September 10th.--Here is another beautiful morning, with the sun dimpling
in the early sunshine. Four sailboats are in sight, motionless on the
sea, with the whiteness of their sails reflected in it. The heat-haze
sleeps along the shore, though not so as quite to hide it, and there is
the promise of another very warm day. As yet, however, the air is cool
and refreshing. Around the island, there is the little ruffle of a
breeze; but where the sail-boats are, a mile or more off, the sea is
perfectly calm. The crickets sing, and I hear the chirping of birds
besides.
At the base of the lighthouse yesterday, we saw the wings and feathers of
a decayed little bird, and Mr. Thaxter said they often flew against the
lantern with such force as to kill themselves, and that large quantities
of them might be picked up. How came these little birds out of their
nests at night? Why should they meet destruction from the radiance that
proves the salvation of other beings?
Mr. Thaxter had once a man living with him who had seen "Old Bab," the
ghost. He met him between the hotel and the sea, and describes him as
dressed in a sort of frock, and with a very dreadful countenance.
Two or three years ago, the crew of a wrecked vessel, a brigantine,
wrecked near Boon Island, landed on Hog Island of a winter night, and
found shelter in the hotel. It was from the eastward. There were six or
seven men, with the mate and captain. It was midnight when they got
ashore. The common sailors, as soon as they were physically comfortable,
seemed to be perfectly at ease. The captain walked the floor, bemoaning
himself for a silver watch which he had lost; the mate, being the only
married man, talked about his Eunice. They all told their dreams of the
preceding night, and saw in them prognostics of the misfortune.
There is now a breeze, the blue ruffle of which seems to reach almost
across to the mainland, yet with streaks of calm; and, in one place, the
glassy surface of a lake of calmness, amidst the surrounding commotion.
The wind, in the early morning, was from the west, and the aspect of the
sky seemed to promise a warm and sunny day. But all at once, soon after
breakfast, the wind shifted round to the eastward; and great volumes of
fog, almost as dense as cannon-smoke, came sweeping from the eastern
ocean, through the valley, and past the house. It soon covered the whole
sea, and the whole island, beyond a verge of a few hundred yards. The
chilliness was not so great as accompanies a change of wind on the
mainland. We had been watching a large ship that was slowly making her
way between us and the land towards Portsmouth. This was now hidden.
The breeze is still very moderate; but the boat, moored near the shore,
rides with a considerable motion, as if the sea were getting up.
Mr. Laighton says that the artist who adorned Trinity Church in New York
with sculpture wanted some real wings from which to imitate the wings of
cherubim. Mr. Thaxter carried him the wings of the white owl that
winters here at the Shoals, together with those of some other bird; and
the artist gave his cherubim the wings of an owl.
This morning there have been two boat-loads of visitors from Rye. They
merely made a flying call, and took to their boats again,--a disagreeable
and impertinent kind of people.
The Spy arrived before dinner, with several passengers. After dinner
came the Fanny, bringing, among other freight, a large basket of
delicious pears to me, together with a note from Mr. B. B. Titcomb. He
is certainly a man of excellent, taste and admirable behavior. I sent a
plateful of pears to the room of each guest now in the hotel, kept a
dozen for myself, and gave the balance to Mr. Laighton.
The two Portsmouth young ladies returned in the Spy. I had grown
accustomed to their presence, and rather liked them; one of them being
gay and rather noisy, and the other quiet and gentle. As to new-comers,
I feel rather a distaste to them; and so, I find, does Mr. Laighton,--a
rather singular sentiment for a hotel-keeper to entertain towards his
guests. However, he treats them very hospitably, when once within his
doors.
The sky is overcast, and, about the time of the Spy and the Fanny sailed,
there were a few drops of rain. The wind, at that time, was strong
enough to raise white-caps to the eastward of the island, and there was
good hope of a storm. Now, however, the wind has subsided, and the
weather-seers know not what to forebode.
September 11th.--The wind shifted and veered about, towards the close of
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 sulken 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.
