Among the Isles of Shoals: I

I.

IN a series of papers published not many years ago, Herman Melville made the world acquainted with the “Encantadas,” or Enchanted Islands, which he describes as lying directly under the equator, off the coast of South America, and of which he says : “ It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group.” Yet their dark volcanic crags and melancholy beaches can hardly seem more desolate than do the low bleached rocks of the Isles of Shoals to eyes that behold them for the first time. Very sad they look, stern, bleak, and unpromising, yet are they enchanted islands in a better sense of the word than are the great Gallipagos of which Mr. Melville discourses so delightfully.

There is a strange charm about them, an indescribable influence in their atmosphere, hardly to be explained, but universally acknowledged. People forget the hurry and worry and fret of life after living there awhile, and, to an imaginative mind, all things become dreamy as they were to the lotus-eaters, to whom

The eternal sound of the sea on every side has a tendency to wear away the edge of human thought and perception ; sharp outlines become blurred and softened like a sketch in charcoal; nothing appeals to the mind with the same distinctness as on the main-land, amid the rush and stir of people and things and the excitements of social life. This was strikingly illustrated during the late war, which, while it wrung the heart of the whole country, and stirred the blood of every man, woman, and child on the continent, left the handful of human beings upon these lonely rocks almost untouched. The echoes of woe and terror were so faint and far they seemed to lose their significance among the many-voiced waters they crossed, and reached at last the indifferent ears they sought, with no more force than a spent wave.

Nine miles of the Atlantic Ocean intervene between these islands and the nearest point of the coast of New Hampshire; but from this nearest point the coast-line recedes gradually, in dim and dimmer distance, to Cape Ann, in Massachusetts, twenty-one miles away at the southwest, and to Cape Neddock in Maine, sixteen miles distant in the northeast (in clear weather another cape is faintly distinguishable beyond this), and about one third of the great horizon is filled by this beautiful, undulating line of land, which, under the touch of atmospheric change, is almost as plastic as the clouds, and wears a new aspect with every turn of wind and weather.

Sailing out from Portsmouth Harbor with a fair wind from the northwest, the Isles of Shoals lie straight before you, nine miles away, — ill-defined and cloudy shapes, faintly discernible in the distance. A word about the origin of this name, “ Isles of Shoals.” They are supposed to have been so called, not because the ragged reefs run out beneath the water in all directions, ready to wreck and destroy, but because of the “shoaling.” or ‘’schooling,” of fish about them, which, in the mackerel and herring seasons, is remarkable. As you approach they separate, and show each its own peculiar characteristics, and you perceive that there are six islands if the tide is low ; but if it is high, there are eight, and would be nine, but that a breakwater connects two of them. Appledore, called for many years Hog Island, from its rude resemblance to a hog’s back rising from the water, when seen from out at sea, is the largest and most regular in shape. From afar, it looks smoothly rounded, like a gradually sloping elevation, the greatest height of which is only seventy-five feet above high-water mark. A little valley, in which are situated the buildings belonging to the house of entertainment which is the only habitation, divides its four hundred acres into two unequal portions. Next, almost within a stone’s throw, is Haley’s Island, or “SmuttyNose,” so christened by passing sailors, with a grim sense of humor, from a long black point of rock, stretching out to the southeast, upon which many a ship has laid her bones. This island is low and flat, and contains a greater depth of soil than the others. At low tide, Cedar and Malaga are both connected with it, — the latter permanently by a breakwater, — the whole comprising about one hundred acres. Star Island contains one. hundred and fifty acres, and lies a quarter of a mile southwest of Smutty-Nose. Toward its northern end are clustered the houses of the little village of Gosport, with a tiny church crowning the highest rock. Not quite a mile southwest from Star, White Island lifts a light house for a warning. This is the most picturesque of the group, and forms with Seavey’s Island, at low water, a double island with an area of some twenty acres. Most westerly lies Londoner’s, an irregular rock with a bit of beach, upon which all the shells about the cluster seem to be thrown. Two miles northeast from Appledore, Duck Island thrusts out its lurking ledges on all sides, beneath the water, one of them running half a mile to the northwest. This is the most dangerous of the islands, and, being the most remote, is the only one visited to any great degree by the shy sea-fowl that are nearly banished by civilization. Yet even now at low tide those long, black ledges are often whitened by the dazzling plumage of gulls, whose exquisite and stainless purity rivals the new-fallen snow. The ledges run toward the west and north ; but at the east and south the shore is bolder, and Shag and Mingo Rocks, where during or after storms the sea breaks with magnificent effect, lie isolated by a narrow channel from the main granite fragment. A very round rock west of Londoner’s, perversely called “Square,” and Anderson’s Rock, off the southeast end of Smutty-Nose, complete the catalogue. Smutty-Nose and Appledore are almost united by a reef, bare at low tide, though a large vessel can pass between them even then. Off the landing at White Island the Devil’s Rock rolls an incessant breaker, and makes an attempt to reach the shore perilous in any but the serenest weather. Between Londoner’s and Star is another, hardly bare at low tide, called Half-way Rock; and another, about four miles east of Appledore, rejoices in the significant title of the “Old Harry.” Old Harry is deeply sunk beneath the surface and never betrays himself except in great storms, when an awful white spray rises afar off, and the shoalers know how tremendous are the breakers that send it skyward.

