NANTUCKET--_continued._
Muskeeget, Tuckanuck, Maddequet,
Sankoty, Coatue, Siasconset.
History is said to repeat itself, and why may not the whale-fishing? Now
that the ships are all gone, a small whale is occasionally taken off the
island, as in days of yore. While I was at Nantucket, a school of
blackfish were good enough to come into the shallows not far from the
harbor, and stupid enough to permit themselves to be taken. The manner
of their capture was truly an example of the triumph of mind over
matter.
When the school were discovered near the shore, the fishermen, getting
outside of them in their dories, by hallooing, sounding of horns, and
other noises, drove them, like frightened sheep, toward the beach. As
soon as the hunters were in shoal water they left their boats, and
jumped overboard, urging the silly fish on by outcries, splashing the
water, and blows. Men, and even boys, waded boldly up to a fish, and led
him ashore by a fin; or, if inclined to show fight, put their knives
into him. They cuffed them, pricked them onward, filling the air with
shouts, or with peals of laughter, as some pursuer, more eager than
prudent, lost his footing, and became for the moment a fish. All this
time the blackfish were nearing the shore, uttering sounds closely
resembling groanings and lamentations. The calves kept close to the old
ones, "squealing," as one of the captors told me, like young pigs. It
was great sport, not wholly free from danger, for the fish can strike a
powerful blow with its flukes; and the air was filled with jets of water
where they had lashed it into foam. At length the whole school were
landed, even to one poor calf that had wandered off, and now came back
to seek its dam. The fishermen, after putting their marks upon them,
went up to town to communicate their good luck. Sometimes a hundred or
two are taken at once in this wise, here or on the Cape.
The oil of the blackfish is obtained in precisely the same manner as
that of the whale, of which it is a pocket edition. The blubber, nearly
resembling pork-fat, was stripped off and taken in dories to town. I saw
the men tossing it with their pitchforks on the shore, whence it was
loaded into carts, and carried to the try-house on one of the wharves.
Here it was heaped in a palpitating and by no means savory mass. Men
were busily engaged in trimming off the superfluous flesh, or in slicing
it, with great knives resembling shingle-froes, into pieces suitable for
the try-pot; and still others were tossing it into the smoking caldron.
But if whales are getting scarce round about Nantucket, the blue-fish is
still plenty. This gamest and most delicious of salt-water fish is noted
for its strength, voracity, and grit. He is a very pirate among fish,
making prey of all alike. Cod, haddock, mackerel, or tautog, are glad to
get out of his way; the smaller fry he chases among the surf-waves of
the shore, much as the fishermen pursue the blackfish. Where the
blue-fish abounds you need not try for other sort: he is lord high
admiral of the finny tribes.
This fish has a curious history. Before the year 1763, in which the
great pestilence occurred among the Indians of the island, and from the
first coming of the Indians to Nantucket, a large, fat fish, called the
blue-fish, thirty of which would fill a barrel, was caught in great
plenty all around the island, from the 1st of July to the middle of
October. It was remarked that in 1764, the year in which the sickness
ended, they disappeared, and were not again seen until about fifty years
ago.[248]
It was a delicious afternoon that I set sail for the "Opening," as it is
called, between Nantucket and Tuckanuck,[249] an appanage of the former,
and one of the five islands constituting the county of Nantucket. The
tide runs with such swiftness that the boatmen do not venture through
the Opening except with plenty of wind, and of the right sort. With a
stiff breeze blowing, the breakers are superb, especially when wind and
tide are battling with each other. With the wind blowing freshly over
these shallow waters, it does not take long for the seas to assume
proportions simply appalling to a lands-man. It was a magnificent
sight! Great waves erected themselves into solid walls of green,
advancing at first majestically, then rushing with course to crash in
clouds of foam upon the opposite shore. It needs a skillful boatman at
the helm. What with the big seas, the seething tide-rips, and the scanty
sea-room, the sail is of itself sufficiently exciting.
[Illustration: CAPTURED PORPOISE AND BLACKFISH.]
