 72.

He was affable and polite in his manner, Amiable in his disposition, Of great piety and integrity, given to hospitality, Diligent and faithful in his pastoral office. Well learned in History and Geography, as well as General Science, And a careful Physician both to the bodies and the souls of his People. Erected 1800. In Memory of the Just.

For two-score years this pious man labored in his stony vineyard. His parishioners agreed to give him a quintal per man of winter fish--their best. They covenanted to carry his wood from the landing home for him. With this he was content. He was their minister, teacher, physician, and even kept the accounts of a little store in a scrupulously exact way. I have been poring over his old-time chirography, clear-cut and beautiful as copper-plate. There are the good old English names of Ruth, Nabby, and Judy, of Betty, Patsey, and Love. We get a glimpse of their household economy in the porringers, pewter lamps, and pint-pots; the horn combs, thread, tape, and endless rows of pins for women-folk; the knitting-needles that clicked by the fireside in long winter nights, while the lads were away on Jeffrey's Ledge.

From here I wended my way to Smith's monument, erected in 1864, a triangular shaft of marble, rising eight or ten feet above a craggy rock. It is placed on a pedestal of rough stone, and protected by a railing from vandal hands. Its situation on one of the highest eminences of Star Island has exposed the inscription to the weather, until it is become difficult to decipher. The three sides of the pillar are occupied by a lengthy eulogium on this hero of many adventures,

"Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach."

Like Temple Bar of old, the monument is crowned with heads--those of the three Moslems slain by Smith, and seen on his scutcheon, as given by Stow, where they are also quartered. I know of no other instance of decapitated heads being set up in New England since King Philip's was struck off and stuck on a pike at Plymouth, in 1676. Two of the heads had fallen down, and the third seemed inclined to follow. Then the monument will be as headless as the doughty captain's tombstone in the pavement of St. Sepulchre's, worn smooth by many feet. In brief, the three Turks' heads stick no better than the name given by Smith to the islands off Cape Ann--after they had been named by De Monts.

Smith says he had six or seven charts or maps of the coast so unlike each other as to do him no more good than waste paper. He gives credit to Gosnold and Weymouth for their relations.

A few rods south-east of the old burying-ground is a sheltered nook, in which are three little graves, wholly concealed by dwarf willows and wild rose-bushes. They are tenanted by three children--"Jessie," two years; "Millie," four years; and "Mittie," seven years old--the daughters of Rev. George Beebe, some time missionary to these isles. Under the name of the little one last named are these touching, tearful words: "I don't want to die, but I'll do just as Jesus wants me to." A gentle hand has formed this retreat, and protected it with a wooden fence. While I stood there a song-bird perched above the entrance and poured forth his matin lay. There is a third burial-place on the harbor side, but it lacks interest.

Another historic spot is the ruined fort, on the west point of the island, overlooking the entrance to the roadstead. Its contour may be traced, and a little of the embankment of one face remains. The well was filled to the curb with water. It once mounted nine four-pounder cannon, but at the beginning of the Revolution was dismantled, and the guns taken to Newburyport. I suppose the inhabitants for a long time to have neglected precautions for defense, as Colonel Romer, in his report to the Lords of Trade, about 1699, makes no mention of any fortification here. One of its terrible four-pounders would not now make a mouthful for our sea-coast ordnance.

Continuing my walk by the shore, I came to the cavern popularly known as Betty Moody's Hole. It is formed by the lodgment of masses of rock, so as to cover one of the gulches common to the isle. Here, says tradition, Betty concealed herself, with her two children, while the Indians were ravaging the isles and carrying many females into captivity. The story goes that the children, becoming frightened in the cavern, began to cry, whereat their inhuman mother, in an excess of fear, strangled them both; others say she was drowned here. The affair is said to have happened during Philip's War. I do not find it mentioned by either Mather or Hubbard.[107] At times during the fishing season there was hardly a man left upon the islands, a circumstance well known to the Indians.