Tne dividing line between Maine and New Hampshire passes through the group, giving Appledore, Smutty-Nose and Duck Islands to Maine, and the rest to New Hampshire ; but their allegiance to either is a matter of small importance, the few inhabitants troubling themselves but little about what State they belong to. Till within a few years no taxes were required of them, and they enjoyed immunity from this and various other earthly ills, as completely as the gulls and loons that shared their dwelling-place.

Swept by every wind that blows, and beaten by the bitter brine for unknown ages, well may the Isles of Shoals be barren, bleak, and bare. At first sight nothing can be more rough and inhospitable than they appear. The incessant influences of wind and sun, rain, snow, frost, and spray, have so bleached the tops of the rocks that they look hoary as if with age, though in the summer time a gracious greenness of vegetation breaks here and there the stern outlines, and softens somewhat their rugged aspect. Yet so forbidding are their shores, it seems scarcely worth while to land upon them, — mere heaps of tumbled granite in the wide and lonely sea, — when all the smiling, “sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land ” lies ready to woo the voyager back again, and welcome his returning prow with pleasant sights and sounds and scents that the wild wastes of water never know. But to the human creature who has eyes that will see and ears that will hear, nature appeals with such a novel charm that the luxurious beauty of the land is half forgotten before one is aware. Its sweet gardens full of color and perfume, its rich woods and softly swelling hills, its placid waters and fields and flowery meadows, are no longer dear and desirable ; for the wonderful sound of the sea dulls the memory of all past impressions, and seems to fulfil and satisfy all present needs. Landing for the first time, the stranger is struck only by the sadness of the place, —the vast loneliness ; for there are not even trees to whisper with familiar voices, — nothing but sky and sea and rocks. But the very wildness and desolation reveal a strange beauty to him. Let him wait till evening comes,

and he will find himself slowly succumbing to the subtile charm of that sea atmosphere. He sleeps with all the waves of the Atlantic murmuring in his ears, and wakes to the freshness of a summer morning ; and it seems as if morning were made for the first time. For the world is like a new-blown rose, and in the heart of it he stands, with only the caressing music of the water to break the utter silence, unless perhaps a song-sparrow pours out its blissful warble like an embodied joy. The sea is rosy, and the sky; the line of land is radiant; the scattered sails glow with the delicious color that touches so tenderly the bare bleak rocks. These are lovelier than sky or sea or distant sails or graceful wings of gulls reddened with the dawn ; nothing takes color so beautifully as the bleached granite ; the shadows are delicate, and the fine hard outlines are glorified and softened beneath the fresh first blush of sunrise. All things are speckless and spotless ; there is no dust, no noise, nothing but peace in the sweet air and on the quiet sea. The day goes on ; the rose changes to mellow gold, the gold to clear white daylight, and the sea is sparkling again. A breeze ripples the surface, and wherever it touches the color deepens. A seine-boat passes, with the tawny net heaped in the stern and the scarlet shirts of the rowers brilliant against the blue ; pleasantly their voices come across the water, breaking the stillness. The fishing-boats steal to and fro, silent, with glittering sails ; the gulls wheel lazily ; the far-off coasters glide rapidly along the horizon ; the mirage steals down the coast-line and seems to remove it leagues away. And what if it were to slip down the slope of the world and disappear entirely ? You think, in a half-dream, you would not care. Many troubles, cares, perplexities, vexations, lurk behind that far, faint line for you. Why should you be bothered any more ?

And so the waves with their lulling murmur do their work, and you are soothed into repose and transient forgetfulness.

