Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

I suppose the phrase "cod-fish aristocracy" did not originate on the Cape, but may have a more ancient beginning than is generally believed, as the Dutch were, in the year 1347, engaged in a civil war which lasted many years, the rival parties being called "Hooks" and "Cod-fish," respectively. The former supported Margaret, Countess of Holland; the latter, William, her son.

Champlain relates that the Indians, in this bay, fished for cod with lines made of bark, to which a bone hook was attached, the bone being fashioned like a harpoon, and fastened to a piece of wood with what he believed to be hemp, such as they had in France. Bass, blue-fish, and sturgeon were taken by spearing.

A fish dinner is eaten at least once a week by every family in New England. In Catholic countries the supply of dried fish is usually exhausted by the end of Lent. We have seen that Bradford received a Jesuit at his own table, and regaled him with a fish dinner because it was Friday, a piece of old-time courtesy some would have us think the Pilgrims incapable of. Somewhat later they had a law in Massachusetts banishing Jesuits or other Roman Catholic ecclesiastics out of their jurisdiction on pain of death.

In effect, the cod-fish is to New England what roast beef is to old Albion. The likeness of one is hanging in the State-house at Boston, as the symbol of a leading Massachusetts industry. Down East the girls carry bits of it in their pockets, and it is set on the bar-room counters for luncheon. A Yankee can fatten on it where an Englishman would starve. The statement is fortified by what we call the truth of history.

In 1714 her Majesty of England concluded a peace with her restless neighbor across the Channel; or, as Pope rhymes it,

"At length great Anna said, 'Let discord cease;'
She said, the world obey'd, and all was peace."

This was the famous treaty that Matthew Prior, the negotiator-poet, calls "the d – d Peace of Utrecht." Prior went to Paris with Bolingbroke. Having arrived there during Lent, he was, by an edict, permitted to have roast beef as a mark of royal favor, and on, I presume, his own application. I rescue this morceau from the abyss of state archives:

"Nous Baron de Breteuil et de Preuilly, premier Baron de Touraine, Con

du Roy en ses Conseils, Introducteur des Ambassadeurs et Princes Etrangères pres de Sa Ma

; Enjoignons au Boucher de l'Hôtel de Dieu de fournir pendant le Carême au prix ordinaire, suivant l'ordre du Roy, toute la viande de Boucherie, et Rotisserie qui sera necessaire pour la subsistance de la maison de plenipotentiaire de la Reyne de la Grande Bretagne, M. Prior."[220 - Prior was personally acceptable to Louis XIV., who gave him a diamond box with his portrait. He was also well known to Boileau.]

If the great staple of New England is so firmly associated with the Cape, its claims in another direction deserve also to be remembered. The whale-fishery of New England had its beginning here. The hook caught those leviathans as the Penobscot weirs catch salmon. It was long afterward that Nantucket bristled with harpoons. That sea-girt isle borrowed her art of the Cape, and induced a professor in whale-craft, Ichabod Paddock by name, to come over and teach it to her. The Pilgrims would have begun on the instant, but they had not the gear. The Indians followed it in their primitive way, and the exploring parties saw them stripping blubber from a stranded blackfish exactly as now practiced.

During the years the whales swam along the shore by Cape Cod there was good fishing in boats. Watchmen stationed on the hills gave notice by signals when one was in sight. After some time they passed farther off on the banks, and sloops carrying whale-boats were used. Cotton Mather refers to the fishery here. Douglass notes a whale struck on the back of Cape Cod that yielded one hundred and thirty-four barrels of oil. In 1739 six small whales were taken in Provincetown Harbor. In 1746 not more than three or four whales were taken on the Cape.

The first whaling adventure to the Falkland Islands is referred to the enterprise of two inhabitants of Truro, who received the hint from Admiral Montague, of the British navy, in 1774.[221 - Captain David Smith and Captain Gamaliel Collins.]

This admiral, commonly called "Mad Montague," was a character. There is an anecdote of his causing his coxswain to put the hands of some drowned Dutch sailors in their pockets, and then betting fifty guineas to five they died thus. The only reminiscence of whaling that I saw in Provincetown was a gate-way formed of the ribs of a whale before the door of a cottage. Over the house-door was a gilded eagle, of wood, that had decorated some luckless craft. At the tavern the door was kept ajar by a curiously carved whale's tooth wedged underneath. My landlord, gray-haired, but still straight and sinewy, remarked, as he saw me examining it, "I struck that fellow."

