America Volume III Part 3

To the eastward are Huntingdon, Setauket and Port Jefferson, popular resorts, and inland are Jerusalem and Islip, the latter settled and named in the seventeenth century by emigrants from old Islip, Oxfords.h.i.+re, England. Here is the famous Ronkonkoma Lake, so named by the Indians from the white sand of its sh.o.r.es. It is a pretty sheet of fresh water among the forests, about a mile in diameter, of great depth, and has neither inlet nor outlet, though its surface level regularly rises and falls every four years. Here lived the chief wampum makers, the Secatogue and Patchogue tribes. Their wampum mainly consisted of the thick blue part of clam sh.e.l.ls, ground into the form of bugle beads, and strung upon cards a foot long.

ENTERING NEW ENGLAND.

Coming out of New York on the northern sh.o.r.e of Long Island Sound, the land is found to be profusely sprinkled with outcropping rocks, a development so universal that to one place the Indians gave the name of Mamaroneck, meaning "the place of rolling-stones." These rocks are gathered into piles for fences, which cross the surface in all directions, and it requires serious effort to till the stony land.

About twenty-five miles from New York is the Byram River, the Connecticut boundary, the old saying being that New England stretches "from Quoddy Head to Byram River." This original Yankee land, though the smallest section of the United States, has made the deepest impress upon the American character. They have not enjoyed the agricultural advantages of other sections, the bleak climate, poor soil and lavish distribution of rocks and sterility making farming hard work with meagre results, so that the chief Yankee energy has been devoted to the development of manufactures, literature, commerce and the fisheries; this wonderful race who have had to practically live by their wits having admirably succeeded. Crossing Byram River brings us into the "Land of Steady Habits," Connecticut, the "Wooden-Nutmeg State," the special home of "Yankee Notions," which gave the country the original personation of "Brother Jonathan" in Governor Jonathan Trumbull, who was so useful to General Was.h.i.+ngton.

Consulting him in many emergencies, Was.h.i.+ngton was wont to remark, "Let us hear what Brother Jonathan says," a phrase finally popularly adopted by making him the national impersonation.

Connecticut has the great Puritan College of the country--Yale--ruled by the Congregationalists. It has varied manufactures, to which its abundant water-powers contribute, and in which nearly all its people are engaged, its methods being largely the inventions of its own sons, of whom three are prominent--Eli Whitney of the cotton-gin, Samuel Colt of the revolver, and Charles Goodyear of india-rubber fame. When De Tocqueville was in America, he was much impressed by the development of the inventive genius, education and political force of the State, which he described as a little yellow spot on the map, and at a dinner he proposed a toast, saying, in his quaint, broken English: "And now for my grand sentiment: Connect-de-coot--de leetle yellow spot dat make de clock-peddler, de school-master and de Senator; de first give you time, de second tell you what to do with him, and de third make your law and civilization." Connecticut gets more patents proportionately than any other State, one to eight hundred inhabitants being annually granted; it makes clocks for all the world, and leads in india-rubber and elastic goods, in hardware and myriads of "Yankee notions," besides being well in the front for sewing-machines, arms and war material. It is named after the chief New England river, and its rugged surface is diversified by long ridges of hills and deep valleys, running generally from north to south, being the prolongation of mountain ranges and intervales that are beyond the northern border. The picturesque Housatonic comes from the Ma.s.sachusetts Berks.h.i.+re hills down through the western counties; the centre is crossed by the Connecticut Valley, which has great fertility and beautiful scenery, while in the eastern section the Quinnebaug River makes a deep valley, and, flowing into the Thames, seeks the Sound at New London. These many hills make many streams, all having water-powers, around which cl.u.s.ter numerous busy factories.

The southwestern town of Connecticut is Greenwich, and in front Greenwich Point is thrust out into the Sound, while, as the Yankee land is entered by railway, on a high hill stands the Puritan outpost, seen from afar--a stately graystone Congregational Church with its tall spire. The ancient Greenwich village was built on the hillside at Horse Neck, and it was here, in 1779, that General Putnam swiftly galloped down the rude rocky stairway leading from the old church, to get away from the British dragoons, on what has since been known as "Old Put's Hill," and they were too much astonished either to chase or shoot him. Beyond is Stamford, a busy factory town, where lived in the eighteenth century Colonel Abraham Davenport, described as "a man of stern integrity and generous benevolence." He was a legislator, and when, on May 19, 1780, the memorable "Dark Day" came in New England, some one, fearing it was the day of judgment, proposed that the House adjourn. Davenport opposed it, saying, "The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty; I wish therefore that candles may be brought." This scene has been immortalized by Whittier. The town of Norwalk is beyond, another nest of busy mills, spreading upward on the hill-slopes from the Sound. The original settlers bought from the Indians in 1640 a tract extending "one day's north walk" from the Sound, and hence the name.