The natives, or persons who have been brought up here, find it almost as difficult to tear themselves away from the islands as do the Swiss to leave their mountains. From a civilized race’s point of view, this is a curious instance of human perversity, since it is not good for men to live their whole lives through in such remote and solitary places. Nobody hears of people dying of homesickness for New York, or Albany, or Maine, or California, or any place on the broad continent ; but to wild and lonely spots like these isles humanity clings with an intense and abiding affection. No other place is able to furnish the inhabitants of the Shoals with sufficient air for their capacious lungs ; there is never scope enough elsewhere, there is no horizon; they must have sea-room. On shore, it is to them as if all the trees and houses crowded against the windows to suffocation ; and I know a youth who, when at the age of thirteen he made his first visit to the main-land, descended to the cellar of the house in which he found himself, in the not over-populous city of Portsmouth, and spent the few hours of his stay sitting dejectedly upon a wood-pile, in mute protest against the condition of things in general, and the pressure of human society in particular.

Each island has its peculiar characteristics, as I said before, and no two are alike, though all are of the same coarse granite, mixed with masses and seams of quartz and feldspar and gneiss and mica-slate, and interspersed with dikes of trap running in all directions. Upon Appledore for the most part the trap runs from north to south, while the veins of quartz and feldspar run from east to west. Sometimes the narrow white quartz veins intersect the dark trap, in parallel lines, now wavering, and now perfectly straight, and showing a surface like that of some vast piece of inlaid work. Each island presents its boldest shore to the east, to breast the whole force of the great Atlantic, which every year assails the iron cliffs and headlands with the same ponderous fury, yet leaves upon them so little trace of its immense power,— though at White Island, on the top of a precipitous rock called “The Head” which is nearly fifty feet high, lies a boulder weighing fifteen tons, tossed there from below by the breakers. The shores are seldom very bold, but on the east they are often very striking, with their rifts and chasms and roughly piled gorges, and square quarries of stone, and stairways cut as if by human hands. The trap-rock, softer than the granite, is worn away in many places, leaving bare perpendicular walls fifteen or twenty feet high. The largest trap dike upon Appledore runs across the island from northeast to southwest, disappears in the sea, and reappears upon SmuttyNose, a quarter of a mile distant in a straight line. In some places, the geologist will tell you, certain deep scratches in the solid rock mean that here the glacier ground its way across in the world’s earlier ages. Frequently the trap-rock is honeycombed in a curious fashion, — filled with small holes on the surface, as if drops of water falling for years in the same spots had worn these smooth, round hollows. This always happens close to the water and only in the trap-rock, and looks as if it might be the result of the flying spray, which in winter and towards spring, when the northwest gales blow sometimes for three weeks steadily day and night, beats continually upon the shore.

The coast-line varies, of course, with the high or low tide. At low water the shores are much more forbidding than at high tide, for a broad band of dark sea-weed girdles each island, and gives a sullen aspect to the whole group. But in calm days, when the moon is full and the tides are so low that it sometimes seems as if the sea were being drained away on purpose to show to eager eyes what lies beneath the lowest ebb, banks of golden-green and brown moss, thickly clustered on the moist ledges, are exposed, and the water is cut by the ruffled edges of the kelps that grow, in brown and shining forests on every side. At sunrise or sunset, the effect of the long rays slanting across these masses of rich color is very beautiful. But at high tide the shores are most charming ; every little cove and inlet is filled with the music of the waves, and their life, light, color and sparkle. Who shall describe that wonderful noise of the sea among the rocks, to me the most suggestive of all the sounds in nature ? Each island, every isolated rock, has its own peculiar rote, and ears made delicate by listening in great and frequent peril can distinguish the bearings of each in a dense fog ; the threatening speech of Duck Island’s ledges, the swing of the wave over Half-wayRock, the touch of the ripples on the beach at Londoner’s, the long and lazy breaker that is forever rolling below the light-house at White Island—all are familiar and distinct, and indicate to the islander his whereabouts almost as clearly as if the sun shone brightly and no shrouding mist were striving to mock and to mislead him.