But what I came to see here was the desert, and I had not yet seen it. Turning my back upon the town, I set out for Race Point, three miles distant. The last house I passed – and this was a slaughter-house – had the sign-board of a ship, the Plymouth Rock, nailed above the lintel. For a certain distance the path was easy to follow; it then became obscure, and I finally lost it altogether; but the sea on the Atlantic side was always roaring a hoarse halloo.

It was never before my fortune to thread so curious and at the same time so desolate a way as this. It filled up the pictures of my reading of the coasts of Barbary or of Lower Egypt. I first crossed a range of sand-hills thinly grown with beach-plum, whortleberry, brake, and sheep laurel, or wild rhododendron.[222 - In old times a decoction of checker-berry leaves was given to lambs poisoned by eating the young leaves of the laurel in spring.] Now and then there was a grove of stunted pitch-pines on the hill-sides, and upon descending I found the hollows occupied by swamps more or less extensive, where the growth was denser and the stagnant water dotted with white blossoming lilies. There were also clumps of the fragrant white laurel in full bloom. In such places the bushes grew thickly, and I had to force my way through them.

The largest of these sunken ponds is named Shank Painter. Seeing what a share they have in preserving Provincetown, I shall always respect a bog or a morass. Over on the shore, between Race Point and Wood End, they have Shank Painter Bar. Here and there in the swamp were clearings of an acre or two planted with cranberry-vines, which yield a handsome return. It was blossoming-time, and the ground was starred with their delicate white flowers, having the corolla rolled back, as seen in the tiger-lily. I found ripe blueberries growing close to the sand, and wild strawberries, of excellent flavor, on the borders of cranberry meadows. An account says, cows might once be seen "wading, and even swimming, in these ponds, plunging their heads into the water up to their horns, picking up a scanty subsistence from the roots and herbs produced in the water." I saw birch, maple, and a few other forest trees of stinted growth in the swamp, and stumps of very large pines that had been, perhaps, many times covered and uncovered by sand.[223 - There is an authentic account of ice being found here on the 4th of July, 1741.]

Cranberry culture, already briefly alluded to, has become an important industry on Cape Cod. It is pleasant to see the pickers busily gathering the fruit for market, a labor performed almost wholly by females. An instrument called a cranberry-rake was formerly used; but as it bruised the fruit, it has been discarded for hand-picking. Very little outlay is necessary in the preparation of a cranberry-bed, and much less labor than is usual with ordinary farm crops, while the return is much greater. Here the visitor is astonished at seeing the vine producing abundantly in what appears to be pure white sand. These cranberry plantations are very profitable. Captain Henry Hull, of Barnstable, was one of the earliest cultivators on the Cape.

Though it was raw and windy the marsh-flies bit shrewdly. After passing over the first hills beyond Shank Painter, a very different scene presented itself. Here was a stretch of lofty mounds of clean white sand, five miles in length and a mile and a half in breadth, bare of all vegetation, except scanty patches of beach grass. There was no longer a path, and though I saw occasional foot-prints, I did not meet any one. A carriage would be of no use where a horse would sink to his knees in the sand. It was Equality Lane, where pauper or millionaire must trudge for it. In some places the sand was soft and yielding, and again it was so hard beaten by the wind that the footfall would scarcely leave an impression. Scrambling to the summit of one of the highest hills, I found myself overlooking a remarkable hollow completely surrounded with sandy walls. A Bedouin might have been at home here, but shipwrecked sailors would wander aimlessly, until, caught in some such cul-de-sac, they gave up the ghost in despair. In wintry storms the route is impracticable. The tourist who has never been to Naples may here do Vesuvius in poco, taking care to empty his shoes after sliding from the top to the bottom of a sand-hill.

The beach grass, I noticed, resembled the buffalo grass of the plains. It grew at equal distances, even in spots where it had seeded itself. It is the sheet-anchor of the Cape; for, now that the woods are nearly gone, there is nothing else to prevent this avalanche of sand from advancing and overwhelming every thing in its way. Why may not the cotton-wood, which propagates itself in the sand on the borders of Western rivers, prove a valuable auxiliary here? I have known a newly formed sand-bar in the Missouri become a well-wooded island in ten years. There, the tree grows to a great size, and seems to care little for the kind of soil it gets. The poplar (of the same species) flourished well, I saw, in Provincetown and elsewhere on the Cape. The experiment is worth the trying.

