Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

Against the blower!"

The history of Nantucket is not involved in obscurity, though Dr. Morse, in his Gazetteer, printed in 1793, says no mention is made of the discovery and settlement of the island, under its present name, by any of our historians. Its settlement by English goes no further back than 1659, when Thomas Macy[239 - Of Macy it is known that he fled from the rigorous persecution of the Quakers by the government of Massachusetts Bay. The penalties were ordinarily cropping the ears, branding with an iron, scourging, the pillory, or banishment. These cruelties, barbarous as they were, were merely borrowed from the England of that day, where the sect, saving capital punishment, was persecuted with as great rigor as it ever was in the colonies. The death-penalty inflicted in the Bay Colony brought the affairs of the Friends to the notice of the reigning king. Thereafter they were tolerated; but as persecution ceased the sect dwindled away, and in New England it is not numerous. The Friends' poet sings of Macy, the outcast:"Far round the bleak and stormy CapeThe vent'rous Macy passed,And on Nantucket's naked isleDrew up his boat at last."] removed from Salisbury, in Massachusetts, to the west end of the island, called by the Indians Maddequet, a name still retained by the harbor and fishing hamlet there. Edward Starbuck, James Coffin, and another of the name of Daget, or Daggett, came over from Martha's Vineyard, it is said, for the sake of the gunning, and lived with Macy. At that time there were nearly three thousand Indians on the island.

Nantucket annals show what kind of sailors may be made of Quakers. The illustration is not unique. In the same year that Macy came to the island a ship wholly manned by them went from Newfoundland to Lisbon with fish. Some of them much affronted the Portuguese whom they met in the streets by not taking off their hats to salute them. If the gravity of the matter had not been the subject of a state paper I should not have known it.[240 - Thurloe, vol. v., p. 422.]

Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were not included in either of the four New England governments. All the islands between Cape Cod and Hudson River were claimed by the Earl of Sterling. In 1641 a deed was passed to Thomas Mayhew, of Martha's Vineyard, by James Forett, agent of the earl, and Richard Vines, the steward of Sir F. Gorges. The island, until the accession of William and Mary, was considered within the jurisdiction of New York, though we find the deed to Mayhew reciting that the government to be there established by him and his associates should be such as was then existing in Massachusetts, with the same privileges granted by the patent of that colony. In 1659 Mayhew conveyed to the associates mentioned in his deed, nine in number, equal portions of his grant, after reserving to himself Masquetuck Neck, or Quaise.[241 - The nine were Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain, and William Pile, who afterward sold his tenth to Richard Swain.] The consideration was thirty pounds of lawful money and two beaver hats, one for himself, and one for his wife. The first meeting of the proprietors was held at Salisbury, Massachusetts, in September of the same year (1659), at which time ten other persons were admitted partners,[242 - John Smith, Nathaniel Starbuck, Edward Starbuck, Thomas Look, Robert Barnard, James Coffin, Robert Pike, Tristram Coffin, Jun., Thomas Coleman, and John Bishop.] enlarging the whole number of proprietors to nineteen. After the removal to the island, the number was further increased to twenty-seven by the admission of Richard and Joseph Gardiner, Joseph Coleman, William Worth, Peter and Eleazer Folger, Samuel Stretor, and Nathaniel Wier.

The English settlers in 1660 obtained a confirmation of their title from the sachems Wanackmamack and Nickanoose, with certain reservations to the Indian inhabitants, driving, as usual, a hard, ungenerous bargain, as the Indians learned when too late. In 1700 their grievances were communicated by the Earl of Bellomont, then governor, to the crown. Their greatest complaint was, that the English had by calculation stripped them of the means of keeping cattle or live stock of any kind, even on their reserved lands, by means of concessions they did not comprehend. At that time the Indians had been decimated, numbering fewer than four hundred, while the whites had increased to eight hundred souls. The mortality of 1763 wasted the few remaining Indians to a handful.[243 - Of three hundred and fifty-eight Indians alive in 1763, two hundred and twenty-two died by the distemper.] In 1791 there were but four males and sixteen females. Abraham Quady, the last survivor, died within a few years.