There are no beaches of any considerable size along the circle of these shores, and except in two narrow fissures, one on Malaga and one on Star, only a few feet wide at their widest, there is no fine, clean sand, such as lies sparkling on the coast at Rye, opposite, and shows a faintly glimmering white in the far distance. The dock at SmuttyNose is filled with coarse sand and mud, like the little basin of the“ Upper Cove” on Appledore ; and the largest beach on Star, of the same character, is covered with a stratum of fish-bones several feet deep, — by no means a pleasantly fragrant pavement. Roughly rounded pebbles, not beautiful with warmth of color like those on the Cohasset beaches, but a cold, hard combination of gray granite and dark trap, are heaped in the coves. Now and then a smoother bit consists of a coarse gravel, which, if you examine, you will find to be principally composed of shells ground fine by the waves, a fascinating mixture of blue and purple mussels, lined with the rainbow tints of mother-of-pearl, and fragments of golden and ruddy snail-shells, and striped and colored cockles ; with here and there a piece of transparent quartz, white or rosy, or of opaque feldspar, faintly straw-colored, or of dull-purple porphyry stone, all clean and moist with the odorous brine. Upon Appledore and the little islets undevastated by civilization these tiny coves are the most delightful places in the world, lovely with their fringe of weeds, thistles, and mullein-stalks drawn clearly against the sky at the upper edge of the slope, and below their mosaic of stone and shell and sea-wrack, tangles of kelp and drift-wood, — a mass of warm neutral tints, — with brown, green, and crimson mosses, and a few golden snailshells lying on the many-tinted gravel, where the indolent ripples lapse in delicious murmurs. There are few shells more delicate than the variegated snails and cockles and stout whelks that sparsely strew the beaches, but these few are exceedingly beautiful and more precious from their rarity. Two kinds of pure white spiral shells, not quite an inch long, are occasionally found, and cause one to wonder how they can be rolled together with the heavy pebbles by the breakers and not be annihilated.

After the dark-blue mussel-shells have lain long on shore in sun and rain, they take a curious satin sheen, lovely to behold, and the larger kind, shedding their coat of brown varnish, are colored like the eastern sky in clear winter sunsets a rosy purple, with pearly linings streaked with iridescent hues. The driftwood is always full of suggestions : — a broken oar ; a bit of spar with a ragged end of rope-yarn attached ; a section of a mast hurriedly chopped, telling of a tragedy too well-known on the awful sea ; a water-worn buoy, or flakes of rich brown bark, which have been peacefully floated down the rivers of Maine and out on the wide sea, to land at last here and gladden firesides so remote from the deep green wood where they grew ; pine-cones, with their spicy fragrance yet lingering about them ; apples, green spruce twigs, a shingle, with some carpenter’s half-obliterated calculations pencilled upon it ; a child’s roughly carved boat; drowned butterflies, beetles, birds ; dead boughs of ragged fir-trees completely draped with the long, shining ribbon-grass that grows in brackish water near river-mouths. The last, after lying awhile in the wind and sun, present a weird appearance, for the narrow ribbons are dried and bleached as white as chalk, and shiver and shudder with every wind that blows. It used to be a great delight to hold such a bough alolt, and watch all the long, delicate pennons and streamers fly trembling out on the breeze. Beyond high-water mark all things in the course of time take a uniform gray color from the weather ; wood, shells, stones, deposited by some great tide or storm and left undisturbed for months, chocolate-colored bark and yellow shingle and gray stone are not to be distinguished one from another, except by their shape. Of course all white things grow whiter, and shells already colorless become as pure as snow. Sometimes the slabs and blocks of wood that float ashore have drifted so long that they are water-logged, and covered with a rich growth of mosses, barnacles, and wondrous sea-creatures. Sometimes they are completely riddled by the Pholas, and the hardest shells are pierced smoothly through and through by these soft worms.

But, as a child, I was never without apprehension when examining the drift, for I feared to find some too dreadful token of disaster. After the steamer Bohemian was wrecked (off Halifax, I believe), a few years ago, bales of her costly cargo and pieces of the wreck were strewn along the coast even to Cape Ann ; and upon Rye Beach, among other things, two boots came on shore. They were not mates, and each contained a human foot. That must have been agrewsome discovery to him who picked them up.