Fine oysters are gathered in the s.p.a.cious bay, and the people make shoes and hats, locks and door-k.n.o.bs. On the lowlands to the eastward the Pequot Indian nation, once ruling all this part of New England, the name meaning "the destroyers," was finally overpowered in 1637 by the Colonial troops in the Sasco Swamp, now a cultivated farm, with almost the only highly fertile land seen in the immediate region. Most of the Pequots were captured and sold as slaves in the West Indies.

Beyond is tranquil Fairfield, embowered in trees and introduced by a rubber-factory, its green-bordered streets lined with cottages, and church-spires rising among the groves, while along the sh.o.r.e it has the finest beach on Long Island Sound.

BRIDGEPORT, OLD STRATFORD AND MILFORD.

Pequannock, the "dark river" of the Indians, flows out of the hills to an inlet of the Sound, where the enormous mills of the active city of Bridgeport have gathered a population of over fifty thousand people, in a hive containing some of the world's greatest establishments for constructing sewing-machines and firearms, building carriages, and making cutlery, corsets and soaps, while other goods also occupy attention. The grand Seaside Park esplanade overlooks the harbor, and towards the north the city stretches up the slopes into Golden Hill, named from its glittering mica deposits, where magnificent streets display splendid buildings. When the Pequots were exterminated in 1637, colonists founded this town, gradually crowding the Paugusset Indians, who owned the land, into a small reservation on Golden Hill.

The great establishments to-day are the Wheeler and Wilson and Howe Sewing-Machine Works, Sharp's Rifle Factory and the Union Metallic Cartridge Company; and Bridgeport is also the headquarters of the chief American circus. The stately and high-towered mansion of Waldemere fronts the park, and was the home of Bridgeport's best-known townsman, the veteran showman, Phineas T. Barnum. Born in Connecticut, at Bethel, in 1810, he died at Bridgeport in 1891. He first developed the financial advantages of amusing the public, and possibly humbugging them on a grand scale, and by working upon his oft-quoted theory that "the people liked to be humbugged," twice ama.s.sed a large fortune. In early life he wandered over the country earning a precarious livelihood in various occupations, and in Philadelphia in 1834 began his career as a showman. He bought for $1000 a colored slave-woman, Joyce Heth, represented to be the nurse of George Was.h.i.+ngton and one hundred and sixty-one years old. From her exhibition his receipts reached $1500 a week, and she died the next year. In 1842 he began exhibiting Charles S. Stratton, "General Tom Thumb," a native of Bridgeport, born in 1832, whose size and growth were as usual until his seventh month, when he had a stature of twenty-eight inches, and ceased to grow. Barnum exhibited him in the United States, France and England, and attracted world-wide notoriety.

Barnum started the American fas.h.i.+on of paying extravagant sums to opera-singers, in 1849 engaging Jenny Lind to sing at one hundred and fifty concerts in America for $1000 a night, the gross receipts of a nine months' tour being $712,000. He subsequently had his fortune swept away through endorsing $1,000,000 notes for a manufacturing establishment that went down in the panic of 1857. His fortunes were revived, however; he had museums in the leading cities, and in his later life had the "Greatest Show on Earth," which set out every spring from Bridgeport. Tom Thumb in 1863 married Lavinia Warren of Middleboro', Ma.s.sachusetts, a dwarf like himself, and he died in 1882.

To the eastward a short distance, and in sharp contrast with active Bridgeport, is quiet old Stratford, with Stratford Point protruding in front into the Sound, at the entrance of the stately and placid Housatonic, which comes down through the meadowland just beyond the village. Here there are neither watering-place hotel nor busy factory to disturb the ancient order of things, enc.u.mber the greensward, or encroach upon the sleepy and comfortable houses, where one may dream away in the twilight, under the shade of grand trees that are even older than the town. Stratford is much the same now as when settled by a Puritan colony from Ma.s.sachusetts in 1639, the leader and pastor being Adam Blackman, whom Cotton Mather called "a Nazarite purer than snow and whiter than milk." Across the patches of marshland, adjoining the Housatonic, is Milford, its half-mile-long stretch of village green neatly enclosed, and its houses upon the bank of the silvery Wap-o-w.a.n.g, back of which spread the wide streets lined by rows of overarching elms. A colony from Milford in England settled here in 1639 and soon crowded the Indians off the land, establis.h.i.+ng the primitive church, which was the usual beginning of New England settlements. Then, true to the American instinct, they proceeded to hold a convention, the result being the adoption of the following platform:

_Voted_, That the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof.