But the fishing, what of that? We cast our lines over the stern, and, as
the boat was going at a great pace, they were straightened out in a
trice. At the end of each was a wicked-looking hook of large size,
having a leaden sinker run upon the shank of it. Over this hook, called
by the fishermen hereabouts a "drail," an eel-skin was drawn, though I
have known the blue-fish to bite well at a simple piece of canvas or
leather. Away bounded the boat, while we stood braced in the
standing-room to meet her plunging. Twenty fathoms with a pound of lead
at the end seems fifty, at least, with your boat rushing headlong under
all she can bear. Half an acre of smooth water wholly unruffled is just
ahead. "I'm going to put you right into that slick," said our helmsman.
"Now look out for a big one."
I felt a dead weight at my line. At the end of it a shining object
leaped clear from the water and fell, with a loud plash, a yard in
advance. Now, haul in steadily; don't be flurried; but, above all, mind
your line does not slacken. I lost one splendid fellow by too great
precipitation. The line is as rigid as steel wire, and, if your hands
are tender, cuts deep into the flesh. Ah! he is now near enough to see
the boat. How he plunges and tries to turn! He makes the water boil, and
the line fairly sing. I had as lief try to hold an old hunter in a
steeple-chase. Ha! here you are, my captive, under the counter; and now
I lift you carefully over the gunwale. I enjoin on the inexperienced to
be sure they land a fish in the boat, and not lose one, as I did, by
throwing him on the gunwale.
The fish shows fight after he is in the tub, shutting his jaws with a
vicious snap as he is being unhooked. Look out for him; he can bite, and
sharply too. The blue-fish is not unlike the salmon in looks and in
action. He is furnished with a backbone of steel, and is younger brother
to the shark.
I looked over my shoulder. My companion, a cool hand ordinarily, was
engaged in hauling in his line with affected nonchalance; but compressed
lips, stern eye, and rigid figure said otherwise. There is a quick flash
in the water, and in comes the fish. "Eight-pounder," says the boatman.
[Illustration: THE BLUE-FISH.]
These "slicks" are not the least curious feature of blue-fishing. The
fish seems to have the ability to exude an oil, by which he calms the
water so that he may, in a way, look about him, showing himself in this
an adept in applying a well-known principle in hydrostatics. A
perceptible odor arises from the slicks, so that the boatmen will often
say, "I smell blue-fish."
The boatman steered among the tide-rips, where each of us soon struck a
fish, or, as the phrase here is, "got fast." The monster--I believe he
was a ten-pounder at least--that took my hook threw himself bodily into
the air, shaking his head as if he did not mean to come on board us. And
he was as good as his threat: I saw the drail skipping on the top of the
wave as my line came in empty.
In two hours we had filled a barrel with fish, and it was time to shape
our course harborward. We saw the smoke of the _Island Home_, looking at
first as if rising out of the Sound; then her funnel appeared, and at
length her hull rose into view; but she was come within a mile of us
before I could distinguish her walking-beam. Tuckanuck and Low Water
Island were soon a-lee. Maddequet Harbor opened a moment for us, but we
did not enter. We rounded Eel Point with a full sail, and shot past
Whale Rock and the shoal of stranded blackfish I told you of. Ever and
anon we had passed one adrift, stripped of his fatty epidermis, and now
food for the sharks. They were grotesque objects, though now mere
carrion, above which the tierce gulls screamed noisily. Here is Brant
Point, and its light-house of red brick. We stand well over for Coatue,
then about with her for the home stretch. "Fast bind fast find." Our
bark is moored. With stiffened joints, but light hearts, we seek our
lodgings. What do they say to us? I' faith I am not sorry I went
blue-fishing. Reader, are you?
[Illustration: BLUE-FISHING.]
Many blue-fish are caught off the beach on the south shore of the island
by casting a line among the breakers, and then hauling it quickly in.
This method they call "heave and haul." It takes an expert to get the
sleight of it. Gathering the line in a coil and swinging it a few times
around his head, an old hand will cast it to an incredible distance. The
fish is also frequently taken in seines in shallow creeks and inlets,
but he as often escapes through the rents he has made in the net.