There are not many of these quiet coves : in general, a confusion reigns as if an earthquake had rent and split the coasts, and tumbled the masses in chaotic heaps. On Appledore and the larger islands the interior is rather smoother, though nowhere will you find many rods of plain walking. Slopes of greenness alternate with the long white ledges, and here and there are bits of swampy ground and little valleys where the turf is short and the sheep love to browse and the mushrooms grow in August and September. There are no trees, except, perhaps, a few Balm of Gilead trees on Star, and a small elm on Appledore, which has been struggling with the bleakness of the situation some twenty years. It is very probable, that the islands were wooded many years ago, with spruce and pine perhaps — a rugged growth. There are a few bushes, browsed down by the sheep, with maple, poplar, and birch leaves ; and I have seen the crumbling remains of the stump of some large tree in the principal gorge or valley at Appledore. The oldest inhabitants remember quite an orchard on Smutty-Nose. In the following note (for which I am indebted to Mr. T. B. Fox) from “Christopher Leavitt’s Voyage into New England ” in the year 1623, it appears that there were trees, though not of the kind the voyagers wished to see. He says : “ The first piace I set my foot upon in New England was the Isles of Shoulds ; we could see not one good timber tree or so much good ground as to make a garden. Good fishing place for six ships,” he goes on to say, “ not more, for want of good storage rooms. Harbor indifferent good. No savages at all.” That was two hundred and forty-six years ago. In the Rev. Jedediah Morse’s Journal of a Mission to the Shoals in August, 1800, he says, referring to the wretched state of the inhabitants of Star Island at that time : “ All the trees, and the bushes even, have been consumed, and they have cut up, dried, and burned many acres of the sward, leaving only naked rocks where formerly there was the finest pasturage for cows.” The bushes have never grown again on Star ; but Appledore, wherever there is soil enough to hold a root, is overgrown with huckleberry and bayberry bushes, the glossy green leaves of the latter yielding a wholesome aromatic fragrance, which accords well with the fresh and healthy sea-odors. Blackberry, raspberry, wild currant, and gooseberry bushes also flourish ; there are clumps of elder and sumach, woodbine and the poison-ivy, shrubs of wild cherry and sbadbush, and even one little wild apple-tree, that yearly bears a few large bright blossoms.

It is curious to note the varieties of plants, wild-flowers, and grasses on this island alone. There are six different ferns, and many delicate flowers bloom in the spring, whose faces it is a continual surprise to find looking up at you from the rough ground, among the rocks. Every flower seems twice as beautiful under these circumstances; and it is a fact that the salt air and a peculiar richness in the soil give a luxuriance of growth and a depth of color not found elsewhere. “ Is that willowweed ?”(or whatever it may be) ; “I never saw any so bright !" is a remark often heard from strangers visiting the islands for the first time. The pale pink herb-robert, for instance, blushes with a tint almost as deep as a damask rose, and as for the wild roses, I heard some one say they were as ‘‘bright as red carnations.” In the spring the anemones are stained with purple and pink and yellow, in a way that makes their sisters of the main-land seem pallid beside them ; and the violets are wonderful, — the blue ones so large and dark, and the delicately veined white ones rich with creamy fragrance.

The calyx of the shadbush flower is dyed with purple, almost crimson, and the color runs into the milky whiteness of the petals. The little pimpernel (when it has anything but salt gravel to grow in, for it runs fairly into the sea) is clear vermilion, and the pearly eyebright is violet on the edges : the shy celandine glows golden in its shady clefts, and the spotted jewel-weed is as rich and splendid as a flower in Doctor Rappacini’s famous garden. Sometimes it is as if the order of nature were set aside in this spot ; for you find the eyebright and pimpernel and white violets growing side by side until the frost comes in November ; often October passes with no sign of frost, and the autumn lingers later than elsewhere. I have even seen the iris and wild rose and golden-rod and aster in blossom together, as if, not having the example of the world before their eyes, they followed their own sweet will, and bloomed when they took the fancy. As for garden flowers, when you plant them in this soil they fairly run mad with color. People say, “ Do give me some seeds of these wonderful flowers " ; and they sow them in their gardens on the mainland, and they come up decorous, commonplace, and pale, like their sisters in the same soil. The little spot of earth on which they grow at the island is like a mass of jewels. Who shall describe the pansies, richly streaked with burning gold ; the dark velvet coreopsis and the nasturtium ; the larkspurs, blue and brilliant as lapis lazuli ; the “ ardent marigolds,” that flame like mimic suns? The sweet-peas are of a deep, bright rose-color, and their odor is like rich wine, too sweet almost to be borne, except when the pure fragrance of mignonette is added,—such mignonette as never grows on shore. Why should the poppies blaze in such imperial scarlet ? What quality is hidden in this thin soil, which so transfigures all the familiar flowers with fresh beauty ? I have heard it said that it is the crumbled rock which so enriches the earth, but I do not know.

If a flock of sheep and various cows did not browse over Appledore incessantly, it would be a little wilderness of wild-flowers in the summer ; they love the soil and climate and put forth all their strength and loveliness. And every year or two a new kind appears, of which the seed has been brought by some bird, or, perhaps, shaken out of a bundle of hay. Last summer, for the first time, I found the purple polygala growing in a meadowy piece of turf on the south side of the island. Columbines and the fragrant ground - nut, helianthus, and various other plants, grow only on Duck Island; and it is singular that the little potentilla, which I am told grows elsewhere only on mountain-sides, is found here on all the islands. At Smutty-Nose alone certain plants of the wicked-looking henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) flourish, and on Londoner’s only there spreads at the top of the beach a large sealungwort (Mertensia maritima). At Star the crooked little ways between the houses are lined with tall plants ot the poisonous hemlock (the Conium that made the death-draught of Socrates), which flourishes amain, and is the only green thing out of the small-walled enclosures except the grass and the burdocks, for the cows and the children devastate the ground.

