Part 2

There are not many of these quiet coves. In general a confusion reigns as if an earthquake had rent and split the coasts, and tumbled the masses in chaotic heaps. On Appledore and the larger islands the interior is rather smoother, though nowhere will you find many rods of plain walking. Slopes of greenness alternate with the long white ledges, and here and there are bits of swampy ground and little valleys where the turf is short, and the sheep love to browse, and the mushrooms grow in August and September. There are no trees except, perhaps, a few balm-of-gilead trees on Star and a small elm on Appledore, which has been struggling with the bleakness of the situation some twenty years. It is very probable that the islands were wooded many years ago with spruce and pine perhaps,--a rugged growth. I am certain that cedars grew there, for I found on the highest part of Smutty-nose Point, deep down in a crevice in the rocks, a piece of a root of cedar-wood, which, though perfectly preserved, bore marks of great age, being worn as smooth as glass with the raindrops that had penetrated to its hiding-place. There are a few bushes, browsed down by the sheep, with maple, poplar, and birch leaves; and I have seen the crumbling remains of the stump of some large tree in the principal gorge or valley at Appledore. The oldest inhabitants remember quite an orchard on Smutty-nose. In the following note (for which I am indebted to Mr. T. B. Fox) from “Christopher Leavitt’s Voyage into New England” in the year 1623, it appears that there were trees, though not of the kind the voyagers wished to see. He says: “The first place I set my foot upon in New England was the Isles of Shoulds. We could see not one good timber tree, or so much good ground as to make a garden. Good fishing-place for six ships,” he goes on to say, “not more for want of good storage rooms. Harbor indifferent good. No savages at all.” That was two hundred and forty-six years ago. In the Rev. Jedediah Morse’s journal of a mission to the Shoals in August, 1800, he says, referring to the wretched state of the inhabitants of Star Island at that time, “All the trees, and the bushes even, have been consumed, and they have cut up, dried, and burned many acres of the sward, leaving only naked rocks where formerly there was the finest pasturage for cows.” The bushes have never grown again on Star; but Appledore, wherever there is soil enough to hold a root, is overgrown with huckleberry and bayberry bushes, the glossy green leaves of the latter yielding a wholesome, aromatic fragrance, which accords well with the fresh and healthy sea-odors. Blackberry, raspberry, wild currant, and gooseberry bushes also flourish; there are clumps of elder and sumach, woodbine and the poison ivy, shrubs of wild-cherry and shadbush, and even one little wild apple-tree that yearly bears a few large, bright blossoms.

It is curious to note the varieties of plants, wild-flowers, and grasses on this island alone. There are six different ferns, and many delicate flowers bloom in the spring, whose faces it is a continual surprise to find looking up at you from the rough ground, among the rocks. Every flower seems twice as beautiful under these circumstances; and it is a fact that the salt air and a peculiar richness in the soil give a luxuriance of growth and a depth of color not found elsewhere. “Is that willow-weed” (or whatever it may be)? “I never saw any so bright!” is a remark often heard from strangers visiting the islands for the first time. The pale-pink herb-robert, for instance, blushes with a tint almost as deep as a damask rose, and as for the wild-roses, I heard some one say they were as “bright as red carnations.” In the spring the anemones are stained with purple and pink and yellow in a way that makes their sisters of the mainland seem pallid beside them; and the violets are wonderful,--the blue ones so large and dark, and the delicately-veined white ones rich with creamy fragrance.

The calyx of the shadbush-flower is dyed with purple, almost crimson, and the color runs into the milky whiteness of the petals. The little pimpernel (when it has anything but salt gravel to grow in, for it runs fairly into the sea) is clear vermilion, and the pearly eyebright is violet on the edges; the shy celandine glows golden in its shady clefts, and the spotted jewel-weed is as rich and splendid as a flower in Doctor Rappacini’s famous garden. Sometimes it is as if the order of nature were set aside in this spot; for you find the eyebright and pimpernel and white violets growing side by side until the frost comes in November; often October passes with no sign of frost, and the autumn lingers later than elsewhere. I have even seen the iris and wild-rose and golden-rod and aster in blossom together, as if, not having the example of the world before their eyes, they followed their own sweet will, and bloomed when they took the fancy. As for garden flowers, when you plant them in this soil they fairly run mad with color. People say, “Do give me some seeds of these wonderful flowers”; and they sow them in their gardens on the mainland, and they come up decorous, commonplace, and pale, like their sisters in the same soil. The little spot of earth on which they grow at the island is like a mass of jewels. Who shall describe the pansies, richly streaked with burning gold; the dark velvet coreopsis and the nasturtium; the larkspurs, blue and brilliant as lapis-lazuli; the “ardent marigolds,” that flame like mimic suns? The sweet-peas are of a deep, bright rose-color, and their odor is like rich wine, too sweet almost to be borne, except when the pure fragrance of mignonette is added,--such mignonette as never grows on shore. Why should the poppies blaze in such imperial scarlet? What quality is hidden in this thin soil, which so transfigures all the familiar flowers with fresh beauty? I have heard it said that it is the crumbled rock which so enriches the earth, but I do not know.