I had three excursions to make before I could say I had seen Nantucket.
One was to the hills and sands toward Coatue, that curved like a sickle
around the harbor; another was to Siasconset; and yet another to the
south side. This being done, I had not left much of the island
unexplored.
It was on a raw, blustering morning that I set out for a walk around the
eastern shore of the harbor. I saw the steamboat go out over the bar,
now settling down in the trough, and now shaking herself and staggering
onward. Dismally it looked for a day in July, but I had not the mending
of it. After getting well clear of the town I found the hills assuming
some size and appearance of vegetation. They were overgrown with
wild-cranberry vines bearing stunted fruit, each turning a little red
cheek to be kissed by the morning sun. Some beautiful flowers sprung
from among the neutral patches of heather. The Indian pea, unmatched in
wild beauty, displayed its sumptuous plume among the gray moss or modest
daisies.
The beach grass was rooted everywhere in the hillocks next the shore,
and appeared to be gradually working its way inland. I attempted to pull
some of it up, but only the stalks remained in my hand. Each leaf is
like a sword-blade. Pass your hand across the under-surface, and it is
prickly and rough. What there formerly was of soil has been growing
thinner and thinner by being blown into the sea. Unlike the
buffalo-grass of the plains, the beach grass possesses little nutriment,
though cattle crop the tender shoots in spring. It was formerly much
used for broom-stuff.
I picked up by the shore many scallop-shells, and on the hills saw many
more lying where pleasure-seekers had held, as the saying is, their
"_squantum_" or picnic. This is a historical shell. It surmounts the
cap-stone of the monument built over the Rock of the Forefathers at
Plymouth. In the Dark Ages, a scallop-shell fastened to the hat was the
accepted sign that the wearer had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We
read in Parnell's "Hermit:"
"He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before."
Professor Gosse says there was a supposed mystical connection between
the scallop-shell and St. James, the brother of the Lord, first bishop
of Jerusalem. The scallop beds are usually in deep water, and the fish,
therefore, can be obtained only by dredging. They are rather plentiful
in Narraganset Bay. Some, of a poetic turn, have called them the
"butterflies of the sea;" others a "frill," from their fancied
resemblance to that once indispensable badge of gentility. As much as
any thing they look like an open fan. Many other shells I found,
particularly the valves of quahaugs, and a periwinkle six inches in
length. Its shell is obtained by fastening a hook in the fish and
suspending it by a string. In a few hours the inhabitant drops his
integument. Amber is sometimes picked up on the shores, they say, but
none came to my share.
Shells of the same kind as those now common to the shores of the island
have been found at the depth of fifty feet, after penetrating several
strata of earth and clay. In digging as deep as the sea-level, the same
kind of sand is brought to the surface as now makes the beaches, and the
same inclination has been observed that now exists on the shores. Mr.
Adams, my landlord, told me he saw taken from a well, at the depth of
sixty feet, a quantity of quahaug-shells of the size of a half-dollar.
They usually have to go this depth in the sand, and then get poor,
brackish water. There is an account of the finding of the bone of a
whale thirty feet under-ground at Siasconset. I saw many covered wells
in Nantucket streets that appeared to be the supply of their immediate
neighborhoods.
The fogs that sometimes envelop Nantucket gave rise to a pleasant
fiction, which smacks of the salt. A whaling ship, outward-bound, having
been caught in one of unusual density in leaving the port, the captain
made a peculiar mark in it with a harpoon, and on his return, after a
three years' cruise, fell in with the harbor at the very same spot.
The Indian legend of the origin of Nantucket is that Mashope, the Indian
giant, formed it by emptying the ashes of his pipe into the sea. This
same Mashope, having in one of his excursions lighted his pipe on the
island, and sat down for a comfortable smoke, caused the fogs that have
since prevailed there. He probably waded across from the Vineyard, when
he wanted a little distraction from domestic infelicities.