Appledore is altogether the most agreeable in its aspect of all the islands, being the largest and having a greater variety of surface than the rest. Its southern portion is full of interest, from the traces of vanished humanity which one beholds at every step ; for the ground in some places is undermined with ancient graves, and the ruined cellars of houses wherein men and women lived more than a century ago are scattered here and there, to the number of seventy and more. The men and women are dust and ashes ; but here are the stones they squared and laid, here are the thresholds over which so many feet have passed. The pale-green and lilac and golden lichens have overgrown and effaced all traces of their footsteps on the door-stones ; but here they passed in and out, — old and young, little feet of children, heavy tramp of stalwart fishermen, lighter tread of women, painful and uncertain steps of age. Pleasant it is to think of the brown and swarthy fisherman, the father, standing on such a threshold, and, with the keen glance all seafaring men possess, sweeping the wide horizon for signs of fair or foul weather; or the mother sitting in the sun on the step, nursing her baby, perhaps, or mending a net, or spinning, — for the women here were famous spinners, and on Star Island are women yet who have not forgotten the art. Pleasanter still, to think of some slender girl at twilight, lingering with reluctant feet and wistful eyes that search the dusky sea for a returning sail, whose glimmer is sweeter than moonlight or starlight to her sight, — lingering though her mother calls within, and the dew falls with the falling night. I love to people these solitudes again, and think that those who lived here centuries ago were decent Godfearing folk, most of them, for so tradition says ; ¹ though in later years they fell into evil ways, and drank “firewater ” and came to grief. And all the pictures over which I dream are set in this framework of the sea, that sparkled and sang, or frowned and threatened, in the ages that are gone, as it does to-day, and will continue to smile and threaten when we who listen to it, and love it, and fear it now, are dust and ashes in our turn.

Some of the cellars are double, as if two families had built together ; some are distinctly marked, in others the stones have partly fallen in ; all are more or less overgrown with lichens, and thick, short turf creeps everywhere in and about them. Sometimes garlands of woodbine drape the walls, and poison-ivy clasps and knots itself about the rocks ; clumps of sweet flowering elder cluster in the corners, or graceful stag-horned sumachs, or raspberrybushes with ruddy fruit. Wild spiked thistles spread, and tall mullein-stalks stand like sentinels on guard over the desolation. Beautiful it is to see the delicate herb-robert’s rosy flowers among the rough heaps of rock, like a tender after-thought where all is hard and stern.

It is a part of the religious belief of the Shoalers, that the ruinous cairn on the summit of Appledore was built by the famous John Smith and his men, when they discovered the islands, in the year 1614, and I will not be so heretical as to doubt the fact, though it seems just as likely that it was set up by fishermen and sailors for a landmark. At any rate nobody remembers when it was not there, and it is perfectly safe to imagine any origin for it. I never could be precisely certain of the site of the first meeting-house on this island, “built (of brick) at a very early period, possibly the first in the Province,” says Williamson, in his “ History of Maine.” Probably there was no cellar beneath it, and the slight underpinning has been scattered and obliterated by time, — a fate which many of the houses must have shared in like manner. When man has vanished, Nature strives to restore her original order of things, and she smooths away gradually all traces of his work with the broad hands of her changing seasons. The men who built the Pyramids felt this, but will not the world spin long enough to level their masonry with the desolate sands ? Neither is there any sign of the foundation of that “Academy” to which “even gentlemen from some of the principal towns on the seacoast sent their sons for literary instruction ” ; I quote again from Williamson. How like a dream it seems, looking now at these deserted rocks, that so much happened here in the years that are gone ! The connection of Spain with these islands always had a great fascination for me ; it is curious that the brightest and gayest of lands, all aglow with sunshine and so rich with southern beauty, should be in any way linked with this place, so remote and desolate. “ In 1730, and afterwards, three or four ships used to load at the Shoals with winter and spring merchantable fish for Bilboa in Spain.” What wondrous craft must have navigated these waters, — lazy, lumbering old ships, with quaintly carved figure-heads and high-peaked sterns and prows, and heavy draperies of weather-beaten sails, — picturesque and charming to behold, and well enough for the sparkling Mediterranean, but not the sort of build to battle with the At-, lantic breakers, as several wrecks ot vessels caught in the terrible gales and driven upon the pitiless ledges might testify ! The ship Sagunto, it is said, met her destruction here, as late as the year 1813, and there are faint echoes of other disasters of the kind, but the names of other ships have not come down to us. One wrecked on Appledore left only a quantity of broad silver pieces sprinkled about the rocks to tell of the calamity. A fisherman from Star, paddling over in his dory to explore the coves and chasms for driftwood (for the island was uninhabited at the time), came suddenly upon the glittering coins. His amazement was boundless. After filling his pockets a sudden terror possessed him ; he began to have a suspicion that something uncanny lurked at the bottom of such good fortune (for the superstition of the natives is very great), and fled home to tell his neighbors, who came in a body and made short work of the process of gathering the rest of the treasure. Occasionally, since that time, coins have been found about the southeast point, whereon the unknown vessel struck and was completely destroyed. Of course Captain Kidd, “as he sailed,” is supposed to have made the locality one of his many hiding-places. I remember being awed when a child at the story of how a certain old black Dinah, an inhabitant of Portsmouth, came out to Appledore, then entirely divested of human abodes, and alone, with only a divining-rod for company, passed several days and nights wandering over the island, muttering to herself, with her divining-rod carefully balanced in her skinny hands. Robert Kidd’s buried treasure, if it existed, never signalled from below to that mystic rod, and the old negress returned emptyhanded ; but what a picture she must have made wandering there in the loneliness, by sunlight or moonlight or starlight, with her weird figure, her dark face, her garments fluttering in the wind, and the awful rod in her hand!