The choice of the island by Macy is accounted for by the foregoing facts, doubtless within his knowledge, as many of the original proprietors were his townsmen.

Thomas Mayhew ought to be considered one of the fathers of English settlement in New England. He was of Watertown, in Massachusetts, and I presume the same person mentioned by Drake, in his "Founders," as desirous of passing, in 1637, into "fforaigne partes." He is styled Mr. Thomas Mayhew, Gent., a title raising him above the rank of tradesmen, artificers, and the like, who were not then considered gentlemen; nor is this distinction much weakened at the present day in England. Mayhew received his grant of Nantucket and two small islands adjoining in October, 1641, and on the 23d of the same month, of Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. The younger Mayhew, who, Mather says, settled at the Vineyard in 1642, seems to have devoted himself to the conversion of the Indians with the zeal of a missionary.[244 - Hutchinson.] In 1657 he was drowned at sea, the ship in which he had sailed for England never having been heard from. He was taking with him one of the Vineyard Indians, with the hope of awakening an interest in their progress toward Christianity. Jonathan Mayhew, the celebrated divine, was of this stock.

The first settlement at Maddequet Harbor was abandoned after a more thorough knowledge of the island and the accession of white inhabitants. The south side of the present harbor was first selected; but its inconvenience being soon felt, the town was located where it now is. By instruction of Governor Francis Lovelace it received, in 1673, the name of Sherburne, changed in 1795 to the more familiar one of Nantucket.

The town stands near the centre of the island, the place having formerly been known by the Indian name of "Wesko," signifying White Stone. This stone, which lay, like the rock of the Pilgrims, on the harbor shore, was in time covered by a wharf. The bluff at the west of the town still retains the name of Sherburne. I found the oldest houses at the extremities of the town.

Another of the original proprietors is remembered with honor by the islanders. Peter Folger was looked up to as a superior sort of man. He was so well versed in the Indian tongue that his name is often found on the deeds from the natives. The mother of Benjamin Franklin was the daughter of Folger. They do not forget it. The name of Peter Folger is still continued, and family relics of interest are preserved by the descendants of the first Peter.

Any account of Nantucket must be incomplete that omits mention of Sir Isaac Coffin. Sir Isaac was a Bostonian. His family were out-and-out Tories in the Revolution, with more talent than in general falls to the share of one household. He was descended from an ancient family in the northern part of Devonshire, England. In 1773 Isaac Coffin was taken to sea by Lieutenant Hunter, of the Gaspee, at the recommendation of Admiral John Montague. His commanding officer said he never knew any young man acquire so much nautical knowledge in so short a time. After reaching the grade of post-captain, Coffin, for a breach of the regulations of the service, was deprived of his vessel, and Earl Howe struck his name from the list of post-captains. This act being illegal, he was reinstated in 1790. In 1804 he was made a baronet, and in 1814 became a full admiral in the British navy. One of his brothers was a British general.

On a visit to the United States, in 1826, Sir Isaac came to Nantucket. Finding that many of the inhabitants claimed descent from his own genealogical tree, he authorized the purchase of a building, and endowed it with a fund of twenty-five hundred pounds sterling, for the establishment of a school to which all descendants of Tristram Coffin, one of the first settlers, should be admitted. On one of his voyages to America the admiral suffered shipwreck.

During the war of 1812, it is related that the admiral made a visit to Dartmoor prison, for the purpose of releasing any American prisoners of his family name. Among others who presented themselves was a negro. "Ah," said the admiral, "you a Coffin too?" "Yes, massa." "How old are you?" "Me thirty years, massa." "Well, then, you are not one of the Coffins, for they never turn black until forty."

CHAPTER XXI.

NANTUCKET —continued

Muskeeget, Tuckanuck, Maddequet,

Sankoty, Coatue, Siasconset.

