Narragansett Bay is one of the finest harbors on the New England
coast. It stretches thirty miles inland, the rivers emptying into it
making the water-power for the numerous and extensive textile
factories of Rhode Island, which embraces the shores surrounding and
the islands within the bay. It opens broadly, having beautiful shores,
lined with pleasant beaches which dissolve into low cliffs and
water-worn crags; for the character of the coast gradually changes
from the sandy borders of Long Island Sound to the rocks of New
England. Its western boundary, stretching far out into the sea, is the
famous Point Judith, a long, low, narrow and protruding sandspit
thrust into the Atlantic, a headland dreaded by the traveller, to whom
"rounding Point Judith" and its brilliant flashing beacon, thus
changing the course over the long ocean swells, when voyaging upon a
Sound steamer, means a great deal in the way of tribute to Neptune.
This headland was always feared by the mariner, and we are
romantically told that in the colonial days a storm-tossed vessel was
driven in towards this shore, her anxious skipper at the wheel, when
suddenly his bright-eyed daughter, Judith, called out, "Land, father,
I see the land!" His dim vision not discerning it, he shouted, "Where
away? Point, Judith, point!" She pointed; he was warned; and quickly
changing the course, escaped disaster. This story was often repeated,
so that in time the sailors gave her name to the headland. It is an
interesting tale, but there are people, more prosaic, who insist that
the Point was really named after Judith Quincy, wife of John Hull, the
coiner of the ancient "pine-tree shillings," who bought the land there
from the Indians. But, however named, and whoever the sponsor, Judith
is usually well-remembered by those circumnavigating the dreaded
Point.
Within Narragansett Bay, the chief island is Aquidneck, or Rhode
Island, about fifteen miles long and of much fertility, having the
best farm land in New England, and at the southern end the noted
watering-place of Newport. This island furnishes the first half of the
long official title of the little State--"Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations." The memory of the old Narragansett chieftain, Canonicus,
is preserved in Conanicut Island, west of Rhode Island, and seven
miles long, there being between the two islands the capacious
anchorage-ground of Newport Harbor. This island in 1678 was named
Jamestown in honor of King James, and at its southern end, near the
ruins of an old British fort, is the famous Beaver Tail Light, the
guide into Newport harbor, the oldest lighthouse in America, dating
from 1667. Roger Williams, who founded the "Providence Plantations,"
distributed various names to the other islands, several of them now
popular resorts, among these titles, which represent the varying
phases of his early emotions, being Prudence, Patience, Hope and
Despair, while some later colonists with different ideas, evidently
named Dutch Island, Hog Island, and the Starved Goat. Rhode Island is
the smallest State in the Union, though among the first in
manufactures, and in wealth proportionately to population. It has
barely twelve hundred square miles of surface, of which more than
one-eighth is water, and the highest land, Durfee Hill, is elevated
only eight hundred feet.