If a flock of sheep and various cows did not browse over Appledore incessantly, it would be a little wilderness of wild-flowers in the summer; they love the soil and climate, and put forth all their strength and loveliness. And every year or two a new kind appears, of which the seed has been brought by some bird, or, perhaps, shaken out of a bundle of hay. Last summer, for the first time, I found the purple polygala growing in a meadowy piece of turf on the south side of the island. Columbines and the fragrant ground-nut, helianthus, and various other plants, grow only on Duck Island; and it is singular that the little potentilla, which I am told grows elsewhere only on mountain-sides, is found here on all the islands. At Smutty-nose alone certain plants of the wicked-looking henbane (_Hyoscyamus niger_) flourish, and, on Londoner’s only, there spreads at the top of the beach a large sea-lungwort (_Mertensia maritima_). At Star the crooked little ways between the houses are lined with tall plants of the poisonous hemlock (the _Conium_ that made the death-draught of Socrates), which flourishes amain, and is the only green thing out of the small walled enclosures, except the grass and the burdocks; for the cows and the children devastate the ground.

Appledore is altogether the most agreeable in its aspect of all the islands, being the largest, and having a greater variety of surface than the rest. Its southern portion is full of interest, from the traces of vanished humanity which one beholds at every step; for the ground in some places is undermined with ancient graves, and the ruined cellars of houses wherein men and women lived more than a century ago are scattered here and there to the number of seventy and more. The men and women are dust and ashes; but here are the stones they squared and laid; here are the thresholds over which so many feet have passed. The pale green and lilac and golden lichens have overgrown and effaced all traces of their footsteps on the door-stones; but here they passed in and out,--old and young, little feet of children, heavy tramp of stalwart fishermen, lighter tread of women, painful and uncertain steps of age. Pleasant it is to think of the brown and swarthy fisherman, the father, standing on such a threshold, and with the keen glance all seafaring men possess sweeping the wide horizon for signs of fair or foul weather; or the mother, sitting in the sun on the step, nursing her baby, perhaps, or mending a net, or spinning,--for the women here were famous spinners, and on Star Island yet are women who have not forgotten the art. Pleasanter still to think of some slender girl at twilight lingering with reluctant feet, and wistful eyes that search the dusky sea for a returning sail whose glimmer is sweeter than moonlight or starlight to her sight,--lingering still, though her mother calls within and the dew falls with the falling night. I love to people these solitudes again, and think that those who lived here centuries ago were decent, God-fearing folk, most of them,--for so tradition says;[A] though in later years they fell into evil ways, and drank “fire-water,” and came to grief. And all the pictures over which I dream are set in this framework of the sea, that sparkled and sang, or frowned and threatened, in the ages that are gone as it does to-day, and will continue to smile and threaten when we who listen to it and love it and fear it now are dust and ashes in our turn.

[A] “The character and habits of the original settlers for industry, intelligence, and pure morals have acquired for them great respect in the estimation of posterity.”--_Williamson’s History of Maine._

Some of the cellars are double, as if two families had built together; some are distinctly marked; in others the stones have partly fallen in; all are more or less overgrown with lichens, and thick, short turf creeps everywhere in and about them. Sometimes garlands of woodbine drape the walls, and poison-ivy clasps and knots itself about the rocks; clumps of sweet flowering-elder cluster in the corners, or graceful, stag-horned sumachs, or raspberry bushes with ruddy fruit. Wild spiked thistles spread, and tall mullein-stalks stand like sentinels on guard over the desolation. Beautiful it is to see the delicate herb-robert’s rosy flowers among the rough heaps of rocks, like a tender afterthought where all is hard and stern.