History is said to repeat itself, and why may not the whale-fishing? Now that the ships are all gone, a small whale is occasionally taken off the island, as in days of yore. While I was at Nantucket, a school of blackfish were good enough to come into the shallows not far from the harbor, and stupid enough to permit themselves to be taken. The manner of their capture was truly an example of the triumph of mind over matter.

When the school were discovered near the shore, the fishermen, getting outside of them in their dories, by hallooing, sounding of horns, and other noises, drove them, like frightened sheep, toward the beach. As soon as the hunters were in shoal water they left their boats, and jumped overboard, urging the silly fish on by outcries, splashing the water, and blows. Men, and even boys, waded boldly up to a fish, and led him ashore by a fin; or, if inclined to show fight, put their knives into him. They cuffed them, pricked them onward, filling the air with shouts, or with peals of laughter, as some pursuer, more eager than prudent, lost his footing, and became for the moment a fish. All this time the blackfish were nearing the shore, uttering sounds closely resembling groanings and lamentations. The calves kept close to the old ones, "squealing," as one of the captors told me, like young pigs. It was great sport, not wholly free from danger, for the fish can strike a powerful blow with its flukes; and the air was filled with jets of water where they had lashed it into foam. At length the whole school were landed, even to one poor calf that had wandered off, and now came back to seek its dam. The fishermen, after putting their marks upon them, went up to town to communicate their good luck. Sometimes a hundred or two are taken at once in this wise, here or on the Cape.

The oil of the blackfish is obtained in precisely the same manner as that of the whale, of which it is a pocket edition. The blubber, nearly resembling pork-fat, was stripped off and taken in dories to town. I saw the men tossing it with their pitchforks on the shore, whence it was loaded into carts, and carried to the try-house on one of the wharves. Here it was heaped in a palpitating and by no means savory mass. Men were busily engaged in trimming off the superfluous flesh, or in slicing it, with great knives resembling shingle-froes, into pieces suitable for the try-pot; and still others were tossing it into the smoking caldron.

But if whales are getting scarce round about Nantucket, the blue-fish is still plenty. This gamest and most delicious of salt-water fish is noted for its strength, voracity, and grit. He is a very pirate among fish, making prey of all alike. Cod, haddock, mackerel, or tautog, are glad to get out of his way; the smaller fry he chases among the surf-waves of the shore, much as the fishermen pursue the blackfish. Where the blue-fish abounds you need not try for other sort: he is lord high admiral of the finny tribes.

This fish has a curious history. Before the year 1763, in which the great pestilence occurred among the Indians of the island, and from the first coming of the Indians to Nantucket, a large, fat fish, called the blue-fish, thirty of which would fill a barrel, was caught in great plenty all around the island, from the 1st of July to the middle of October. It was remarked that in 1764, the year in which the sickness ended, they disappeared, and were not again seen until about fifty years ago.[245 - Zaccheus Macy, in his account of the island, written in 1792, says none had been taken up to that time – "a great loss to the islanders."]

It was a delicious afternoon that I set sail for the "Opening," as it is called, between Nantucket and Tuckanuck,[246 - The Indian name Tuckanuck signifies a loaf of bread.] an appanage of the former, and one of the five islands constituting the county of Nantucket. The tide runs with such swiftness that the boatmen do not venture through the Opening except with plenty of wind, and of the right sort. With a stiff breeze blowing, the breakers are superb, especially when wind and tide are battling with each other. With the wind blowing freshly over these shallow waters, it does not take long for the seas to assume proportions simply appalling to a lands-man. It was a magnificent sight! Great waves erected themselves into solid walls of green, advancing at first majestically, then rushing with course to crash in clouds of foam upon the opposite shore. It needs a skillful boatman at the helm. What with the big seas, the seething tide-rips, and the scanty sea-room, the sail is of itself sufficiently exciting.