_Voted_, That the earth is given to the saints.

_Voted_, That we are the saints.

They had a good deal of trouble afterwards, both with the Dutch from New York and the Indians, but the saints ultimately possessed the earth in peace, and their successors are now making straw hats for the country.

THE CITY OF ELMS.

The city of New Haven, the most populous in Connecticut, having a hundred thousand people, is built upon a plain, surrounded by hills, at the head of a deep bay extending several miles northward from Long Island Sound. The magnificent elms, arching over the streets and the Public Green, and grandly rising in stately rows, make the earliest and the deepest impression upon the visitor. In one of his most eloquent pa.s.sages, Henry Ward Beecher said that the elms of New England are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture. The grand foliage-arched avenues of New Haven are unsurpa.s.sed elsewhere, so that they are the crowning glory as well as the constant care of the townsfolk. Among the finest is the avenue separating the Yale College grounds from the Public Green--a magnificent Gothic aisle of the richest foliage-covered interlacing boughs. The Indian name for the region round about New Haven was Quinnepiack, and the placid Quinnepiack River, coming from the northward, flows through a deep valley past the towering East Rock into the harbor. Old John Davenport was the leader and first pastor of the infant colony that settled here. He was a powerful Anglican parish pastor of London who had joined the Puritans, and in 1637 was forced to leave for New England with many of his people. They spent a year in Boston, but in April, 1638, sailed around Cape Cod to the Sound, and landed at Quinnepiack, where they laid out a town plan with nine squares for buildings, surrounding a large central square, the Public Green. At the foundation, Davenport delivered a most impressive sermon from the text, "Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars;" and from this came the original scheme of government for the colony by the seven leading church members, who were known as the "seven pillars." The colony got on well with the Indians, who revered Davenport, calling him "so big study man." They bought the whole tract of one hundred and thirty square miles from the Indians for thirteen coats. At first, however, they did not prosper, their trading ventures proving unfortunate, and they determined to abandon the place and remove elsewhere, selecting Jamaica, and afterwards Galloway in Ireland. The s.h.i.+p carrying their prospectors to Ireland sailed in January, 1647, but was never heard from afterwards, save when, as the legend has it, "the spectre of the s.h.i.+p sailed into the harbor in the teeth of a head-wind, and when in full view of the anxious people, it slowly melted into thin air and vanished." Then they decided to remain, and getting on better, in 1665 united their plantation with that of Connecticut at Hartford, under the condition that each should be a capital, a compact observed until 1874, when Hartford was made the sole capital. The British in July, 1779, attacked and partly burnt and plundered the town, the Americans galling them by desultory attacks as they pa.s.sed through the streets.

They captured Rev. Naphtali Daggett, President of Yale College, musket in hand, and with repeated bayonet-thrusts forced him to guide them.

When he was wearied and sore from wounds they asked, "Will you fight again?" He st.u.r.dily answered, "I rather believe I shall if I have an opportunity." Being forced to pray for the King, he did it thus: "O Lord, bless thy servant King George, and grant him wisdom, for thou knowest, O Lord, he needs it."

The great fame of New Haven comes from Yale College, having two hundred and fifty instructors and over twenty-five hundred students, the orthodox Congregational University of New England, which for two centuries has exerted a most advantageous and widely diffused influence upon the American intellectual character, and around it and its mult.i.tude of buildings of every kind cl.u.s.ters the town. In the year 1700 ten clergymen planned to have a college in the colony of Connecticut, and for the purpose contributed as many books as they could spare for its library. In 1701 it was chartered, and began in a very small way at Saybrook, at the mouth of Connecticut River, during the first year having only one student. The pastor of the adjacent village of Killingworth was placed in charge, and for several years the students went there to him, though the commencements were held at Saybrook, and in 1707 the college was located at Saybrook.

Subsequently, for a more convenient location, it was removed to New Haven, the first commencement being held there in 1718, and its first building being named Yale College, in honor of Elihu Yale, a native of the town, born in 1648, who went abroad, and afterwards became Governor of the East India Company. He made at different times gifts of books and money amounting to about five hundred pounds sterling, the benefactions being of greater value because of their timeliness.