On Star Island, I have been told, a little three-legged black pot full of gold and silver pieces was dug up not very many years ago, and it is certainly true that Mr. Samuel Haley, who lived upon and owned Smutty-Nose, in building a wall, turned over a large flat stone beneath which lay four bars of solid silver. He must have been a fine, energetic old fellow, that Samuel Haley. With this treasure, says tradition again, he built at great trouble and expense the sea-wall which connects Smutty-Nose with Malaga, and makes a safe harbor for distressed mariners in stormy weather. (This name Malaga, by the way, is a very distinct token of the Spaniards.) Not only did Haley build the seawall, but he erected salt-works which “manufactured excellent salt for the curing of fish,” and stretched a ropewalk over the uneven ground to the extent of two hundred and seventy feet, and set up wind-mills to catch with their wide wings all the winds that blew, that he might grind his own corn and wheat and live as independently as possible of his fellow-men, for that is one of the first things a settler on the Isles of Shoals finds it necessary to learn. He planted a little orchard where the soil was deepest, and with much cherishing care contrived to coax his cherry-trees into abundant fruitfulness, and in every way made the most of the few advantages of the place. The old square house which he built upon his island, and which still stands, had, long ago, a broad balcony running the whole length of the front beneath the second-story windows. This being in a ruinous condition, I never dared venture out upon it ; but a large and square lookout, with a stout railing, which he built on the top of the house, remained till within a few years, and I found it a charming place to linger in on still days, and watch the sea and the vessels, and the play of color over the bright face of the world. Looking from that airy station, years ago, I used to think how many times he had sat there with his spy-glass, scanning the horizon and all within it, while the wind ruffled his gray hair and the sun shone pleasantly across his calm old face. Many years of his useful, happy life he lived there, and left behind him a beloved and honorable name. His descendants, still living upon Star, are among the best people in the village. A young girl bearing his name was married this autumn to one of the youthful fishermen. Star Island might well be proud of such a girl,— so modest and sweet, and pretty too, slender and straight, dark-haired, brown-eyed, — as picturesque a creature as one would wish to see, with a delicate rose in her cheek and a clear light of intelligence in her eyes. Considering her, and remembering this ancient ancestor of hers, I thought she came honestly by her gentle, self-reliant expression and her fine bearing, full of unconscious dignity and grace. The old man’s quaint epitaph speaks of his humanity in “receiving into his enclosure many a poor distressed seaman and fisherman in distress of weather.” “In distress of weather ! ” — one must live in such a place fully to comprehend the meaning of the words. It was his custom every night to put in his bedroom window, over the broad balcony facing the southeast, a light which burned all night — a little act of thoughtfulness which speaks volumes. I think the light-house at White Island could not have been kindled at that time, but I am not sure. There is much uncertainty with regard to dates and records of those old times. Mr. Haley is said to have died in 1811, but I have always heard that he was living when the Sagunto was wrecked upon his island, which happened, according to the Gosport records, in 1813. This is the entry : “ Ship Sagunto stranded on Smotinose Isle Jany 14th 1813 Jany 15th one man found, Jany 16th 6 men found 21-7 the Number of men yet found Belonging to said ship twelve.” I am inclined to think the writer made a mistake in his date as well as in his spelling and arithmetic, for it is an accepted tradition that Mr. Haley found and buried the dead crew of that ship, and I have always heard this spoken of as simple fact. On that stormy January night, runs the story, he placed the light as usual in his chamber window, and I dare say prayed in his good heart that no vessel might be wandering near this dangerous place, tossed helpless on the raging sea in the thick darkness and bitter cold and blinding snow. But that night the great ship Sagunto, from Cadiz, drove crashing full upon the fatal southeast point, in sight of the tiny spark that burned peacefully, unwavering, in that quiet chamber. Her costly timbers of mahogany and cedar-wood were splintered on the sharp teeth of those inexorable rocks ; her cargo of dried fruits and nuts, and bales of broadcloth, and gold and silver, was tossed about the shore; and part of her wretched crew were thrown alive upon it. Some of them saw the light, and crawled toward it, benumbed with cold and spent with fatigue and terror. The roaring of the storm bore away their faint cries of distress ; the old man slept on quietly, with his family about him, — sheltered, safe, while a stone’s - throw from his door these sailors strove and agonized to reach that friendly light. Two of them gained the stone wall in front of the house, but their ebbing strength would not allow them to climb over ; they threw themselves upon it and perished miserably, with safety, warmth and comfort so close at hand ! In the morning, when the tumult was somewhat hushed, and underneath the sullen sky rolled the more sullen sea in long, deliberate waves, the old man looked out in the early light across the waste of snow, and on the wall lay — something that broke the familiar outline though all was smooth with the pure, soft snow. He must put on coat and cap, and go and find out what this strange thing might be. Ah, that was a sight for his pitying eyes under the cold and leaden light of that unrelenting morning ! He summoned his sons and his men. Quickly the alarm was given, and there was confusion and excitement as the islanders, hurriedly gathering, tried if it were possible yet to save some life amid the wreck. But it was too late, every soul was lost. Fourteen bodies were found at that time, strewn all the way between the wall and that southeast point where the vessel had gone to pieces. The following summer the skeleton of another was discovered among some bushes near the shore. The imagination lingers over those poor drowned sailors ; strives to figure what each man was like, what might have been the musical name of each (for all names in Spanish should be musical, with a reminiscence of flute and guitar in them); dwells on the dark-olive faces and jet-black hair, the graceful foreign dress,—curious short jackets, perhaps, with bits of bright embroidery that loving hands had worked for them, all stained and tarnished by the brine. No doubt some of them wore about their necks a cross or amulet, with an image of the “ Blessed Virgin” or the “ Son of God,” that so they might be saved from just such a fate as this ; and maybe some one among these sailormen carried against his heart a lock of hair, dark and lustrous before the washing of the cold waves dulled the brightness of its beauty. Fourteen shallow graves were quarried for the unknown dead in the iron earth, and there they lie, with him who buried them a little above in the same grassy slope. Here is his epitaph : —

