yesterday, and later it was almost calm, after blowing gently from the
northwest,--notwithstanding which it rained. There being a mistiness in
the air, we could see the gleam of the lighthouse itself by the highest
point of this island, or by our being in a valley. As we sat in the
piazza in the evening, we saw the light from on board some vessel move
slowly through the distant obscurity,--so slowly that we were only
sensible of its progress by forgetting it and looking again. The plash
and murmur of the waves around the island were soothingly audible. It
was not unpleasantly cold, and Mr. Laighton, Mr. Thaxter and myself sat
under the piazza till long after dark; the former at a little distance,
occasionally smoking his pipe, and Mr. Thaxter and I talking about poets
and the stage. The latter is an odd subject to be discussed in this
stern and wild scene, which has precisely the same characteristics now as
two hundred years ago. The mosquitoes were very abundant last night, and
they are certainly a hardier race than their inland brethren.
This morning there is a sullen sky, with scarcely any breeze. The clouds
throw shadows of varied darkness upon the sea. I know not which way the
wind is; but the aspect of things seems to portend a calm drizzle as much
as anything else.
About eleven o'clock, Mr. Thaxter took me over to Smutty Nose in his
dory. A sloop from the eastward, laden with laths, bark, and other
lumber, and a few barrels of mackerel, filled yesterday, and was left by
her skipper and crew. All the morning we have seen boats picking up her
deck-load, which was scattered over the sea, and along the shores of the
islands. The skipper and his three men got into Smutty Nose in the boat;
and the sloop was afterwards boarded by the Smutty Noses and brought into
that island. We saw her lying at the pier,--a black, ugly, rotten old
thing, with the water half-way over her decks. The wonder was, how she
swam so long. The skipper, a man of about thirty-five or forty, in a
blue pilot-cloth overcoat, and a rusty, high-crowned hat jammed down over
his brow, looked very forlorn; while the islanders were grouped about,
indolently enjoying the matter.
I walked with Mr. Thaxter over the island, and saw first the graves of
the Spaniards. They were wrecked on this island a hundred years ago, and
lie buried in a range about thirty feet in length, to the number of
sixteen, with rough, moss-grown pieces of granite on each side of this
common grave. Near this spot, yet somewhat removed, so as not to be
confounded with it, are other individual graves, chiefly of the Haley
family, who were once possessors of the island. These have slate
gravestones. There is also, within a small enclosure of rough pine
boards, a white marble gravestone, in memory of a young man named Bekker,
son of the person who now keeps the hotel on Smutty Nose. He was buried,
Mr. Thaxter says, notwithstanding his marble monument, in a rude pine
box, which he himself helped to make.
We walked to the farthest point of the island, and I have never seen a
more dismal place than it was on this sunless and east-windy day, being
the farthest point out into the melancholy sea, which was in no very
agreeable mood, and roared sullenly against the wilderness of rocks. One
mass of rock, more than twelve feet square, was thrown up out of the sea
in a storm, not many years since, and now lies athwartwise, never to be
moved unless another omnipotent wave shall give it another toss. On
shore, such a rock would be a landmark for centuries. It is
inconceivable how a sufficient mass of water could be brought to bear on
this ponderous mass; but, not improbably, all the fragments piled upon
one another round these islands have thus been flung to and fro at one
time or another.
There is considerable land that would serve tolerably for pasture on
Smutty Nose, and here and there a little enclosure of richer grass, built
round with a strong stonewall. The same kind of enclosure is prevalent
on Star Island,--each small proprietor fencing off his little bit of
tillage or grass. Wild-flowers are abundant and various on these
islands; the bayberry-bush is plentiful on Smutty Nose, and makes the
hand that crushes it fragrant.