His name was afterwards adopted in the incorporation of the university. Timothy Dwight and Theodore D. Woolsey were perhaps the greatest Presidents of Yale, and among its graduates were Jonathan Edwards, Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B. Morse, Benjamin Silliman, Noah Webster, John C. Calhoun, J. Fenimore Cooper, James Kent, William M.

Evarts, John Pierpont and Samuel J. Tilden. The College buildings are of various ages and styles of architecture, the original ones being the plain "Old Brick Row" on College Street, northwest of the Public Green, behind which what was formerly a large open s.p.a.ce has been gradually covered with more modern structures. The line of ancient buildings facing the Green has a venerable and scholarly aspect, stretching broadly across the greensward, fronted by n.o.ble elms arranged in quadruple lines along the street. One of these houses, Connecticut Hall, was built with money raised by a lottery, and from the proceeds of a French prize-s.h.i.+p in the colonial wars, when Connecticut aided the King by equipping a frigate. There are on the campus statues of the first rector, Abraham Pierson, President Woolsey and Professor Silliman. Various elaborate buildings are also upon adjacent grounds, such as the Peabody Museum, the Sheffield Scientific School, of four halls; the Divinity Halls, Observatory, Laboratory and Gymnasium, while the entrance to the campus from the Public Green is by an imposing tower-gateway known as Phelps Hall. The Peabody Museum has one of the best natural-history collections in the country, and the College Library approximates three hundred thousand volumes.

Besides the Academic Department, Yale has schools of Science, Law, Medicine, Theology and the Fine Arts, and its properties and endowments exceed $10,000,000, the grounds occupying nine acres.

NEW HAVEN ATTRACTIONS.

But New Haven is much more than Yale College. It is a great hive of industry, manufacturing all kinds of "Yankee notions," with agricultural machinery, corsets, scales, organs, pianos, carriages, hardware and other things, and it has a large commerce along the coast and with the West Indies. It was to New Haven that the first steamboat navigating Long Island Sound went from New York in March, 1815, the Fulton, which occupied eleven hours in going there, and fifteen hours in returning two days later, being delayed by fog, subsequently, however, making the trip in less time. This boat was constructed by Robert Fulton, and carried a figure-head of him on her bow. She was one hundred and thirty-four feet long, and of three hundred and twenty-seven tons, built with a keel like a s.h.i.+p, having a sloop bow, and being rigged with one mast and sails to accelerate her speed. She was managed by Elihu S. Bunker, and her ability to pa.s.s through h.e.l.l Gate against a tide running six miles an hour was regarded as one of the marvels of that time. The New York _Evening Post_ of March 25, 1815, describing her, said, "We have been a.s.sured that this establishment has cost $90,000, and we believe it may with truth be affirmed that there is not in the whole world such accommodations afloat as the Fulton affords. Indeed, it is hardly possible to conceive that anything of the kind can exceed her in elegance and convenience." Many were the races she had with the "packet-sloops" that plied on the Sound and often beat her, when the wind was fair.

There are tastefully adorned suburbs surrounding New Haven, where the hills afford charming prospects. The two great attractions, however, are the bold and impressive promontories known as the East and West Rocks, which are high b.u.t.tresses of trap rock, lifting themselves from the plain on each side of the town in magnificent opposition, and rising four hundred feet. The geologists say they were driven up through the other strata, and some people think these grim precipices in remote ages may have sentinelled the outflow of the Connecticut River, between their broad and solid bases, to the Sound. Each tremendous cliff is the termination of a long mountain range coming down from the far North. The Green Mountain prolongation, stretching through ridges southward from Vermont, is represented in the West Rock, while the East Rock terminates the Mount Tom range, through which the Connecticut River breaks its pa.s.sage in Ma.s.sachusetts, and part of which rises a thousand feet in the "Blue Hills of Southington," which are the most elevated portion of Connecticut. Thus projected out upon the plain, almost to Long Island Sound, the summits of these two huge rocks afford grand views. In the Judge's Cave, a small cleft in a group of boulders on the West Rock, the three regicides, Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell were in hiding for some time in 1661, and the three streets leading out to this rock from the city are named after them. It is recorded that a man living about a mile away took them food until one night a catamount looked in on them, and "blazed his eyes in such a frightful manner as greatly to terrify them." Dixwell's bones repose upon the Public Green at the back of the "Centre Church," which stands in the row of three churches occupying the middle of the Green that was the graveyard of colonial New Haven, and Whalley is buried nearby.