In Dr. Belknap's account of Provincetown, printed in 1791, he says of this range of sand-hills: "This volume of sand is gradually rolling into the woods with the winds, and as it covers the trees to the tops, they die. The tops of the trees appear above the sand, but they are all dead. Where they have been lately covered the bark and twigs are still remaining; from others they have fallen off; some have been so long whipped and worn out with the sand and winds that there is nothing remaining but the hearts and knots of the trees; but over the greater part of this desert the trees have long since disappeared." The tops of the dead trees mentioned by Dr. Belknap, the remnant of the forest seen here by the Pilgrims, have been cut off for fuel, until few, if any, are to be seen.

After crossing the wilderness, I came to the shore. It was blowing half a gale, the sea being roughened by it, but not grand. There was but little drift, and that such "unconsidered trifles" of the sea as the vertebræ of fishes, jelly-fish, a few tangled bunches of weed, and some pretty pebbles. Looking up and down the beach, I discovered one or two wreckers seeking out the night's harvest; and presently there came a cart in which were a man and woman, the man ever and anon jumping out to gather up a little bundle of drift-wood, with which he ran back to the cart, followed by a shaggy Newfoundland dog that barked and gamboled at his side. These wreckers claim what they have discovered by placing crossed sticks upon the heap, the mark being respected by all who come after.

I followed the bank by the verge of the beach, the tide having but just turned. Before me was the light-house, and the collection of huts at Race Point. A single vessel, bound for a Southern port, was in sight, that, after standing along, gunwale under, within half a mile of the shore, filled away on the other tack, rounding the point in good style. A hundred yards back of the usual high-water mark were well-defined lines of drift, indicating the limit where the sea in great storms had forced its way. I passed a group of huts, used perhaps at times by fishermen, and at others as a shelter for shipwrecked mariners. The doors were open, and, notwithstanding a palisade of barrel-staves, the sand had drifted to a considerable depth within. Here also were pieces of a vessel's bulwarks, the first vestiges of wreck I had seen.

In 1802 the Humane Society erected a hut of refuge at the head of Stout's Creek; but it being improperly built with a chimney, and placed on a spot where no beach grass grew, the strong winds blew the sand from its foundation, and the weight of the chimney brought it to the ground. A few weeks later the ship Brutus was cast away. Had the hut remained, it is probable the whole of the unfortunate crew might have been saved, as they gained the shore within a few rods of the spot where it had stood. Upon such trifles the lives of men sometimes depend.

The curvature of the shore south of Race Point, by which I was walking, is called Herring Cove. There is good anchorage here, and vessels may ride safely when the wind is from north-east to south-east. The shore between Race Point and Stout's Creek, in Truro, was formerly considered the most dangerous on the Cape. Since the erection of Race Point Light, disasters have been less frequent. An attempt to penetrate through the hills to Provincetown by night would be attended with danger, especially in the winter season, but by day the steeple of the Methodist church is always in sight from the highest sand-hills.

Freeman, in his "History of Cape Cod," relates an occurrence that happened here in 1722. A sloop from Duxbury, in which the Rev. John Robinson and wife, and daughter Mary, had taken passage, was upset by a sudden tempest near Nantasket Beach, at the entrance of Boston Harbor. The body of Mrs. Robinson was found "in Herring Cove, a little within Race Point," by Indians, about six weeks after the event. It was identified by papers found in the stays, and by a gold necklace, that had been concealed from the natives by the swelling of the neck. A finger had been cut off, doubtless for the gold ring the unfortunate lady had worn.

The winter of 1874-'75 will be memorable in New England beyond the present generation, the extreme cold having fast locked up a greater number of her harbors than was ever before known. Provincetown, that is so providentially situated to receive the storm-tossed mariner, was hermetically sealed by a vast ice-field, which extended from Wood End to Manomet, a distance of twenty-two miles, grasping in its icy embrace all intermediate shores and havens. In the neighborhood of Provincetown a fleet of fishing vessels that was unable to reach the harbor became immovably imbedded in the floe, thus realizing at our very doors all the perils of Arctic navigation. A few were released by the aid of a steam-cutter, but by far the greater number remained helplessly imprisoned without other change than that caused by the occasional drift of the ice-floe in strong gales.

The sight was indeed a novel one. Where before was the expanse of blue-water, nothing could now be seen except the white slab, pure as marble, which entombed the harbors. All within the grasp of the eye was a Dead Sea. Flags of distress were displayed in every direction from the masts of crippled vessels that no help could reach. Their hulls, rigging, and tapering spars were so ice-crusted as to resemble ships of glass. As many as twenty signals of distress were counted at one time from the life-saving station at Provincetown. Some of these luckless craft were crushed and sunk to the bottom; others were abandoned by their crews, who had eaten their last crust and burned the bulwarks of their vessels for fuel. The remainder were at length released by the breaking-up of the ice-floe, which only relaxed its grip after having held them fast for a month.

It would not be extravagant to say that the beach on the ocean side, between Highland Light and Wood End, was strewed with wrecks. Vessel after vessel was dashed into pieces by waves that bore great blocks of drift-ice to aid in the work of destruction. One starless morning the James Rommell struck between Highland Light and Race Point. Instantly the ice-laden surges leaped upon her decks. Wood and iron were crushed like paper under the blows of sea and ice. The helpless vessel was forced side wise toward the beach, where the waves began heaping up the loose sand on the leeward side, until it reached as high as her decks. When the vessel struck, the crew clambered up the rigging, and all were saved, in a perishing condition, with the help of rescuing hands from the life station. One poor fellow dropped dead on the shore he had periled life to gain, a frozen corpse. In twenty-four hours there was no more left of the James Rommell than could be carried away in the wreckers' carts.

But saddest of all was the loss of the Italian bark Giovanni. After eighty-one days of stormy voyage from Palermo, a terrible gale, which tore the frozen sails in shreds from her masts, drove her upon this dangerous coast. In the midst of a blinding snow-storm, the unmanageable vessel was borne steadily and mercilessly upon the shore. When she struck, the shock brought down portions of her rigging, leaving her a dismantled wreck. Her crew could see people moving about on the beach, but no human power could aid them. Soon the Giovanni began to sink into the sandy grave the waves were fast digging to receive her hull, and the seas sweeping her decks raged around the rigging, in which the sailors had taken refuge. One by one they were picked off by the waves. The wreckers' bombs failed to bring a line to them. A few of the ship's company made a desperate push for the beach, which only one reached alive. All night long the wreckers kept their watch by the shore, hoping the gale might abate; but sea and wind beat and howled as wildly as before. When it was light enough to descry the Giovanni, six objects could be seen clinging in the ringing. The ship, it was perceived, was fast breaking up. God help them, for no other could! The spectators saw these poor fellows perish before their eyes. They saw the overstrained masts bend and shiver and break, crashing in ruin down upon the shattered hull. The next day only a piece of the bow remained, sticking up like a grave-stone on the reef.

Of the Giovanni's crew of fifteen only the one mentioned escaped. He could not speak a syllable of English, but was able, by signs, to identify the body of his captain, when it came ashore. The other bodies that came in were laid out in Provincetown church, three miles from the scene of the wreck. Stray portions of the ship's cargo of wine and fruit were washed up, and while any of the former was to be had the beach was not safe to be traversed. In the midst of this carnival of death, men drunk with wine wandered up and down in the bitter cold, intent upon robbery and violence. One or more of these beach pirates were found dead, the victims of their own debauch.

The configuration of the shores of the Cape on the Atlantic side is very different from what was observed by early voyagers. The Isle Nauset of Smith has, for more than a century, been "wiped out" by the sea.[224 - When the English first settled upon the Cape there was an island off Chatham, three leagues distant, called Webb's Island. It contained twenty acres, covered with red-cedar or savin. The Nantucket people resorted to it for fire-wood. In 1792, as Dr. Morse relates, it had ceased to exist for nearly a century. "A large rock," he says, "that was upon the island, and which settled as the earth washed away, now marks the place."] Inlets to harbors have in some cases been closed and other passages opened, as at Eastham and Orleans. In 1863 remains of the hull of an ancient ship were uncovered at Nauset Beach in Orleans, imbedded in the mud of a meadow a quarter of a mile from any water that would have floated her. Curiosity was aroused by the situation as well as the singular build of the vessel, and what was left of her was released from the bed in which, it is believed, it had been inclosed for more than two centuries. A careful writer considers it to have been the wreck of the Sparrow-hawk, mentioned by Bradford as having been stranded here in 1626.[225 - Amos Otis, in the "New England Historical and Genealogical Register," 1865.]

There are generally two ranges of sand-bars on the ocean side of the Cape; the outward being about three-fourths of a mile from shore, and the inner range five hundred yards. As in the case of the ill-fated Giovanni, a vessel usually brings up on the outer bar, and pounds over it at the next tide, merely to encounter the inward shoal. Between these two ranges a tremendous cross-sea is always running in severe gales, and, if the wind has continued long from the same quarter, causing also a current that will float the débris of a wreck along the shore faster than a man can walk. With the wind at south-east the wreck stuff will not land, but is carried rapidly to the north-west. Shipwrecked mariners have to cross this hell gate to reach the beach. The mortars used at the life-stations will not carry a life-line to a vessel at five hundred yards from the shore in the teeth of a gale, and are therefore useless at that distance; but if the wreck is fortunate enough to be lifted over the inner bar by the sea, it will strike the beach at a distance where it is practicable to save life under ordinary contingencies. So great are the obstacles to be overcome on this shore, that there is no part of the New England coast, Nantucket perhaps excepted, where a sailor would not rather suffer shipwreck.

Standing here, I felt as if I had not lived in vain. I was as near Europe as my legs would carry me, at the extreme of this withered arm with a town in the hollow of its hand. You seem to have invaded the domain of old Neptune, and plucked him by the very beard. For centuries the storms have beaten upon this narrow strip of sand, behind which the commerce of a State lies intrenched. The assault is unflagging, the defense obstinate. Fresh columns are always forming outside for the attack, and the roll of ocean is forever beating the charge. Yet the Cape stands fast, and will not budge. It is as if it should say, "After me the Deluge."

CHAPTER XX.

NANTUCKET

"God bless the sea-beat island!
And grant for evermore
That charity and freedom dwell,
As now, upon her shore." – Whittier.

The sea-port of Nantucket, every body knows, rose, flourished, and fell with the whale-fishery. It lies snugly ensconced in the bottom of a bay on the north side of the island of the name, with a broad sound of water between it and the nearest main-land of Cape Cod. The first Englishman to leave a distinct record of it was Captain Dermer, who was here in 1620, though Weymouth probably became entangled among Nantucket Shoals in May, 1605. The relations of Archer and Brereton render it at least doubtful whether this island was not the first on which Gosnold landed, and to which he gave the name of Martha's Vineyard. The two accounts are too much at variance to enable the student to bring them into reciprocal agreement, yet that of Archer, being in the form of a diary, in which each day's transactions are noted, will be preferred to the narrative of Brereton, who wrote from recollection. To these the curious reader is referred.[226 - Purchas, iv.; reprinted in "Massachusetts Historical Collections," iii., viii. I can not give space to those points that confirm my view, but they make a strong presumptive case. It has been alleged that De Poutrincourt landed here after his conflict with the Indians of Cape Cod. So far from landing on the island they saw, Champlain says they named it "La Soupçonneuse," from the doubts they had of it. Lescarbot adds that "they saw an island, six or seven leagues in length, which they were not able to reach, and so called 'Ile Douteuse.'" The land, it is probable, was the Vineyard.]

The name of "Nautican" is the first I have found applied to Nantucket Island.[227 - By Sir F. Gorges.] Whether the derivation is from the Latin nauticus, or a corruption of the Indian, is disputed, though the word has an unmistakably Indian sound and construction.[228 - Nantasket, Namasket, Naushon, Sawtuckett, are Indian.] In the patents and other documents it is called Nantukes, Mantukes, or Nantucquet Isle, indifferently, showing, as may be suggested, as many efforts to construe good Indian into bad English. Previous to Gosnold's voyage the English had no knowledge of it, nor were the names he gave the isles discovered by him in general use until long afterward. One other derivation is too far-fetched for serious consideration, a mere jeu de mot, to which all readers of Gosnold's voyage are insensible. Historians and antiquaries having alike failed to solve these knotty questions, it is proposed to refer them to a council of Spiritualists, with power to send for persons and papers.

Those who wish to enjoy a foretaste of crossing the British Channel may have it by going to Nantucket. The passage affords in a marked degree the peculiarities of a sea-voyage, and, in rough weather, is not exempt from its drawbacks. The land is nearly, if not quite, lost to view. You are on the real ocean, and the remainder of the voyage to Europe is merely a few more revolutions of the paddles. You have enjoyed the emotions incident to getting under way, of steering boldly out into the open sea, and of tossing for a few hours upon its billows: the rest is but a question of time and endurance.