The hotel is kept by a Prussian, an old soldier, who fought at the Battle
of Waterloo. We saw him in the barn,--a gray, heavy, round-skulled old
fellow, troubled with deafness. The skipper of the wrecked sloop had,
apparently, just been taking a drop of comfort, but still seemed
downcast. He took passage in a fishing-vessel, the Wave, of Kittery, for
Portsmouth; and I know not why, but there was something that made me
smile in his grim and gloomy look, his rusty, jammed hat, his rough and
grisly beard, and in his mode of chewing tobacco, with much action of the
jaws, getting out the juice as largely as possible, as men always do when
disturbed in mind. I looked at him earnestly, and was conscious of
something that marked him out from among the careless islanders around
him. Being as much discomposed as it was possible for him to be, his
feelings individualized the man and magnetized the observer. When he got
aboard the fishing-vessel, he seemed not entirely at his ease, being
accustomed to command and work amongst his own little crew, and now
having nothing to do. Nevertheless, unconsciously perhaps, he lent a
hand to whatever was going on, and yet had a kind of strangeness about
him. As the Wave set sail, we were just starting in our dory, and a
young fellow, an acquaintance of Mr. Thaxter, proposed to take us in tow;
so we were dragged along at her stern very rapidly, and with a whitening
wake, until we came off Hog Island. Then the dory was cast loose, and
Mr. Thaxter rowed ashore against a head sea.
The day is still overcast, and the wind is from the eastward; but it does
not increase, and the sun appears occasionally on the point of shining
out. A boat--the Fanny, I suppose, from Portsmouth--has just come to her
moorings in front of the hotel. A sail-boat has put off from her, with a
passenger in the stern. Pray God she bring me a letter with good news
from home; for I begin to feel as if I had been long enough away.
There is a bowling-alley on Smutty Nose, at which some of the
Star-Islanders were playing, when we were there. I saw only two
dwelling-houses besides the hotel. Connected with Smutty Nose by a
stone-wall there is another little bit of island, called Malaga. Both
are the property of Mr. Laighton.
Mr. Laighton says that the Spanish wreck occurred forty-seven years ago,
instead of a hundred. Some of the dead bodies were found on Malaga,
others on various parts of the next island. One or two had crept to a
stone-wall that traverses Smutty Nose, but were unable to get over it.
One was found among the bushes the next summer. Mr. Haley had them
buried at his own expense.
The skipper of the wrecked sloop, yesterday, was unwilling to go to
Portsmouth until he was shaved,--his beard being of several days' growth.
It seems to be the impulse of people under misfortune to put on their
best clothes, and attend to the decencies of life.
The Fanny brought a passenger,--a thin, stiff, black-haired young man,
who enters his name as Mr. Tufts, from Charlestown. He, and a country
trader, his wife, sister, and two children (all of whom have been here
several days) are now the only guests besides myself.
September 12th.--The night set in sullen and gloomy, and morning has
dawned in pretty much the same way. The wind, however, seems rising
somewhat, and grumbles past the angle of the house. Perhaps we shall see
a storm yet from the eastward; and, having the whole sweep of the broad
Atlantic between here and Ireland, I do not see why it should not be
fully equal to a storm at sea.
It has been raining more or less all the forenoon, and now, at twelve
o'clock, blows, as Mr. Laighton says, "half a gale" from the southeast.
Through the opening of our shallow valley, towards the east, there is the
prospect of a tumbling sea, with hundreds of white-caps chasing one
another over it. In front of the hotel, being to leeward, the water near
the shore is but slightly ruffled; but farther the sea is agitated, and
the surf breaks over Square Rock. All round the horizon, landward as
well as seaward, the view is shut in by a mist. Sometimes I have a dim
sense of the continent beyond, but no more distinct than the thought of
the other world to the unenlightened soul. The sheep bleat in their
desolate pasture. The wind shakes the house. A loon, seeking, I
suppose, some quieter resting-place than on the troubled waves, was seen
swimming just now in the cove not more than a hundred yards from the
hotel. Judging by the pother which this "half a gale" makes with the
sea, it must have been a terrific time, indeed, when that great wave
rushed and roared across the islands.
Since dinner, I have been to the eastern shore to look at the sea. It is
a wild spectacle, but still, I suppose, lacks an infinite deal of being a
storm. Outside of this island there is a long and low one (or two in a
line), looking more like a reef of rocks than an island, and at the
distance of a mile or more. There the surf and spray break gallantly,--
white-sheeted forms rising up all at once, and hovering a moment in the
air. Spots which, in calm times, are not discernible from the rest of
the ocean, now are converted into white, foamy breakers. The swell of
the waves against our shore makes a snowy depth, tinged with green, for
many feet back from the shore. The longer waves swell, overtop, and rush
upon the rocks; and, when they return, the waters pour back in a cascade.