There is a grand approach to the East Rock, which is elevated high above the marshy valley of Mill River, winding about its base, and upon the topmost crag is a n.o.ble monument reared to the soldiers who fell in the Civil War. The whole surface of the East Rock is a park, and upon the face of the cliff the perpendicular strata of reddish-brown trap stand bolt upright. From this elevated outpost there is a charming view over the town spreading upon the flat plain, and the little harbor stretching down to the Sound; and beyond, across the silvery waters, can be traced the hazy hills of Long Island, twenty-five miles away. Two little crooked rivers come out of the deep valleys on either side of the great rock, winding through the town to the harbor, while all about, the country is dotted with flouris.h.i.+ng villages. Among them is Wallingford, to which the railway leads northeast amid meadows and brickyards until it reaches the high hill, whose church-towers watch over the population, largely composed of plated-ware makers. When this town was founded, John Davenport came out from New Haven and preached the initial sermon from the appropriate text, "My beloved hath a vineyard on a very fruitful hill."

Hillhouse Avenue, a broad and beautiful elm-shaded street bordered by fine mansions, leads out to the "Sachem's Wood," which was the home of the Hillhouses, of whom James Hillhouse was the great Connecticut Senator after the Revolution. His remains repose in the old Grove Street Burying-Ground, where rest many other famous men of the Academic City, among them Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher, Samuel F. B.

Morse, Benjamin Silliman, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, of whom Jefferson wrote that he "never said a foolish thing in his life," Eli Whitney, and Noah Webster, who, before he compiled his famous dictionary, had published the "Elementary Spelling Book," which had a sale of fifty millions of copies. The New Haven City Hall, fronting the Green, is one of the finest munic.i.p.al buildings in New England.

The three churches occupying the centre of the Green are the North, the Centre, and Trinity churches, the first two Congregationalist and the last Episcopal, the row presenting a curiously quaint and ancient appearance. The favorite resort of the people of New Haven is Savin Rock, a promontory four miles away, pus.h.i.+ng a rocky front to the Sound at the end of a long sandy beach, and having a good view, being located westward from the harbor entrance.

OLD SAYBROOK.

The Connecticut River flows into Long Island Sound thirty-three miles east of New Haven at Saybrook Point. Between is the venerable village of Guilford, where Fitz Greene Halleck was born, and where the three regicides were also for some time hidden. Out in front is the bold and picturesque Sachem's Head, which got its name from a tragedy of the Pequot War in 1637. The Mohican chief Uncas pursued a Pequot warrior out on this point, and shooting him, put his head in the fork of an oak tree, where it remained many years. The group of Thimble Islands are off sh.o.r.e, having been repeatedly dug over by deluded individuals searching for the buried treasures of Captain Kidd. Saybrook Point was the place of earliest settlement in Connecticut. The first English patent for lands on these coasts was granted to Lord Saye and Seal and Lord Brooke, and the colony was given their double name. The original settlement was planned with great care, as it was expected to become the home of noted men, and a fort was built on an isolated hill at the river's mouth. According to the British historian, it was to Saybrook that Cromwell, Pym, Hampden and Haselrig, with their party of malcontents, intended to emigrate when they were stopped by the order of King Charles I. Had this migration been made, it might have greatly changed the subsequent momentous events in England ending with the execution of that king. A little westward of the old colonial fort guarding the river entrance, a public square was laid out, where, according to the town plan, their houses were to have been built. The first Yale College at Saybrook was a narrow one-story house eighty feet long, and looking much like a ropewalk, which was afterwards removed, with the college, to New Haven. Its founders were pious men, who in 1708 drew up the celebrated "Saybrook Platform," with a declaration that "the churches must have a public profession of faith, agreeable to which the instruction of the college shall be conducted."

The ancient fort at Saybrook, built by Plymouth people in 1635, stood upon a steep and solitary knoll near the Connecticut River, which in 1872 was carried off bodily by a railroad to make embankments across the adjacent lowlands. The earliest governor of the colony came out in 1636, Colonel Fenwick, afterwards one of the regicide judges. Old Saybrook is now a quiet village, chiefly spread along one handsome wide street, canopied over by the arching branches of its stately elms, under which the distant vista view looks almost like a scene through a veritable foliage tunnel. The broad Connecticut flows in front, back and forth with the tide from the Sound, its restfulness in keeping with the ancient town, as yet uninvaded by business bustle or manufacturing energy. The Saybrook fort repelled the Pequots in 1637; and afterwards, in the Connecticut boundary disputes with the Dutch at New York, the latter, according to the veracious chronicler, marched against it "brimful of wrath and cabbage," but seeing it would be stoutly defended, he adds that "they thought best to desist before attacking." The British captured it in 1814, and ascending the river in a sudden raid, destroyed a large number of vessels.