“ In memory of Mr. Samuel Haley Who died in the year 1811 Aged 84 He was a man of great Ingenuity Industry Honor and Honesty, true to his Country & A man who did A great Publik good in Building A Dock & Receiving into his Enclosure many a poor Distressed Seaman & Fisherman In distress of Weather.”

A few steps from their resting-place the low wall on which the two unfortunates were found frozen is falling into ruin. The glossy green leaves of the bayberry-bushes crowd here and there about it, in odorous ranks on either side, and sweetly the warm blush of the wild rose glows against its cool gray stones. Leaning upon it in summer afternoons, when the wind is quiet and there steals up a fragrance and fresh murmur from the incoming tide ; when the slowly mellowing light lies tranquil over the placid sea, enriching everything it touches with infinite beauty, — waves and rocks that kill and destroy, blossoming roses and lonely graves, — a wistful sadness colors all one’s thoughts. Afar off the lazy waters sing and smile about that white point, shimmering in the brilliant atmosphere. How peaceful it is ! How innocent and unconscious is the whole face of this awful and beautiful nature ! But listening to the blissful murmur of the tide, one can but think with what another voice that tide spoke when it ground the ship to atoms and roared with sullen thunder about those dying men.

There is no inscription on the rough boulders at the head and foot of these graves. A few more years and all trace of them will be obliterated. Already the stones lean this way and that, and are half buried in the rank grass. Soon will they be entirely forgotten ; the old, old world forgets so much ! And it is sown thick with graves from pole to pole.