Against the outer points of Smutty Nose and Star Island, there is a
higher surf than here; because, the wind being from the southeast, these
islands receive it first, and form a partial barrier in respect to this.
While I looked, there was moisture in the air, and occasional spats of
rain. The uneven places in the rocks were full of the fallen rain.
It is quite impossible to give an idea of these rocky shores,--how
confusedly they are tossed together, lying in all directions; what solid
ledges, what great fragments thrown out from the rest. Often the rocks
are broken, square and angular, so as to form a kind of staircase;
though, for the most part, such as would require a giant stride to ascend
them.
Sometimes a black trap-rock runs through the bed of granite; sometimes
the sea has eaten this away, leaving a long, irregular fissure. In some
places, owing to the same cause perhaps, there is a great hollow place
excavated into the ledge, and forming a harbor, into which the sea flows;
and, while there is foam and fury at the entrance, it is comparatively
calm within. Some parts of the crag are as much as fifty feet of
perpendicular height, down which you look over a bare and smooth descent,
at the base of which is a shaggy margin of sea-weed. But it is vain to
try to express this confusion. As much as anything else, it seems as if
some of the massive materials of the world remained superfluous, after
the Creator had finished, and were carelessly thrown down here, where the
millionth part of them emerge from the sea, and in the course of
thousands of years have become partially bestrewn with a little soil.
The wind has changed to southwest, and blows pretty freshly. The sun
shone before it set; and the mist, which all day has overhung the land,
now takes the aspect of a cloud,--drawing a thin veil between us and the
shore, and rising above it. In our own atmosphere there is no fog nor
mist.
September 13th.--I spent last evening, as well as part of the evening
before, at Mr. Thaxter's. It is certainly a romantic incident to find
such a young man on this lonely island; his marriage with the pretty
Miranda is true romance. In our talk we have glanced over many matters,
and, among the rest, that of the stage, to prepare himself for which was
his first motive in coming hither. He appears quite to have given up any
dreams of that kind now. What he will do on returning to the world, as
his purpose is, I cannot imagine; but, no doubt, through all their
remaining life, both he and she will look back to this rocky ledge, with
its handful of soil, as to a Paradise.
Last evening we (Mr., Mrs., and Miss Thaxter) sat and talked of ghosts
and kindred subjects; and they told me of the appearance of a little old
woman in a striped gown, that had come into that house a few months ago.
She was seen by nobody but an Irish nurse, who spoke to her, but received
no answer. The little woman drew her chair up towards the fire, and
stretched out her feet to warm them. By and by the nurse, who suspected
nothing of her ghostly character, went to get a pail of water; and, when
she came back, the little woman was not there. It being known precisely
how many and what people were on the island, and that no such little
woman was among them, the fact of her being a ghost is incontestable. I
taught them how to discover the hidden sentiments of letters by
suspending a gold ring over them. Ordinarily, since I have been here, we
have spent the evening under the piazza, where Mr. Laighton sits to take
the air. He seems to avoid the within-doors whenever he can. So there
he sits in the sea-breezes, when inland people are probably drawing their
chairs to the fireside; and there I sit with him,--not keeping up a
continual flow of talk, but each speaking as any wisdom happens to come
into his mind.
The wind, this morning, is from the northwestward, rather brisk, but not
very strong. There is a scattering of clouds about the sky; but the
atmosphere is singularly clear, and we can see several hills of the
interior, the cloud-like White Mountains, and, along the shore, the long
white beaches and the dotted dwellings, with great distinctness. Many
small vessels spread their wings, and go seaward.
I have been rambling over the southern part of the island, and looking at
the traces of habitations there. There are several enclosures,--the
largest perhaps thirty yards square,--surrounded with a rough stonewall
of very mossy antiquity, built originally broad and strong, two or three
large stones in width, and piled up breast-high or more, and taking
advantage of the extending ledge to make it higher. Within this
enclosure there is almost a clear space of soil, which was formerly, no
doubt, cultivated as a garden, but is now close cropt by the sheep and
cattle, except where it produces thistles, or the poisonous weed called
mercury, which seems to love these old walls, and to root itself in or
near them. These walls are truly venerable, gray, and mossy; and you see
at once that the hands that piled the stones must have been long ago
turned to dust. Close by the enclosure is the hollow of an old cellar,
with rocks tumbled into it, but the layers of stone at the side still to
be traced, and bricks, broken or with rounded edges, scattered about, and
perhaps pieces of lime; and weeds and grass growing about the whole.