Every one is prepossessed with Nantucket. Its isolation from the world surrounds it with a mysterious haze, that is the more fascinating because it exacts a certain faith in the invisible. Inviting the imagination to depict it for us, is far more interesting than if we could, by going down to the shore, see it any day. In order to get to it we must steer by the compass, and in thick weather look it up with the plummet. In brief, it answers many of the conditions of an undiscovered country. Although laid down on every good map of New England, and certified by the relations of many trustworthy writers, it is not enough; we do not know Nantucket.

No brighter or sunnier day could be wished for than the one on which the Island Home steamed out from Wood's Hole into the Vineyard Sound for the sea-girt isle. Besides the usual complement of health and pleasure seekers was a company of strolling players, from Boston, as they announced themselves – a very long way indeed, I venture to affirm. These "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time" were soon "well bestowed" on the cabin sofas, the rising sea making it at least doubtful whether they would be able to perform before a Nantucket audience so soon as that night. From the old salt who rang the bell and urged immediate attendance at the captain's office, to the captain himself, with golden rings in his ears, and the Indian girl who officiated as stewardess, the belongings of the Island Home afloat were spiced with a novel yet agreeable foretaste of the island home fast anchored in the Atlantic.

The sail across the Vineyard Sound is more than beautiful; it is a poem. Trending away to the west, the Elizabeth Islands, like a gate ajar, half close the entrance into Buzzard's Bay. Among them nestles Cuttyhunk, where the very first English spade was driven into New England soil.[229 - In 1602 by the colony of Bartholomew Gosnold, already so often mentioned in these pages.] Straight over in front of the pathway the steamer is cleaving the Vineyard is looking its best and greenest, with oak-skirted highlands inclosing the sheltered harbor of Vineyard Haven,[230 - Better known as Holmes's Hole.] famous on all this coast. Edgartown is seen at the bottom of a deep indentation, its roofs gleaming like scales on some huge reptile that has crawled out of the sea, and is basking on the warm yellow sands. Chappaquiddick Island, with its sandy tentacles, terminates in Cape Poge, on which is a light-house.

Between the shores, and as far as eye can discern, the fleet that passes almost without intermission is hurrying up and down the Sound. One column stretches away under bellying sails, like a fleet advancing in line of battle, but the van-guard is sinking beneath the distant waves. Still they come and go, speeding on to the appointed mart, threading their way securely among islands, capes, and shoals. Much they enliven the scene. A sea without a sail is a more impressive solitude than a deserted city.

We ran between the two sandy points, long and low, that inclose the harbor into smoother water. The captain went on the guard. "Heave your bow-line." "Ay, ay, sir." "Back her, sir" (to the pilot). "Hold on your spring." "Stop her." "Slack away the bow-line there." "Haul in." It is handsomely done, and this is Nantucket.

The wharf, I should infer, would be the best place in which to take the census of Nantucket. No small proportion of the inhabitants were assembled at the pier's head, waiting the arrival of the boat. You had first to make your way through a skirmishing line of hack-drivers and of boys eager to carry your luggage; then came the solid battalion of citizen idlers, and behind these was a reserve of carriages and carts. On the pier you gain the idea that Nantucket is populous; that what you see is merely the overflow; whereas it is the wharf that is populous, while the town is for the moment well-nigh deserted. There could be no better expression of the feeling of isolation than the agitation produced by so simple an event as the arrival of the daily packet. Doors are slammed, shutters pulled to in a hurry, while a tide of curious humanity pours itself upon the landing-place. The coming steamer is heralded by the town-crier's fish-horn, as soon as descried from the church-tower that is his observatory. In winter, when communication with the main-land is sometimes interrupted for several days together, the sense of separation from the world must be intensified.[231 - On the raising of the ice-blockade of the past winter seventeen mails were due, the greatest number since 1857, when twenty-five regular and two semi-monthly mails were landed at Quidnet.]

After running the gantlet of the crowd on the wharf, the stranger is at liberty to look about him.

The fire of 1846 having destroyed the business portion of the town, that part is not more interesting than the average New England towns of modern growth. Generally speaking, the houses are of wood, the idea of spaciousness seeming prominent with the builders. Plenty of house-room was no doubt synonymous with plenty of sea-room in the minds of retired ship-masters, whose battered hulks I saw safe moored in snug and quiet harbors. The streets are cleanly, and, having trees and flower-gardens, are often pretty and cheerful.