There are not many of these quiet coves. In general a confus_Among the Isles of Shoals

[Illustration: WHITE ISLAND, LOOKING SOUTHWEST FROM APPLEDORE.]

_Among the Isles of Shoals._

BY CELIA THAXTER.

With Illustrations.

[Illustration]

“Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine.”

TENNYSON.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[Illustration]

WHITE ISLAND, LOOKING SOUTHWEST

FROM APPLEDORE _Frontispiece._

TRAP DIKE, APPLEDORE Page 18

WHITE ISLAND “ 120

VIEW FROM THE SOUTHEASTERN

POINT OF APPLEDORE “ 180

[Illustration]

It is with reluctance that I suffer these fragmentary and inadequate

sketches of the Isles of Shoals to appear in book form. Except that

some account of the place, however slight, is so incessantly called for

by people who throng these islands in summer, I should hardly venture

to offer to the public so imperfect a chronicle, of which the most that

can be said is, that it is, perhaps, better than nothing.

[Illustration]

AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

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.” But 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 Galapagos 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 gushing of the wave

Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave

On alien shores.”

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 mainland, 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 “Smutty-nose,” 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 lighthouse 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; a perpetual danger, for it lies directly in the path of

most of the sailing vessels, and many a schooner has been “brought up

all standing” by this unexpected obstacle. Another rock, 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.

The names of the towns, Appledore, Gosport, and, along the coast,

Portsmouth, Newcastle, Rye, Ipswich, Portland, Bangor, Newbury,

Amesbury, Salisbury, and many more, are all borrowed from towns on, or

not far from, the coasts of England and Wales, as may be seen from the

maps of those countries. Salisbury Beach fronts our islands. Amesbury

lies farther inland, but the gentle outline of Po Hill, in that town,

is the last eminence of any importance on the southern end of the coast

line.

The 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

tumbling 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,

“With sunset purple soothing all the waste,”

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 gulls’ wings 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?

“Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.”

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 mainland, 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 bowlder

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 Smutty-nose,

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 toward spring, when the northwest gales blow sometimes

for three weeks steadily day and night, beats continually upon the

shore.

[Illustration: TRAP DIKE, APPLEDORE.]

The coast-line varies, of course, with 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 Halfway Rock, the touch of the ripples on the beach at Londoner’s,

the long and lazy breaker that is forever rolling below the lighthouse

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, faintly glimmering, white in the far distance. The dock at

Smutty-nose 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. Indian arrowheads of jasper and

flint have been found among them. 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 driftwood,--a mass of warm neutral tints,--with brown, green, and

crimson mosses, and a few golden snail-shells 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 aloft, 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 think) a few years

ago, bales of her costly cargo of silks and rich stuffs 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 a grewsome

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.

I am certain that cedars grew there, for I found on the highest part

of Smutty-nose Point, deep down in a crevice in the rocks, a piece of

a root of cedar-wood, which, though perfectly preserved, bore marks of

great age, being worn as smooth as glass with the raindrops that had

penetrated to its hiding-place. 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 place 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 shadbush, 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 willow-weed” (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 mainland 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 sea-lungwort (_Mertensia maritima_). At Star the

crooked little ways between the houses are lined with tall plants of

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 yet are women 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 still, 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, God-fearing folk, most of them,--for so

tradition says;[A] though in later years they fell into evil ways, and

drank “fire-water,” 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.

[A] “The character and habits of the original settlers for industry,

intelligence, and pure morals have acquired for them great respect in

the estimation of posterity.”--_Williamson’s History of Maine._

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 raspberry bushes 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 rocks,

like a tender afterthought 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 as a landmark. At

any rate, nobody knows 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 sea-coast 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 Atlantic breakers, as several wrecks

of 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 empty-handed; 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 sea-wall, 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 windmills 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 house

beneath the second-story windows. This being in a ruinous condition, I

never dared venture out upon it; but a large, 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 sky and 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 lately married 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 lighthouse 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 14^{th} 1813 Jany 15^{th} one man found, Jany

16^{th} 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 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 it spoken of as a 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 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 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 sailor-men 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.