It is a part of the religious belief of the Shoalers, that the ruinous cairn on the summit of Appledore was built by the famous John Smith and his men when they discovered the islands in the year 1614; and I will not be so heretical as to doubt the fact, though it seems just as likely that it was set up by fishermen and sailors as a landmark. At any rate, nobody knows when it was not there, and it is perfectly safe to imagine any origin for it. I never could be precisely certain of the site of the first meeting-house on this island, “built (of brick) at a very early period, possibly the first in the province,” says Williamson in his “History of Maine.” Probably there was no cellar beneath it, and the slight underpinning has been scattered and obliterated by time,--a fate which many of the houses must have shared in like manner. When man has vanished, Nature strives to restore her original order of things, and she smooths away gradually all traces of his work with the broad hands of her changing seasons. The men who built the Pyramids felt this; but will not the world spin long enough to level their masonry with the desolate sands? Neither is there any sign of the foundation of that “Academy” to which “even gentlemen from some of the principal towns on the sea-coast sent their sons for literary instruction,”--I quote again from Williamson. How like a dream it seems, looking now at these deserted rocks, that so much happened here in the years that are gone! The connection of Spain with these islands always had a great fascination for me; it is curious that the brightest and gayest of lands, all aglow with sunshine and so rich with southern beauty, should be in any way linked with this place, so remote and desolate. “In 1730, and afterwards, three or four ships used to load at the Shoals with winter and spring merchantable fish for Bilboa in Spain.” What wondrous craft must have navigated these waters,--lazy, lumbering old ships, with quaintly carved figure-heads, and high-peaked sterns and prows, and heavy draperies of weather-beaten sails, picturesque and charming to behold, and well enough for the sparkling Mediterranean, but not the sort of build to battle with the Atlantic breakers, as several wrecks of vessels caught in the terrible gales and driven upon the pitiless ledges might testify! The ship Sagunto, it is said, met her destruction here as late as the year 1813; and there are faint echoes of other disasters of the kind, but the names of other ships have not come down to us. One wrecked on Appledore left only a quantity of broad silver pieces sprinkled about the rocks to tell of the calamity. A fisherman from Star, paddling over in his dory to explore the coves and chasms for driftwood (for the island was uninhabited at the time), came suddenly upon the glittering coins. His amazement was boundless. After filling his pockets, a sudden terror possessed him; he began to have a suspicion that something uncanny lurked at the bottom of such good fortune (for the superstition of the natives is very great), and fled home to tell his neighbors, who came in a body and made short work of the process of gathering the rest of the treasure. Occasionally, since that time, coins have been found about the southeast point, whereon the unknown vessel struck and was completely destroyed. Of course Captain Kidd, “as he sailed,” is supposed to have made the locality one of his many hiding-places. I remember being awed when a child at the story of how a certain old black Dinah, an inhabitant of Portsmouth, came out to Appledore, then entirely divested of human abodes, and alone, with only a divining-rod for company, passed several days and nights wandering over the island, muttering to herself, with her divining-rod carefully balanced in her skinny hands. Robert Kidd’s buried treasure, if it existed, never signalled from below to that mystic rod, and the old negress returned empty-handed; but what a picture she must have made wandering there in the loneliness, by sunlight, or moonlight, or starlight, with her weird figure, her dark face, her garments fluttering in the wind, and the awful rod in her hand!