THE THAMES TO THE PAWCATUCK.

The river Thames, coming down out of the hills and receiving the Quinnebaug, flows into the Sound twenty miles east of the Connecticut, and here is the pleasant city of New London, with about fifteen thousand people. Thus the early settlers renewed in the New England colony the names of old London and Father Thames, replacing the original Indian t.i.tles of Pequot for the town and Mohegan for the river. New London is built on a hillside, famous for comfortable old mansions and n.o.ble trees on the hilly streets, running down the declivity to the harbor, in the upper part of which is a navy yard. On either side of the harbor entrance are the gray walls and gra.s.sy mounds of the ancient defensive works, Forts Griswold and Trumbull, which got their chief scars during the Revolution. The most sacred New London memory is of Nathan Hale, who lived there, his little house being preserved as a relic. The Thames is a fine estuary, and upon it are sailed the great Yale and Harvard boat-races. New London was the headquarters of the Connecticut navy during the Revolution, a fleet of twenty-six vessels. After Arnold's treason, he came in September, 1780, with s.h.i.+ps and a large force of troops, captured Fort Trumbull and burnt the town. Afterwards they attacked Fort Griswold across the river, losing large numbers in storming it, and when the garrison had surrendered they were ma.s.sacred. A fine granite Obelisk contains the names of the slain, and bears the inscription: "Zebulon and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives till death in the high places of the Lord." The people of New London go down to the Sound for recreation and clam-bakes, the wide-spreading beaches having numerous hotels and summer cottages. All this region in the early times was the home of the Niantic Indians, a clan of the Narragansetts, their sachem being Ninigret, the brother of Canonicus and uncle of Miantonomoh, whose names are preserved in powerful American wars.h.i.+ps.

Beyond the Thames is Groton, known as the home of Silas Deane, the early American diplomatist, a hilly towns.h.i.+p, with little good soil.

On its verge are Fort Hill, where Sa.s.sacus, the sachem of the Pequots, had his royal fortress, and Mystic, with the popular resort of Mystic Island just off sh.o.r.e. To the northward of Mystic is Pequot Hill, where Colonel Mason attacked that tribe in May, 1637. He had marched out of Rhode Island with ninety English and over four hundred Mohicans and Narragansetts under the sachems Uncas and Miantonomoh, but when they arrived at the Pequot stronghold, the Indian allies were afraid to attack and drew off. Nothing daunted, Mason and his colonial soldiers prepared to do the work alone, and as a preliminary knelt down in prayer. At the sight of this, another sachem, Wequash, who had been their guide, was amazed and asked an explanation, and when he understood it, became so impressed that he was converted, afterwards preaching throughout New England. Mason and his men a.s.saulted the stronghold in the darkness, and got inside the palisades, but being overwhelmed by the superior numbers, fell back after setting fire to the wigwams. The fire compelled the Pequots to flee, and then the English and friendly Indians surrounded the hill and shot down the fugitives, there being six hundred Pequots shot or burnt, this being the death-blow to the tribe. Old Cotton Mather, who recorded it, wrote: "It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to G.o.d." Sa.s.sacus, from Fort Hill, sent reinforcements, but they were too late, although they hara.s.sed Mason's retreat, and Sa.s.sacus was soon forced also to flee, the remnant of the Pequot tribe being killed or captured in Sasco Swamp.

This region was Pawcatuck, and its chief town now is Stonington, built on a fine harbor, near the Rhode Island boundary, which is protected by the protruding arm of Watch Hill Point, the whole coast thereabout being filled with summer hotels and cottages. Stonington is on a narrow rocky peninsula, and of this town, in the early part of the nineteenth century, President Dwight of Yale College wrote, referring to its reputation, that "Stonington and all its vicinity suffers in religion from the nearness of Rhode Island." The place was bombarded for three days, in 1814, by a British fleet, but all attempts to land were successfully repulsed. Watch Hill Point is a high bold promontory, with sand beaches stretching both ways and hooking around westward so as to enclose Stonington harbor. To the eastward is Westerly on the Pawcatuck River, noted for its fine granite quarries and textile factories.

EASTERN LONG ISLAND.