A memoir extracted from the French archives gives a picture of the Isles in 1702, when an attack appears to have been meditated. "The Isles de Chooles are about three leagues from Peskatoué to the south-south-east from the embouchure of the river, where a great quantity of fish are taken. These are three isles in the form of a tripod, and at about a musket-shot one from the other." * * * "There are at these three islands about sixty fishing shallops, manned each by four men. Besides these are the masters of the fishing stages, and, as they are assisted by the women in taking care of the fish, there may be in all about two hundred and eighty men; but it is necessary to observe that from Monday to Saturday there are hardly any left on shore, all being at sea on the fishing-grounds."

Taking note of the ragged fissures, which tradition ascribes to the day of the Crucifixion, I clambered down one of the rocky gorges from which the softer formation has been eaten out by the consuming appetite of the waves. Sometimes the descent was made easy by irregular steps of trap-rock, and again a flying leap was necessary from stone to stone. The perpendicular walls of the gorge rose near fifty feet at its outlet, at the shore. It was a relief to emerge from the dripping sides and pent-up space into the open air. The Flume, on Star Island, is a fine specimen of the intrusion of igneous rock among the harder formation.

If you would know what the sea can do, go down one of these gulches to the water's edge and be satisfied. I could not find a round pebble among the débris of shattered rock that lay tumbled about; only fractured pieces of irregular shapes. Those rocks submerged by the tide were blackened as if by fire, and shagged with weed. Overhead the precipitous cliffs caught the sun's rays on countless glittering points, the mica with which they are so plentifully bespangled dazzling the eye with its brilliancy. Elsewhere they were flint, of which there was more than enough to have furnished all Europe in the Thirty Years' War, or else granite. Looking up from among the _abattis_ which girds the isle about, you are confronted by masses of overhanging rocks that threaten to detach themselves from the cliff and bury you in their ruins.

It is not for the timid to attempt a ramble among the rocks on the Atlantic side at low tide. He should be sure-footed and supple-jointed who undertakes it, with an eye to estimate the exact distance where the incoming surf-wave is to break. The illusions produced in the mind by the great waves that roll past are not the least striking sensations experienced. The speed with which they press in, and the noise accompanying their passage through the gullies and rents of the shore, contribute to make them seem much larger than they really are. It was only by continually watching the waves and measuring their farthest reach that I was able to await one of these curling monsters with composure; and even then I could not avoid looking suddenly round on hearing the rush of a breaker behind me; and ever and anon one of greater volume destroyed all confidence by bursting far above the boundaries the mind had assigned for its utmost limits.

Nothing struck me more than the idea of such mighty forces going to pure waste. A lifting power the Syracusan never dreamed of literally throwing itself away! An engine sufficient to turn all the machinery in Christendom lying idle at our very doors. What might not be accomplished if Old Neptune would put his shoulder to the wheel, instead of making all this magnificent but useless pother!

I noticed that the waves, after churning themselves into foam, assumed emerald tints, and caught a momentary gleam of sapphire, melting into amethyst, during the rapid changes from the bluish-green of solid water to its greatest state of disintegration. The same change of color has been observed in the Hebrides, and elsewhere.

The place that held for me more of fascination and sublimity than others was the bluff that looks out upon the vast ocean. I was often there. The swell of the Atlantic is not like the long regular roll of the Pacific, but it beats with steady rhythm. The grandest effects are produced after a heavy north-east blow, when the waves assume the larger and more flattened form known as the ground-swell. I was fortunate enough to stand on the cliff after three or four days of "easterly weather" had produced this effect. Such billows as poured with solid impact on the rocks, leaping twenty feet in the air, or heaped themselves in fountains of boiling foam around its base, give a competent idea of resistless power! The shock and recoil seemed to shake the foundations of the island.

Upon a shelf or platform of this cliff a young lady-teacher lost her life in September, 1848. Since then the rock on which she was seated has been called "Miss Underhill's Chair." Other accidents have occurred on the same spot, insufficient, it would seem, to prevent the foolhardy from risking their lives for a seat in this fatal chair.

There are circumstances that cast a melancholy interest around the fate of Miss Underhill. In early life she had been betrothed, and the banns, as was then the custom, had been published in the village church. Her father, a stern old Quaker, opposed the match, threatening to tear down the marriage intention rather than see his daughter wed with one of another sect. Whether from this or other cause, the suitor ceased his attentions, and not long after took another wife in the same village.