The residence of Mashope was in a cavern known as the Devil's Den, at
Gay Head. Here he broiled the whale on a fire made of the largest trees,
which he pulled up by the roots. After separating No Man's Land from Gay
Head, metamorphosing his children into fishes, and throwing his wife on
Seconnet Point, where she now lies, a misshapen rock, he broke up
housekeeping and left for parts unknown.
Another Indian legend ascribed the discovery of Nantucket to the ravages
made by an eagle among the children of the tribes on Cape Cod. The bird
having seized a papoose, was followed by the parents in a canoe until
they came to the island, where they found the bones of the child. The
existence of the island was not before suspected.
Anciently, the dwellers were shepherds, living by their flocks as well
as by fishing. Every inhabitant had the right to keep a certain number
of sheep. One day in the year--formerly the only holiday kept on the
island--every body repaired to the commons. The sheep were driven into
pens and sheared. Sheep-shearing day continued the red-letter day on
Nantucket well into the present century. I saw flocks browsing almost
everywhere in my rambles, and thought them much more picturesque objects
in the landscape than corn-fields or vegetable gardens. There is a
freedom about a shepherd's life, a communion with and knowledge of
nature in all her variable moods, that renders it more attractive than
delving in the soil. No one is so weather-wise as a shepherd-boy. I
liked to hear the tinkling of the bells, and watch the gambols of the
lambs on the hill-sides.
In his day, Philip was lord and sagamore of the Nantucket Indians. He
came once to the island, in pursuit of a subject who had violated savage
laws by speaking the name of the dead. The culprit took refuge in the
house of Thomas Macy, and Philip, by the payment of a considerable
ransom, was induced to spare his life. This occurred in 1665.
The Indian prince was absolute lord on land and sea. Every thing
stranded on his coasts--whales or other wreck of value found floating on
the sea washing his shores--or brought and landed from any part of the
sea, was no less his own. In the "Magnalia" is related an incident
illustrating this absolutism of Indian sagamores. An Indian prince, with
eighty well-armed attendants, came to Mr. Mayhew's house at Martha's
Vineyard. Mayhew entered the room, but, being acquainted with their
customs, took no notice of the visitors, it being with them a point of
honor for an inferior to salute the superior. After a considerable time
the chief broke silence, addressing Mr. Mayhew as sachem, a title
importing only good or noble birth. The prince having preferred some
request, Mayhew acceded to it, adding that he would confer with the
whites to obtain their consent also. The Indian demanded why he recalled
his promise, saying, "What I promise or speak is always true; but you,
an English governor, can not be true, for you can not of yourself make
true what you promise."
It has been observed that the island is gradually wasting away. On the
east and south some hundreds of acres have been encroached upon by the
sea, and, by the accounts of ancient inhabitants, as many more on the
north. During some years the sea has contributed to extend the shores;
in others the waste was arrested; but the result of a long series of
observations shows a constant gain for the ocean. Smith's Point, now
isolated from the main-land, once formed a part of it, the sea in 1786
making a clean breach through, and forming a strait half a mile wide.
I have no wish to depreciate the value of real estate upon Nantucket,
but by the year 3000, according to our present calendar, I doubt if
there will be more than a grease-spot remaining to mark the habitation
of a race of vikings whose javelins were harpoons.
Siasconset is the paradise of the islander: not to see it would be in
his eyes unpardonable. Therefore I went to Siasconset, or Sconset, as
your true islander pronounces it, retaining all the kernel of the word.
It is situated on the south-east shore of the island, seven miles from
the town.
You may have, for your excursion, any sort of vehicle common to the
main-land, but the islanders most affect a cart with high-boarded sides
and a step behind, more resembling a city coal-cart than any thing else
I can call to mind. Though not like an Irish jaunting-car, it is of
quite as peculiar construction, and, when filled with its complement of
gleeful excursionists, is no bad conveyance. For my own part, I would
rather walk, but they will tell you every body rides to Sconset. Take
any vehicle you will, you can have only a single horse, the road, or
rather track, being so deeply rutted that, when once in it, the wheels
run in grooves six to twelve inches in depth, while the horse jogs along
in a sort of furrow.