From the Long Island sh.o.r.e, opposite the mouth of Connecticut River, there protrudes northeastward an elongated and almost bisected peninsula, ending in Orient Point. The eastern end of Long Island divides into two arms, this being the northern one, having at its outer extremity Plum Island, the pa.s.sage between being the famous "Plum Gut," a short cut occasionally taken by cunning yachtsmen racing around Long Island. Orient Point was originally the "Oyster Pond Point," its name having been modernized, and Plum Island, covering more than a square mile, is said to have been bought from the Indians by the first colonists in 1667 for a hundred fish-hooks and a barrel of biscuit. A succession of islands stretches out from it over northeastward towards the Rhode Island sh.o.r.e, and these guard the entrance to the Sound. The southern arm of Long Island extends much farther eastward than the northern one, and ends in Montauk Point.

Enclosed between these branching peninsulas is Shelter Island, thus appropriately named from its well protected harbors. It is a delicious island, about four by six miles in extent, picturesque and irregular in outline, having cliffs and promontories dropping off into tiny coves and bays with little beaches, their sh.o.r.es rich with the attractions that sh.e.l.ls and sea mosses give. In the interior are rolling hills and fresh-water ponds. Out in front on either hand are the blue waters of Peconic and Gardiner's Bays, with the broad Atlantic beyond. This island was the home of the Manha.s.set Indians, and that was its early name. To its hospitable sh.o.r.es fled some of the persecuted Quakers of New England, when driven out by the Puritans, the settlement being made as early as 1652. The records tell that in the eighteenth century George Whitefield came and preached here with such fervor and success that he was constrained to ask, "And is Shelter Island become a Patmos?" It is in a delightful location, and from the breezy hill-tops which have a grand outlook over the azure waters there can be seen a vision

"----of islands that together lie As quietly as spots of sky Amongst the evening clouds."

The array of islands guarding the entrance to the Sound beyond Plum Island begins with Great Gull and Little Gull Islands, the latter marking the edge of the "Horse Race," as the rapid tidal current in and out of the Sound between Little Gull and Fisher's Island is called. This Race is off the mouth of the Thames River, beyond which is Fisher's Island, nearer the Connecticut sh.o.r.e, an island nine miles long, and forming a sort of barrier protecting the Thames entrance from the ocean storms. This elongated island, covering about twelve square miles, was originally "Ye Governour's Farme of Fyscher's Island," owned by Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut, to whom it was granted in 1668, remaining in his family for two centuries, when a wealthy New Yorker bought it for a stock-farm. The adjacent waters are now a favorite locality for United States naval evolutions. To the eastward of Shelter Island, and lying in front of Gardiner's Bay, is Gardiner's Island, covering about six square miles, and having a long protruding northern point stretching up towards Plum Island. This island was the Indian Monchonock, and Lyon Gardiner, the first Englishman who settled anywhere in the State of New York, came along in 1639, and bought it from them for some rum and blankets, a gun and a large black dog, and his descendants have since been the owners. He was a veteran of Cromwell's wars, and always had the confidence of the Indians. Gardiner's Island was a favorite resort of the noted freebooter Captain Kidd, and while thousands of people at many places have at various times searched for his buried treasures, this is the only place that anything was ever found. Kidd was the son of a Scottish clergyman, became a mariner, and was sent from New York in an armed vessel to chase the pirates off the coast. Succeeding admirably, he was placed at the head of a new s.h.i.+p, the "Adventure," with one hundred and fifty men, and sent to chastise the freebooters in the East Indies. But after rounding the Cape of Good Hope and entering the Indian Ocean he turned pirate himself, crossing the Indian and Pacific Oceans, rounding Cape Horn, sailing up the Atlantic, and sweeping the West Indies. In two years he circ.u.mnavigated the world, became the most famous pirate in history, and landed at Gardiner's Island, burying his treasures. He was afterwards captured in Boston and sent to London, where he was hanged in 1701 on a charge of murder. The Earl of Bellamont, Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, took from Kidd part of his plunder, and learning the hiding-place on Gardiner's Island, had the locality dug up, recovering gold, silver, jewels and merchandise, valued at $70,000. Kidd's exploits are commemorated in a song which is of world-wide renown, thus beginning:

"I'll sing you a song that you'll wonder to hear, Of a freebooter, lucky and bold-- Of old Captain Kidd--of the man without fear, How himself to the devil he sold.

"His s.h.i.+p was a trim one as ever did swim, His comrades were hearty and brave,-- Twelve pistols he carried, that freebooter grim, And he fearlessly ploughed the wild wave."