The disappointment was believed to have made a deep impression on a girl of Miss Underhill's strength of character. She was a Methodist, deeply imbued with the religious zeal of that denomination. Hearing from one who had been at the Isles of Shoals that the people were in as great need of a missionary as those of Burmah or of the Gold Coast, it became an affair of conscience with her to go there and teach.

She came to the islands, and applied herself with ardor to the work before her, a labor from which any but an enthusiast would have recoiled. It is asserted that no spot of American soil contained so debased a community as this.

It was her habit every pleasant day, at the close of school, to repair to the high cliff on the eastern shore of Star Island, where a rock conveniently placed by nature became her favorite seat. Here, with her Bible or other book, she was accustomed to pass the time in reading and contemplation. She was accompanied on her last visit by a gentleman, erroneously thought to have been her lover, who ventured on the rock with her. A tidal wave of unusual magnitude swept them from their feet. The gentleman succeeded in regaining his foothold, but the lady was no more seen.

Search was made for the body without success. A week after the occurrence it was found on York Beach, where the tide had left it. There was not the least disorder in the ill-fated lady's dress; the bonnet still covered her head, the ear-rings were in her ears, and her shawl was pinned across her breast. In a word, all was just as when she had set out for her walk. The kind-hearted man who found the poor waif took it home, and cared for it as if it had been his own dead. An advertisement caught the eye of Miss Underhill's brother. She was carried to Chester, New Hampshire, her native place, and there buried.

Notwithstanding the humble surroundings of her home, Miss Underhill was a person of superior and striking appearance. Her face was winning and her self-possessed manner is still the talk of her old-time associates. I have heard, as a sequel to the school-teacher's story, that some years after the fatal accident her old suitor came to the Isles, and, while bathing there, was drowned. The recovery of the body of the lady uninjured seems little short of miraculous, and confirms the presence of a strong under-tow, as I had suspected on seeing the floats of the lobstermen moored within a few feet of the rocks.

Schiller may have stood, in imagination, on some such crag as this when his wicked king flung his golden goblet into the mad sea, and with it the life of the hapless stripling who plunged, at his challenge, down into

"The endless and measureless world of the deep."

In a neighboring ravine I found a spring of fresh water, though rather brackish to the taste; and in the more sheltered places were heaps of mussel-shells, the outer surface of a beautiful purple. They look better where they are than in my cabinet, though the lining of those I secured have an enamel of mother-of-pearl. Another remarkable feature I observed were the deposits of gravel among the crevices; but I saw no flint among the water-worn boulders wedged, as if by a heavy pressure, in fissures of the rocks. I remarked also the presence of a poor schistus intersecting the strata here and there. Some of it I could break off with my hands.

Another delightful ramble is on the harbor side, from the old fort round to Caswell's Peak or beyond. Passing by the little hand-breadth of sandy beach where the dories may land, once paved, the chronicles tell us, many feet deep with fish-bones, I observed with pleasure the green oasis spread out between the hotel and the shore. The proprietor seemed resolved that the very rocks should blossom, and already "a garden smiled" above the flint.

There is a sight worth seeing from the cupola of the hotel; of the White Hills, and Agamenticus, with the sands of Rye, Hampton, and Squam stretching along shore. I could see the steeples of Portsmouth and of Newburyport, the bluff at Boar's Head, and the smoke of a score of inland villages. Following with the eye the south coast where it sweeps round Ipswich Bay one sees Cape Ann and Thatcher's Island outlying; the gate-way of the busy bay beyond, into which all manner of craft were pressing sail. Northward were Newcastle, Kittery, and York, and farther eastward the lonely rock of Boon Island. Shoreward is Appledore, with the turret of its hotel visible above; and right below us the little harbor so often a welcome haven to the storm-tossed mariner.[108]

Most visitors to the islands are familiar with the terrible story of the wreck of the _Nottingham_ galley, of London, in the year 1710. She was bound into Boston, and having made the land to the eastward of the Piscataqua, shaped her course southward, driven before a north-east gale, accompanied with rain, hail, and snow. For ten or twelve days succeeding they had no observation. On the night of the 11th of December, while under easy sail, the vessel struck on Boon Island.

With great difficulty the crew gained the rocks. The ship having immediately broken up, they were able to recover nothing eatable, except three small cheeses found entangled among the rock-weed. Some pieces of the spars and sails that came ashore gave them a temporary shelter, but every thing else had been carried away from the island by the strong drift. In a day or two the cook died. Day by day their sufferings from cold and hunger increased. The main-land being in full view before them, they built a boat and got it into the water. It was overset, and dashed in pieces against the rocks. One day they descried three boats in the offing, but no signals they were able to make could attract notice. Then, when reduced to a miserable band of emaciated, hopeless wretches, they undertook and with great labor constructed a raft, upon which two men ventured to attempt to reach the shore. Two days afterward it was found on the beach, with one of its crew lying dead at some distance. After this they were obliged to resort to cannibalism in order to sustain life, subsisting on the body of the carpenter, sparingly doled out to them by the captain's hand. To make an end of this chapter of horrors, the survivors were rescued after having been twenty-four days on the island. The raft was, after all, for them a messenger of preservation, for it induced a search for the builders.

No one can read this narrative without feeling his sympathy strongly excited for the brave John Deane, master of the wrecked vessel. He seemed possessed of more than human fortitude, and has told with a sailor's simple directness of his heroic struggle for life. His account was first published in 1711, appended to a sermon by Cotton Mather. Deane afterward commanded a ship of war in the service of the Czar, Peter the Great.[109]

Few who have seen the light-house tower on this lonely rock, distant not more than a dozen miles from the coast, receiving daily and nightly obeisance of hundreds of passing sails, can realize that the story of the _Nottingham_ could be true. It is a terrible injunction to keep the lamps trimmed and brightly burning.[110]

Proceeding onward in this direction, I came to the fish-houses that remain on the isle. Tubs of trawls, a barrel or two of fish-oil, a pile of split fish, and the half of a hogshead, in which a "kentle" or so of "merchantable fish" had just been salted down, were here and there; a hand-barrow on which to carry the fish from the boat, a lobster-pot, and a pair of rusty scales, ought to be added to the inventory. Sou'-westers and suits of oil-skin clothing hung against the walls; and in the loft overhead were a spare block or two and a parcel of oars, evidently picked up adrift, there being no two of the same length. In some of the houses were whale-boats, that had been hauled up to be calked and painted, that the men were preparing to launch. They were all schooner-rigged, and some were decked over so as to furnish a little cuddy for bad weather. No more sea-worthy craft can be found, and under guidance of a practiced hand one will sail, as sea-folk say, "like a witch." They usually contained a coil of half-inch line for the road, a "killick," and a brace of powder-kegs for the trawls.

The process of curing, or, as it is called by the islanders, "saving," fish is familiar to all who live near the sea-shore, and has not changed in two hundred years. It is described as practiced here in 1800, by Dr. Morse:

"The fish, in the first place, are thrown from the boat in piles on the shore. The cutter then takes them and cuts their throat, and rips open their bellies. In this state he hands them to the header, who takes out the entrails (detaching the livers, which are preserved for the sake of the oil they contain), and breaks off their heads. The splitter then takes out the backbone, and splits them completely open, and hands them to the salter, who salts and piles them in bulk, where they lie from ten to twenty hours, as is most convenient. The shoremen and the women then wash and spread them on the flakes. Here they remain three or four weeks, according to the weather, during which time they are often turned, piled in fagots, and then spread again, until they are completely cured for market."

The "dun," or winter fish, formerly cured here, were larger and thicker than the summer fish. Great pains were taken in drying them, the fish-women often covering the "fagots" with bed-quilts to keep them clean. Being cured in cold weather, they required but little salt, and were almost transparent when held up to the light. These fish sometimes weighed a hundred pounds or more. The dun fish were of great esteem in Spain and in the Mediterranean ports, bringing the highest price during Lent. They found their way to Madrid, where many a platter, smoking hot, has doubtless graced the table of the Escurial. In 1745 a quintal would sell for a guinea.