I own to a rooted antipathy to carts, going much farther back than my
visit to Nantucket. The one I rode in over a stony road in Maine, with a
sack of hay for a cushion, put me out of conceit with carts. I would
have admired the scenery, had not my time been occupied in holding on,
and in catching my breath. I might have talked with the driver, had not
the jolting put me under the necessity of swallowing my own words, and
nobody, I fancy, quite likes to do that. What little was said came out
by jerks, like the confession of a victim stretched on the rack.
Henceforth I revolted against having my utterance broken on the wheel.
But when I came to be the involuntary witness of a family quarrel in a
cart, I banished them altogether from the catalogue of vehicles. "You
are kept so very close to it, in a cart, you see. There's thousands of
couples among you getting on like sweet-ile on a whetstone, in houses
five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the divorce court in
a cart. Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide,
but in a cart it does come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a
cart is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart so aggrawating."
After leaving the town the way is skirted, for some distance, with
scraggy, weird-looking pitch-pines, that are slowly replacing the native
forest. At every mile is a stone--set at the roadside by the care of one
native to this, and now an inhabitant of the most populous island in
America.[250] They are painted white, and stand like sentinels by day,
or ghosts by night, to point the way. In one place I noticed the bone of
a shark stuck in the ground for a landmark. There are two roads to
Siasconset, the old and the new. I chose the old.
A stretch of seven miles across a lonely prairie, with no other object
for the eye to rest upon than a few bare hills or sunken ponds, brought
us in sight of the village and of the sea.
The Siasconset of the past was neither more nor less than a collection
of fishermen's huts, built of the simplest materials that would keep out
wind and weather. In the beginnings of the English along our coast these
little fishing-hamlets were called "stages." Other fishing-stages were
at Weweeders, Peedee, Sesacacha, and Quidnet. Of these Siasconset alone
has flourished. All early navigators and writers agree that the waters
hereaway were abundantly stocked with the cod.
I found the village pleasantly seated along the margin of the bluff,
that rises here well above the sea. Behind it the land swelled again so
as to intercept the view of the town. Underneath the cliff is a terrace
of sand, to which a flight of steps, eked out with a foot-path, assists
the descent. Here were lying a number of dories, and one or two
singular-looking fish-carts, with a cask at one end for a wheel. A
fish-house, with brush flakes about it, and a pile of wreck lumber,
completed what man might have a title to. This terrace pitches abruptly
into the sea, with a regularity of slope like the glacis of a fortress;
It would never do to call the Atlantic a ditch, yet you seem standing
on a parapet of sand. The sand here appears composed of particles of
granite; in other parts of the island it is like the drift at Cape Cod.
[Illustration: HOMES OF THE FISHERMEN, SIASCONSET.]
The village is an odd collection of one-story cottages, so alike that
the first erected might have served as a pattern for all others. Iron
cranes projected from angles of the houses, on which to hang lanterns at
night-fall, in place of street-lamps. Fences, neatly whitewashed or
painted, inclosed each householder's possession, and in many instances
blooming flower-beds caused an involuntary glance at the window for
their guardians. On many houses were the names of wrecks that had the
seeming of grave-stones overlooking the sands that had entombed the
ships that wore them. In one front yard was the carved figure of a woman
that had been filliped by the foam of many a sea. Fresh from the loftier
buildings and broader streets of the town, this seemed like one of those
miniature villages that children delight in.
Looking off seaward, I could descry no sails. The last objects on the
horizon line were white-crested breakers combing above the "gulf or
ship-swallower" lying in wait beneath them. It is a dangerous sea, and
Nantucket Shoals have obtained a terrible celebrity--unequaled, perhaps,
even by the Goodwin Sands, that mariners shudder at the mention of. If a
ship grounds on the Shoal she is speedily wrenched in pieces by the
power of the surf. They will tell you of a brig (the _Poinsett_) that
came ashore on the south side with her masts in her, apparently
uninjured. Two days' pounding strewed the beach with her timbers. "A
ship on the Shoals!" is a sound that will quicken the pulses of men
familiar with danger. I suppose the calamitous boom of a minute-gun has
often roused the little fishing-hamlet to exertions of which a few human
lives were the guerdon. Heard amidst the accompaniments of tempest,
gale, and the thunder of the breakers, it might well thrill the listener
with fear; or, if unheard, the lightning flashes would tell the watchers
that wood and iron still held together, and that hope was not yet
extinct.
It may be that the great Nantucket South Shoal, forty-five miles in
breadth, by fifty in length, tends to the preservation of the island,
for which it is a breakwater. The great extent of shallows on both sides
of the island, with the known physical changes, would almost justify the
belief that these sands and this island once formed part of the
main-land of New England.
Much is claimed, doubtless with justice, for the salubrity of Siasconset
air. Many resort thither during the heats of midsummer. I found denizens
of Nantucket who, it would seem, had enough of sea and shore at home,
domesticated in some wee cottage. The season over, houses are shut up,
and the village goes into winter-quarters. The greensward, elevation
above the sea, and pure air are its credentials. I saw it on a sunny
day, looking its best.
[Illustration: THE SEA-BLUFF, SIASCONSET.]
The sand is coarse-grained and very soft. There is no beach on the
island firm enough for driving, or even tolerable walking. The waves
that came in here projected themselves fully forty feet up the
escarpment of the bank that I have spoken of. I recollect that, having
chosen what I believed a safe position, I was overtaken by a wave, and
had to beat a hasty retreat. Bathing here is, on account of the
under-tow and quicksands, attended with hazard, and ought not to be
attempted except with the aid of ropes. Willis talks of the tenth wave.
I know about the third of the swell, for I have often watched it. The
first and second are only forerunners of the mighty one. The dories come
in on it. A breaker fell here every five seconds, by the watch.
We returned by the foreland of Sankoty Head, on which a light-house
stands. From an eminence here the sea is visible on both sides of the
island. When built, this light was unsurpassed in brilliancy by any on
the coast, and was considered equal to the magnificent beacon of the
Morro. Fishermen called it the blazing star. Its flashes are very full,
vivid, and striking, and its position is one of great importance, as
warning the mariner to steer wide of the great Southern Shoal. Seven
miles at sea the white flash takes a reddish hue.
[Illustration: HAULING A DORY OVER THE HILLS, NANTUCKET.]
The following afternoon I walked across the island to the south shore at
Surfside, a distance of perhaps three miles or more. A south-west gale
that had prevailed for twenty-four hours led me to expect an angry and
tumultuous sea; nor was I disappointed: the broad expanse between shore
and horizon was a confused mass of foam and broken water. It was a
mournful sea: not a sail nor a living soul was in sight. A few
sand-birds and plover piped plaintively to the hoarse diapason of the
billows.
Here I saw a sunset in a gale; the sun, as the sailors say, "setting up
shrouds and backstays"--screened from view by a mass of dark clouds, yet
pouring down from behind them through interstices upon the bounds of the
sea, the rays having somewhat the appearance of golden ropes arising
from the ocean and converging to an unseen point.
[Illustration: LIGHT-HOUSE, SANKOTY HEAD, NANTUCKET.]
I seated myself in one of the dories on the beach and gazed my fill. Say
what you will, there is a mighty fascination in the sea. Darkness
surprised me before I had recrossed the lonely moor, and I held my way,
guided by the deep cart-ruts, until the lights of the town twinkled
their welcome before me. It was my last night on sea-girt Nantucket. I
do not deny that I left it with reluctance.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[248] Zaccheus Macy, in his account of the island, written in 1792, says
none had been taken up to that time--"a great loss to the islanders."
[249] The Indian name Tuckanuck signifies a loaf of bread.
[250] Rev. F. C. Ewer, of New York.
[Illustration: NEWPORT, FROM FORT ADAMS.]