Several such sites of former human homes may be seen there, none of which
can possibly be later than the Revolution, and probably they are as old
as the settlement of the island. The site has Smutty Nose and Star
opposite, with a road (that is, a water-road) between, varying from half
a mile to a mile. Duck Island is also seen on the left; and, on the
right, the shore of the mainland. Behind, the rising ground intercepts
the view. Smith's monument is visible. I do not see where the
inhabitants could have kept their boats, unless in the chasms worn by the
sea into the rocks.
One of these chasms has a spring of fresh water in the gravelly base,
down to which the sea has worn out. The chasm has perpendicular, though
irregular, sides, which the waves have chiselled out very square. Its
width varies from ten to twenty feet, widest towards the sea; and on the
shelves, up and down the sides, some soil has been here and there
accumulated, on which grow grass and wild-flowers,--such as golden-rod,
now in bloom, and raspberry-bushes, the fruit of which I found ripe,--the
whole making large parts of the sides of the chasm green, its verdure
overhanging the strip of sea that dashes and foams into the hollow.
Sea-weed, besides what grows upon and shags the submerged rocks, is
tossed into the harbor, together with stray pieces of wood, chips,
barrel-staves, or (as to-day) an entire barrel, or whatever else the sea
happens to have on hand. The water rakes to and fro over the pebbles at
the bottom of the chasm, drawing back, and leaving much of it bare, then
rushing up, with more or less of foam and fury, according to the force
and direction of the wind; though, owing to the protection of the
adjacent islands, it can never have a gale blowing right into its mouth.
The spring is situated so far down the chasm, that, at half or two-thirds
tide, it is covered by the sea. Twenty minutes after the retiring of the
tide suffices to restore to it its wonted freshness.
In another chasm, very much like the one here described, I saw a niche in
the rock, about tall enough for a person of moderate stature to stand
upright. It had a triangular floor and a top, and was just the place to
hold the rudest statue that ever a savage made.
Many of the ledges on the island have yellow moss or lichens spread on
them in large patches. The moss of those stone walls does really look
very old.
"Old Bab," the ghost, has a ring round his neck, and is supposed either
to have been hung or to have had his throat cut, but he steadfastly
declines telling the mode of his death. There is a luminous appearance
about him as he walks, and his face is pale and very dreadful.
The Fanny arrived this forenoon, and sailed again before dinner. She
brought, as passenger, a Mr. Balch, brother to the country trader who has
been spending a few days here. On her return, she has swept the islands
of all the non-residents except myself. The wind being ahead, and pretty
strong, she will have to beat up, and the voyage will be anything but
agreeable. The spray flew before her bows, and doubtless gave the
passengers all a thorough wetting within the first half-hour.
The view of Star Island or Gosport from the north is picturesque,--the
village, or group of houses, being gathered pretty closely together in
the centre of the island, with some green about them; and above all the
other edifices, wholly displayed, stands the little stone church, with
its tower and belfry. On the right is White Island, with the lighthouse;
to the right of that, and a little to the northward, Londoner's Rock,
where, perhaps, of old, some London ship was wrecked. To the left of
Star Island, and nearer Hog, or Appledore, is Smutty Nose. Pour the blue
sea about these islets, and let the surf whiten and steal up from their
points, and from the reefs about them (which latter whiten for an
instant, and then are lost in the whelming and eddying depths), the
northwest-wind the while raising thousands of white-caps, and the evening
sun shining solemnly over the expanse,--and it is a stern and lovely
scene.
The valleys that intersect, or partially intersect, the island are a
remarkable feature. They appear to be of the same formation as the
fissures in the rocks, but, as they extend farther from the sea, they
accumulate a little soil along the irregular sides, and so become green
and shagged with bushes, though with the rock everywhere thrusting itself
through. The old people of the isles say that their fathers could
remember when the sea, at high tide, flowed quite through the valley in
which the hotel stands, and that boats used to pass. Afterwards it was a
standing pond; then a morass, with cat-tail flags growing in it. It has
filled up, so far as it is filled, by the soil being washed down from the
higher ground on each side. The storms, meanwhile, have tossed up the
shingle and paving-stones at each end of the valley, so as to form a
barrier against the passage of any but such mighty waves as that which
thundered through a year or two ago.
The old inhabitants lived in the centre or towards the south of the
island, and avoided the north and east because the latter were so much
bleaker in winter. They could moor their boats in the road, between
Smutty Nose and Hog, but could not draw them up. Mr. Laighton found
traces of old dwellings in the vicinity of the hotel, and it is supposed
that the principal part of the population was on this island. I spent
the evening at Mr. Thaxter's, and we drank a glass of his 1820 Scheidam.
The northwest-wind was high at ten o'clock, when I came home, the tide
full, and the murmur of the waves broad and deep.
September 14th.--Another of the brightest of sunny mornings. The wind is
not nearly so high as last night, but it is apparently still from the
northwest, and serves to make the sea look very blue and cold. The
atmosphere is so transparent that objects seem perfectly distinct along
the mainland. To-day I must be in Portsmouth; to-morrow, at home. A
brisk west, or northwest wind, making the sea so blue, gives a very
distinct outline in its junction with the sky.
September 16th.--On Tuesday, the 14th, there was no opportunity to get to
the mainland. Yesterday morning opened with a southeast rain, which
continued all day. The Fanny arrived in the forenoon, with some coal for
Mr. Laighton, and sailed again before dinner, taking two of the maids of
the house; but as it rained pouring, and as I could not, at any rate,
have got home to-night, there would have been no sense in my going. It
began to clear up in the decline of the day; the sun shot forth some
golden arrows a little before his setting; and the sky was perfectly
clear when I went to bed, after spending the evening at Mr. Thaxter's.
This morning is clear and bright; but the wind is northwest, making the
sea look blue and cold, with little breaks of white foam. It is
unfavorable for a trip to the mainland; but doubtless I shall find an
opportunity of getting ashore before night.
The highest part of Appledore is about eighty feet above the sea. Mr.
Laighton has seen whales off the island,--both on the eastern side and
between it and the mainland; once a great crowd of them, as many as
fifty. They were drawn in by pursuing their food,--a small fish called
herring-bait, which came ashore in such abundance that Mr. Laighton
dipped up basketfuls of them. No attempt was made to take the whales.
There are vague traditions of trees on these islands. One of them, Cedar
Island, is said to have been named from the trees that grew on it. The
matter appears improbable, though, Mr. Thaxter says, large quantities of
soil are annually washed into the sea; so that the islands may have been
better clad with earth and its productions than now.
Mrs. Thaxter tells me that there are several burial-places on this
island; but nobody has been buried here since the Revolution. Her own
marriage was the first one since that epoch, and her little Karl, now
three months old, the first-born child in all those eighty years.
[Then follow extracts from the Church Records of Gosport.]
This book of the church records of Gosport is a small folio, well bound
in dark calf, and about an inch thick; the paper very stout, with a
water-mark of an armed man in a sitting posture, holding a spear . . . .
over a lion, who brandishes a sword; on alternate pages the Crown, and
beneath it the letters G. R. The motto of the former device Pro Patria.
The book is written in a very legible hand, probably by the Rev. Mr.
Tucke. The ink is not much faded.
Concord, March 9th, 1853.--Finished, this day, the last story of
Tanglewood Tales. They were written in the following order.
The Pomegranate Seeds.
The Minotaur.
The Golden Fleece.
The Dragons' Teeth.
Circe's Palace.
The Pygmies.
The introduction is yet to be written. Wrote it 13th March. I went to
Washington (my first visit) on 14th April.
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life
of the affections, as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are
wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
June 9th.--Cleaning the attic to-day, here at the Wayside, the woman
found an immense snake, flat and outrageously fierce, thrusting out its
tongue. Ellen, the cook, killed it. She called it an adder, but it
appears to have been a striped snake. It seems a fiend, haunting the
house. On further inquiry, the snake is described as plaided with brown
and black.
Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrows,
and uses fire-arms,--a pistol,--perhaps a revolver.