But the fishing, what of that? We cast our lines over the stern, and, as the boat was going at a great pace, they were straightened out in a trice. At the end of each was a wicked-looking hook of large size, having a leaden sinker run upon the shank of it. Over this hook, called by the fishermen hereabouts a "drail," an eel-skin was drawn, though I have known the blue-fish to bite well at a simple piece of canvas or leather. Away bounded the boat, while we stood braced in the standing-room to meet her plunging. Twenty fathoms with a pound of lead at the end seems fifty, at least, with your boat rushing headlong under all she can bear. Half an acre of smooth water wholly unruffled is just ahead. "I'm going to put you right into that slick," said our helmsman. "Now look out for a big one."

I felt a dead weight at my line. At the end of it a shining object leaped clear from the water and fell, with a loud plash, a yard in advance. Now, haul in steadily; don't be flurried; but, above all, mind your line does not slacken. I lost one splendid fellow by too great precipitation. The line is as rigid as steel wire, and, if your hands are tender, cuts deep into the flesh. Ah! he is now near enough to see the boat. How he plunges and tries to turn! He makes the water boil, and the line fairly sing. I had as lief try to hold an old hunter in a steeple-chase. Ha! here you are, my captive, under the counter; and now I lift you carefully over the gunwale. I enjoin on the inexperienced to be sure they land a fish in the boat, and not lose one, as I did, by throwing him on the gunwale.

The fish shows fight after he is in the tub, shutting his jaws with a vicious snap as he is being unhooked. Look out for him; he can bite, and sharply too. The blue-fish is not unlike the salmon in looks and in action. He is furnished with a backbone of steel, and is younger brother to the shark.

I looked over my shoulder. My companion, a cool hand ordinarily, was engaged in hauling in his line with affected nonchalance; but compressed lips, stern eye, and rigid figure said otherwise. There is a quick flash in the water, and in comes the fish. "Eight-pounder," says the boatman.

These "slicks" are not the least curious feature of blue-fishing. The fish seems to have the ability to exude an oil, by which he calms the water so that he may, in a way, look about him, showing himself in this an adept in applying a well-known principle in hydrostatics. A perceptible odor arises from the slicks, so that the boatmen will often say, "I smell blue-fish."

The boatman steered among the tide-rips, where each of us soon struck a fish, or, as the phrase here is, "got fast." The monster – I believe he was a ten-pounder at least – that took my hook threw himself bodily into the air, shaking his head as if he did not mean to come on board us. And he was as good as his threat: I saw the drail skipping on the top of the wave as my line came in empty.

In two hours we had filled a barrel with fish, and it was time to shape our course harborward. We saw the smoke of the Island Home, looking at first as if rising out of the Sound; then her funnel appeared, and at length her hull rose into view; but she was come within a mile of us before I could distinguish her walking-beam. Tuckanuck and Low Water Island were soon a-lee. Maddequet Harbor opened a moment for us, but we did not enter. We rounded Eel Point with a full sail, and shot past Whale Rock and the shoal of stranded blackfish I told you of. Ever and anon we had passed one adrift, stripped of his fatty epidermis, and now food for the sharks. They were grotesque objects, though now mere carrion, above which the tierce gulls screamed noisily. Here is Brant Point, and its light-house of red brick. We stand well over for Coatue, then about with her for the home stretch. "Fast bind fast find." Our bark is moored. With stiffened joints, but light hearts, we seek our lodgings. What do they say to us? I' faith I am not sorry I went blue-fishing. Reader, are you?

Many blue-fish are caught off the beach on the south shore of the island by casting a line among the breakers, and then hauling it quickly in. This method they call "heave and haul." It takes an expert to get the sleight of it. Gathering the line in a coil and swinging it a few times around his head, an old hand will cast it to an incredible distance. The fish is also frequently taken in seines in shallow creeks and inlets, but he as often escapes through the rents he has made in the net.

I had three excursions to make before I could say I had seen Nantucket. One was to the hills and sands toward Coatue, that curved like a sickle around the harbor; another was to Siasconset; and yet another to the south side. This being done, I had not left much of the island unexplored.

It was on a raw, blustering morning that I set out for a walk around the eastern shore of the harbor. I saw the steamboat go out over the bar, now settling down in the trough, and now shaking herself and staggering onward. Dismally it looked for a day in July, but I had not the mending of it. After getting well clear of the town I found the hills assuming some size and appearance of vegetation. They were overgrown with wild-cranberry vines bearing stunted fruit, each turning a little red cheek to be kissed by the morning sun. Some beautiful flowers sprung from among the neutral patches of heather. The Indian pea, unmatched in wild beauty, displayed its sumptuous plume among the gray moss or modest daisies.

The beach grass was rooted everywhere in the hillocks next the shore, and appeared to be gradually working its way inland. I attempted to pull some of it up, but only the stalks remained in my hand. Each leaf is like a sword-blade. Pass your hand across the under-surface, and it is prickly and rough. What there formerly was of soil has been growing thinner and thinner by being blown into the sea. Unlike the buffalo-grass of the plains, the beach grass possesses little nutriment, though cattle crop the tender shoots in spring. It was formerly much used for broom-stuff.

I picked up by the shore many scallop-shells, and on the hills saw many more lying where pleasure-seekers had held, as the saying is, their "squantum" or picnic. This is a historical shell. It surmounts the cap-stone of the monument built over the Rock of the Forefathers at Plymouth. In the Dark Ages, a scallop-shell fastened to the hat was the accepted sign that the wearer had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We read in Parnell's "Hermit:"

"He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before."

Professor Gosse says there was a supposed mystical connection between the scallop-shell and St. James, the brother of the Lord, first bishop of Jerusalem. The scallop beds are usually in deep water, and the fish, therefore, can be obtained only by dredging. They are rather plentiful in Narraganset Bay. Some, of a poetic turn, have called them the "butterflies of the sea;" others a "frill," from their fancied resemblance to that once indispensable badge of gentility. As much as any thing they look like an open fan. Many other shells I found, particularly the valves of quahaugs, and a periwinkle six inches in length. Its shell is obtained by fastening a hook in the fish and suspending it by a string. In a few hours the inhabitant drops his integument. Amber is sometimes picked up on the shores, they say, but none came to my share.

Shells of the same kind as those now common to the shores of the island have been found at the depth of fifty feet, after penetrating several strata of earth and clay. In digging as deep as the sea-level, the same kind of sand is brought to the surface as now makes the beaches, and the same inclination has been observed that now exists on the shores. Mr. Adams, my landlord, told me he saw taken from a well, at the depth of sixty feet, a quantity of quahaug-shells of the size of a half-dollar. They usually have to go this depth in the sand, and then get poor, brackish water. There is an account of the finding of the bone of a whale thirty feet under-ground at Siasconset. I saw many covered wells in Nantucket streets that appeared to be the supply of their immediate neighborhoods.

The fogs that sometimes envelop Nantucket gave rise to a pleasant fiction, which smacks of the salt. A whaling ship, outward-bound, having been caught in one of unusual density in leaving the port, the captain made a peculiar mark in it with a harpoon, and on his return, after a three years' cruise, fell in with the harbor at the very same spot.

The Indian legend of the origin of Nantucket is that Mashope, the Indian giant, formed it by emptying the ashes of his pipe into the sea. This same Mashope, having in one of his excursions lighted his pipe on the island, and sat down for a comfortable smoke, caused the fogs that have since prevailed there. He probably waded across from the Vineyard, when he wanted a little distraction from domestic infelicities.

The residence of Mashope was in a cavern known as the Devil's Den, at Gay Head. Here he broiled the whale on a fire made of the largest trees, which he pulled up by the roots. After separating No Man's Land from Gay Head, metamorphosing his children into fishes, and throwing his wife on Seconnet Point, where she now lies, a misshapen rock, he broke up housekeeping and left for parts unknown.

Another Indian legend ascribed the discovery of Nantucket to the ravages made by an eagle among the children of the tribes on Cape Cod. The bird having seized a papoose, was followed by the parents in a canoe until they came to the island, where they found the bones of the child. The existence of the island was not before suspected.