On Star Island, I have been told, a little three-legged black pot full of gold and silver pieces was dug up not very many years ago; and it is certainly true that Mr. Samuel Haley, who lived upon and owned Smutty-nose, in building a wall, turned over a large, flat stone beneath which lay four bars of solid silver. He must have been a fine, energetic old fellow, that Samuel Haley. With this treasure, says tradition again, he built, at great trouble and expense, the sea-wall which connects Smutty-nose with Malaga, and makes a safe harbor for distressed mariners in stormy weather. (This name Malaga, by the way, is a very distinct token of the Spaniards.) Not only did Haley build the sea-wall, but he erected salt-works which “manufactured excellent salt for the curing of fish,” and stretched a ropewalk over the uneven ground to the extent of two hundred and seventy feet, and set up windmills to catch with their wide wings all the winds that blew, that he might grind his own corn and wheat, and live as independently as possible of his fellow-men; for that is one of the first things a settler on the Isles of Shoals finds it necessary to learn. He planted a little orchard where the soil was deepest, and with much cherishing care contrived to coax his cherry-trees into abundant fruitfulness, and in every way made the most of the few advantages of the place. The old square house which he built upon his island, and which still stands, had, long ago, a broad balcony running the whole length of the house beneath the second-story windows. This being in a ruinous condition, I never dared venture out upon it; but a large, square lookout, with a stout railing, which he built on the top of the house, remained till within a few years; and I found it a charming place to linger in on still days, and watch the sky and the sea and the vessels, and the play of color over the bright face of the world. Looking from that airy station years ago, I used to think how many times he had sat there with his spy-glass, scanning the horizon and all within it, while the wind ruffled his gray hair and the sun shone pleasantly across his calm old face. Many years of his useful, happy life he lived there, and left behind him a beloved and honorable name. His descendants, still living upon Star, are among the best people in the village. A young girl bearing his name was lately married to one of the youthful fishermen. Star Island might well be proud of such a girl, so modest and sweet, and pretty too, slender and straight, dark-haired, brown-eyed,--as picturesque a creature as one would wish to see, with a delicate rose in her cheek and a clear light of intelligence in her eyes. Considering her, and remembering this ancient ancestor of hers, I thought she came honestly by her gentle, self-reliant expression, and her fine bearing, full of unconscious dignity and grace. The old man’s quaint epitaph speaks of his humanity in “receiving into his enclosure many a poor, distressed seaman and fisherman in distress of weather.” “In distress of weather!” One must live in such a place fully to comprehend the meaning of the words. It was his custom every night to put in his bedroom window, over the broad balcony facing the southeast, a light which burned all night,--a little act of thoughtfulness which speaks volumes. I think the lighthouse could not have been kindled at that time, but I am not sure. There is much uncertainty with regard to dates and records of those old times. Mr. Haley is said to have died in 1811, but I have always heard that he was living when the Sagunto was wrecked upon his island, which happened, according to the Gosport records, in 1813. This is the entry: “Ship Sagunto stranded on Smotinose Isle Jany 14^{th} 1813 Jany 15^{th} one man found, Jany 16^{th} 6 men found 21--7 the Number of men yet found Belonging to said ship twelve.” I am inclined to think the writer made a mistake in his date as well as his spelling and arithmetic, for it is an accepted tradition that Mr. Haley found and buried the dead crew of that ship, and I have always heard it spoken of as a simple fact. On that stormy January night, runs the story, he placed the light as usual in his chamber window, and I dare say prayed in his good heart that no vessel might be wandering near this dangerous place, tossed helpless on the raging sea in the thick darkness and bitter cold and blinding snow. But that night the great ship Sagunto drove, crashing, full upon the fatal southeast point, in sight of the tiny spark that burned peacefully, unwavering, in that quiet chamber. Her costly timbers of mahogany and cedar-wood were splintered on the sharp teeth of those inexorable rocks; her cargo of dried fruits and nuts and bales of broadcloth and gold and silver, was tossed about the shore, and part of her crew were thrown alive upon it. Some of them saw the light, and crawled toward it benumbed with cold and spent with fatigue and terror. The roaring of the storm bore away their faint cries of distress; the old man slept on quietly, with his family about him, sheltered, safe; while a stone’s-throw from his door these sailors strove and agonized to reach that friendly light. Two of them gained the stone-wall in front of the house, but their ebbing strength would not allow them to climb over; they threw themselves upon it, and perished miserably, with safety, warmth, and comfort so close at hand! In the morning, when the tumult was somewhat hushed, and underneath the sullen sky rolled the more sullen sea in long, deliberate waves, the old man looked out in the early light across the waste of snow, and on the wall lay--something that broke the familiar outline, though all was smooth with the pure, soft snow. He must put on coat and cap, and go and find out what this strange thing might be. Ah, that was a sight for his pitying eyes under the cold and leaden light of that unrelenting morning! He summoned his sons and his men. Quickly the alarm was given, and there was confusion and excitement as the islanders, hurriedly gathering, tried if it were possible yet to save some life amid the wreck. But it was too late; every soul was lost. Fourteen bodies were found at that time, strewn all the way between the wall and that southeast point where the vessel had gone to pieces. The following summer the skeleton of another was discovered among some bushes near the shore. The imagination lingers over those poor drowned sailors; strives to figure what each man was like, what might have been the musical name of each (for all names in Spanish should be musical, with a reminiscence of flute and guitar in them); dwells on the dark-olive faces and jet-black hair, the graceful foreign dress,--curious short jackets, perhaps, with bits of bright embroidery that loving hands had worked for them, all stained and tarnished by the brine. No doubt some of them wore about their necks a cross or amulet, with an image of the “Blessed Virgin” or the “Son of God,” that so they might be saved from just such a fate as this; and maybe some one among these sailor-men carried against his heart a lock of hair, dark and lustrous before the washing of the cold waves dulled the brightness of its beauty. Fourteen shallow graves were quarried for the unknown dead in the iron earth, and there they lie, with him who buried them a little above in the same grassy slope. Here is his epitaph:--

“In memory of Mr. Samuel Haley Who died in the year 1811 Aged 84 He was a man of great Ingenuity Industry Honor and Honesty, true to his Country & A man who did A great Publik good in Building A Dock & Receiving into his Enclosure many a poor Distressed Seaman & Fisherman In distress of Weather.”