In 1775 the revolting colonies, unable to protect the islands, ordered their abandonment. A few of the inhabitants remained, but the larger number removed to the near main-land, and were scattered among the neighboring towns. The Shoals became through the war a rendezvous for British ships. The last official act of the last royal governor of New Hampshire was performed here in 1775, when Sir John Wentworth prorogued the Assembly of his majesty's lost province.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] "Et en la connoissance et experience que vous avez de la qualité, condition et situation dudit païs de la Cadie, pour les diverses navigations, voyages, et frequentations que vous avez faits en ces terres et autres proches et circonvoisines."

[98] Williamson erroneously calls Champlain the pilot.

[99] A little book I have seen translates rather freely in making Champlain say "and on the west Ipswitch Bay." See p. 122 for Champlain's exact language.

[100] Pring came to the main-land in forty-three and a half degrees--his farthest point westward on this voyage--and worked along the coast to the south-west. I know of no other islands between Cape Ann and his landfall answering his description.

[101] De Monts sailed from Havre de Grace March 7th, 1604.

[102] Winthrop's "Journal."

[103] Star Island is three-fourths of a mile long and half a mile wide; White Island is also three-fourths of a mile in length. It is a mile and three quarters from Star Island. Londoner's is five-eighths of a mile in length, and one-eighth of a mile from Star Island. Duck Island is seven-eighths of a mile in length, and three miles from Star Island meeting-house. Appledore is seven-eighths of a mile from Star, and a mile in length. Haley's, or Smutty Nose, is a mile in length, and five-eighths of a mile from Star Island meeting-house. Cedar Island is one-third of a mile long, and three-eighths of a mile distant from the meeting-house. The whole group contains something in excess of six hundred acres.

[104] The term "Shoals of Isles" seems rather far-fetched, and scarcely significant to English sailors familiar with the hundred and sixty islands of the Hebrides. I can find no instance of these isles having been so called.

[105] Built in 1800, through the efforts of Dudley A. Tyng, of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Dedicated in November by Rev. Jedediah Morse, father of S. F. B. Morse. A school was for a time kept in it.

[106] For more than a century previous to the Revolution the islands were prosperous, containing from three to six hundred souls. In 1800 there were three families and twenty persons on Smutty Nose; fifteen families and ninety-two persons on Star Island, alias Gosport; eleven dwellings and ten fish-houses on the latter, and three decent dwellings on the former. At this time there was not an inhabitant on Appledore, alias Hog Island.

[107] 1691. A considerable body of Eastern Indians came down from the interior, with the intention of sacking the Isles of Shoals, but on August 4th came upon some English forces at Maquoit, under Captain March, and had a fight with them. This prevented their proceeding, and saved the Shoals.--"Magnalia," vol. xi., p. 611.

1692. Governor Fletcher examined three deserters, or renegadoes, as he calls them, from Quebec, who came before him September 23d. They said two men-of-war had arrived at Quebec, and were fitting out for an expedition along the coast, "with a design to fall on Wells, Isle of Shoals, Piscataqua, etc."--"New York Colonial Documents," vol. iii., p. 855.

1724. After the Indians had cut off Captain Winslow and thirteen of his men in the River St. George, encouraged by this success, the enemy made a still greater attempt by water, and seized two shallops at the Isles of Shoals.--HUTCHINSON's "Massachusetts," vol. ii., p. 307.

[108] _Mountains seen off the coast_: Agamenticus, twelve miles north of the entrance of the Piscataqua; three inferior summits, known as Frost's Hills, at a less distance on the north-west. In New Hampshire the first ridge is twenty or thirty miles from sea, in the towns of Barrington, Nottingham, and Rochester--the summits known as Teneriffe, Saddleback, Tuckaway, etc. Their general name is the Blue Hills. Beyond these are several detached summits--Mount Major, Moose Mountain, etc.; also a third range farther inland, with Chocorua, Ossipee, and Kearsarge. In the lofty ridge, separating the waters of the Merrimac and the Connecticut is Grand Monadnock, twenty-two miles east of the Connecticut River; thirty miles north of this is Sunapee, and forty-eight farther, Moosehillock. The ranges then trend away north-east, and are massed in the White Hills.

[109] John Ward Dean, of Boston, the accomplished antiquary, has elicited this and other facts relative to his namesake.

[110] On Boone Island it is said there is no soil except what has been carried there.