Anciently, the dwellers were shepherds, living by their flocks as well as by fishing. Every inhabitant had the right to keep a certain number of sheep. One day in the year – formerly the only holiday kept on the island – every body repaired to the commons. The sheep were driven into pens and sheared. Sheep-shearing day continued the red-letter day on Nantucket well into the present century. I saw flocks browsing almost everywhere in my rambles, and thought them much more picturesque objects in the landscape than corn-fields or vegetable gardens. There is a freedom about a shepherd's life, a communion with and knowledge of nature in all her variable moods, that renders it more attractive than delving in the soil. No one is so weather-wise as a shepherd-boy. I liked to hear the tinkling of the bells, and watch the gambols of the lambs on the hill-sides.

In his day, Philip was lord and sagamore of the Nantucket Indians. He came once to the island, in pursuit of a subject who had violated savage laws by speaking the name of the dead. The culprit took refuge in the house of Thomas Macy, and Philip, by the payment of a considerable ransom, was induced to spare his life. This occurred in 1665.

The Indian prince was absolute lord on land and sea. Every thing stranded on his coasts – whales or other wreck of value found floating on the sea washing his shores – or brought and landed from any part of the sea, was no less his own. In the "Magnalia" is related an incident illustrating this absolutism of Indian sagamores. An Indian prince, with eighty well-armed attendants, came to Mr. Mayhew's house at Martha's Vineyard. Mayhew entered the room, but, being acquainted with their customs, took no notice of the visitors, it being with them a point of honor for an inferior to salute the superior. After a considerable time the chief broke silence, addressing Mr. Mayhew as sachem, a title importing only good or noble birth. The prince having preferred some request, Mayhew acceded to it, adding that he would confer with the whites to obtain their consent also. The Indian demanded why he recalled his promise, saying, "What I promise or speak is always true; but you, an English governor, can not be true, for you can not of yourself make true what you promise."

It has been observed that the island is gradually wasting away. On the east and south some hundreds of acres have been encroached upon by the sea, and, by the accounts of ancient inhabitants, as many more on the north. During some years the sea has contributed to extend the shores; in others the waste was arrested; but the result of a long series of observations shows a constant gain for the ocean. Smith's Point, now isolated from the main-land, once formed a part of it, the sea in 1786 making a clean breach through, and forming a strait half a mile wide.

I have no wish to depreciate the value of real estate upon Nantucket, but by the year 3000, according to our present calendar, I doubt if there will be more than a grease-spot remaining to mark the habitation of a race of vikings whose javelins were harpoons.

Siasconset is the paradise of the islander: not to see it would be in his eyes unpardonable. Therefore I went to Siasconset, or Sconset, as your true islander pronounces it, retaining all the kernel of the word. It is situated on the south-east shore of the island, seven miles from the town.

You may have, for your excursion, any sort of vehicle common to the main-land, but the islanders most affect a cart with high-boarded sides and a step behind, more resembling a city coal-cart than any thing else I can call to mind. Though not like an Irish jaunting-car, it is of quite as peculiar construction, and, when filled with its complement of gleeful excursionists, is no bad conveyance. For my own part, I would rather walk, but they will tell you every body rides to Sconset. Take any vehicle you will, you can have only a single horse, the road, or rather track, being so deeply rutted that, when once in it, the wheels run in grooves six to twelve inches in depth, while the horse jogs along in a sort of furrow.

I own to a rooted antipathy to carts, going much farther back than my visit to Nantucket. The one I rode in over a stony road in Maine, with a sack of hay for a cushion, put me out of conceit with carts. I would have admired the scenery, had not my time been occupied in holding on, and in catching my breath. I might have talked with the driver, had not the jolting put me under the necessity of swallowing my own words, and nobody, I fancy, quite likes to do that. What little was said came out by jerks, like the confession of a victim stretched on the rack. Henceforth I revolted against having my utterance broken on the wheel.