To the southward of Shelter Island, on the southern peninsula of Long Island, is the well-protected roadstead of Sag Harbor, formerly a famous whaling port, but most of its maritime glory has departed.

Ma.s.sachusetts fishermen first settled the place, and it had at one time a fleet of over forty whale s.h.i.+ps, earning $1,000,000 a year; but the California gold-hunting fever in 1849-50 is said to have diverted its mariners and began the paralysis of this industry, which subsequently died out almost everywhere. It has about two thousand people, and its admirable situation has made it an attractive summer resort, while it is also developing some manufactures. On the peninsula to the southward are perched various old-time windmills, with their broad gyrating sails, in the wide-spreading land of the Hamptons. Far to the eastward the peninsula stretches out to Montauk Point, the end of Long Island. Here is the reservation of the remnant of the Montauk Indians, their name meaning the "Fort Country," as they were the most powerful tribe on the island, and made some defenses in their hilly region. The Sachem Wyandance who was at their head when the white men came, in the seventeenth century, was wise and sagacious, and became their firm ally, fighting the Pequots and their other enemies. In all the adjacent waters vast numbers of menhaden are caught. Here was located the camp, in 1898, where the American troops returning from the torrid heats and malaria of the Cuban-Spanish war recuperated, over thirty thousand men being cared for previously to discharge. Captain Kidd was at one time around here also, and is supposed to have sunk bags of treasure in one of the little lakes, which has since been called Money Pond, but none was ever found there.

Fort Pond Bay, a s.p.a.cious harbor on the northern side of Montauk Point, has been often suggested as a haven for transatlantic steamers, being safe and commodious. The plan suggested is to bring the pa.s.sengers by fast railway trains from New York. Out on the eastern rocky b.u.t.tress of Montauk Point is the tall white lighthouse tower, containing a most powerful Fresnel light, the gift of the French Government, visible for twenty miles at sea, its intense white light varied by occasional flashes. This is the guiding beacon of the eastern extremity of Long Island, and the solid b.u.t.tress on which it stands Mrs Sigourney calls--

"Ultima Thule of this ancient isle, Against whose breast the everlasting surge, Long travelling on and ominous of wrath, Forever beats."

THE ISLE OF MANISEES.

Fifteen miles northeast of Montauk Point, out in the ocean, is Block Island, lying midway between the extremity of Long Island and Point Judith, on the western side of the entrance to Narragansett Bay. It is about eight miles long, with a prominent white light for a beacon on each end, north and south, and is a curious isolated place amid the rolling waves of the Atlantic. Its balmy climate and equable temperature have made it a favorite summer resort, being popularly called the "Bermuda of the North," while some of its admirers say it is destined to become the American Isle of Wight. It was known to the Indians as Manisees, the "Isle of the Little G.o.d," and when the whites first came, its aboriginal people were great wampum makers. The Puritans campaigned on the island, defeating the Indians, and in 1638 they sent sixty feet of wampum to Boston for tribute, but the English did not permanently settle there till 1661. It is an elongated island, with high bold sh.o.r.es, abrupt hills, narrow valleys and sundry ponds, one, the "Great Salt Pond," near its centre, being of considerable size. The surface, however, is entirely dest.i.tute of trees, and the only harbor is behind the protecting refuge of a breakwater, built some time ago by the Government. As the ocean waves are always buffeting and was.h.i.+ng away the sh.o.r.es, its ultimate total disappearance is predicted, but this impending fate is said not to seriously alarm the inhabitants, who are, by the way, almost all Baptists. Until recently, so little was actually known of these Block Island folk, who were nearly all born there, and relatives, that a strong belief was prevalent on the adjacent mainland that the genuine native Block Islanders had only one eye apiece. They are strange and antiquated, and many of the old people have never been off the island.

Some of them recall as a wonderful journey taken years ago, in early youth, how they ventured so far away from home as to sail "across to the Continent," as they call the remainder of the United States. They gather sea-weed, which brings them quite a revenue, and dig peat, which is largely used for fuel. Their little stone-walled fields, ancient windmills and lily-strewn ponds are picturesque, and their ancestors are buried in the ancient burying-ground, which visitors find interesting, and then climb Beacon Hill to get a view that is unique in being an almost complete circle of the sea. This attractive place, swept by ocean breezes, is the eastern outpost of Long Island, and no better idea of it has ever been given than by Whittier's poem on the Palatine wreck, opening by describing Block Island: