Elm Island

“ Joe, what’s the reason pigeons don’t come to Elm Island? Only once in a while half a dozen light as they go over.”
“’Cause there’s nothing for them to eat there. They live on what bears do—acorns, beech-nuts, and blueberries; but on your place there’s enough for both. Come, hurry up your cakes, and get on to it, and we’ll hunt in company.”
In the afternoon Joe carried the boys down to Captain Rhines’s in the boat, with pigeons and bear’s meat enough for his family and Ben’s. After meeting Sunday, Charlie returned to the island. ”

“ Joe built his log house in the midst of a burn, where he had planted corn and sowed wheat in the spring. Ben gave Sally a cow and Captain Rhines a pig to begin housekeeping with, and Ben continued to pasture her sheep on Griffin’s Island, as Joe had no land cleared for pasturing sheep, and they were safe from the wolves on that island. Elm Island gradually improved in beauty as Ben ploughed and removed the stumps; and the fruit trees in the new soil increased rapidly in size. ”

“ It was pretty lively times on Elm Island now: in the barn Charlie was building a boat; under a rude shelter, made by setting four poles in the ground, and placing some boards on them, Eaton, who was a splendid shingle weaver, was shaving shingles;—I can’t tell you why shingle makers are called weavers, unless it is on account of the motion of their bodies back and forth when shaving;—and Ben mortising and boring the timber. ”

“ Leaving the long reefs to the leeward, they now kept away before it with a fair wind for home. Taking in all but the foresail, they went along under moderate sail, that they might split their fish as they went, and before dark.
When they reached the island, it was quite dusk. The sea was pouring in sheets of foam upon the rocks, and the white froth, drifting to [35] leeward, had filled the main channel; so that to enter it seemed, to an inexperienced eye, to be rushing into the very jaws of destruction ”

“ Isaac Murch is an independent, wealthy farmer,—a mechanic by nature,—who has acquired the property he holds with his own hands, and would scorn to be a hired servant, like an Irish navvy; but for accommodation, he will hire some one to get in his own harvest, and in the cold, frosty nights, when he might be comfortable at home in the blankets, he will go on to Elm Island, sweat and work, live rough, and sleep on the ground, to build a house for his neighbor ”

“ If you cut the wood off that island, which lies right off the mouth of your harbor, and shelters it from the winds, it will leave it much exposed. It isn’t large enough to make much of a sheep pasture: you can’t keep sheep there in winter; for, besides there not being dulse, Irish moss, and kelp, as there is on Griffin’s, and the outer islands, the bay freezes in the winter, and the wolves would go over on the ice and kill them. ”

“ Uncle Isaac permitted him to keep her at the island. Thus he had two boats, and when it was calm, would take her, paddle over to the main, and up the river, following all its windings. In one of these excursions, he discovered Pleasant Cove. Enraptured with the beauty of the spot, he carried his canoe around the fall, and paddled up the brook into the pond.
“Ben,” said he, on his return, “I have known people spend thousands of dollars to make a beautiful place, and not obtain anything half so fine as the place I have seen to-day. I mean to ask father to buy it. Would Charlie sell it?” ”

“ Didn’t father build the Ark on this island? and couldn’t he, and Captain Rhines, and Uncle Isaac build a vessel if they had a mind to?”
“Why, Charlie, the people here have hardly got their land cleared up, and got to living themselves. There are no carpenters but Joe Griffin and Robert Yelf, no blacksmith but Peter Brock, and he’s worn out. Besides, there’s nothing for a vessel to do, except to carry wood to Salem or Boston, or to fish. Your father and Captain Rhines had rather put their money into a vessel with Mr. Welch.”
“Mother, carpenters and blacksmiths go wherever there is work. ”

“ The vessel being completed as far as was possible at present, Captain Rhines went home, leaving Ben and Charlie alone. There was now a large piece of land running along the eastern side of the island, beside the middle ridge, which was ready for a burn. From this land Ben had hauled his spars, and logs for boards, leaving the tops of the trees and all the brush; in addition to this there was left quite a growth of other trees, that were not fit for timber ”

“ Katherine and the Captain were cooks that morning and had the job of getting breakfast while the rest took an early dip in the lake. It was the first week in July. Three days ago Ellen’s Isle was an uninhabited wilderness and the only sound which broke the stillness of its dark woods was the rushing of the wind in the pine trees, or the lapping of the water on the little beach. Moreover, it bore the plebian name of Murphy’s Island, after the president of the ill-fated Mineral Spring Water Company. ”

“ All day that string of human beads waits there, jerks forward, waits again; all day and every day, constantly replenished, constantly dropping the end beads through the wicket, till the units mount to hundreds and the hundreds to thousands....
Yes, Ellis Island is quietly immense. It gives one a visible image of one aspect at least of this world-large process of filling and growing and synthesis, which is America. ”

“ We passed by "Ellen's Isle," as it is called, the most exquisite little island ever formed, a perfect oval, and all covered with the purple heather, the golden gorse, and all sorts of flowers and exquisitely beautiful trees. O, what a little paradise it is! A number of little row-boats, with fine-looking Highland rowers and gay companies of ladies and gentlemen, were visiting the island as we passed. They show the oak tree to which they say Ellen fastened her boat. ”

“ Last Island has gone! How it went I first heard from the lips of a veteran pilot, while we sat one evening together on the trunk of a drifted cypress which some high tide had pressed deeply into the Grande Isle beach. The day had been tropically warm; we had sought the shore for a breath of living air. Sunset came, and with it the ponderous heat lifted,—a sudden breeze blew,—lightnings flickered in the darkening horizon,—wind and water began to strive together,—and soon all the low coast boomed. Then my companion began his story; perhaps the coming of the storm inspired him to speak! ”

“ In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones. ”

“ Lying nearly forty miles west of Grande Isle, it was nevertheless far more populated a generation ago: it was not only the most celebrated island of the group, but also the most fashionable watering-place of the aristocratic South;—to-day it is visited by fishermen only, at long intervals. Its admirable beach in many respects resembled that of Grande Isle to-day; the accommodations also were much similar, although finer: a charming village of cottages facing the Gulf near the western end. ”

“ But with its imposing groves of oak, its golden wealth of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of oleander.
its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, Grande Isle remains the prettiest island of the Gulf; and its loveliness is exceptional. For the bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated by most of the other islands,—Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many islets haunted by the gray pelican,—all of which are little more than sand-bars covered with wiry grasses, prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. ”

“ We should also expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the island which is called Leodhus or Lewis, which though larger than any of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely inaccessible. ”

“ To the eastward there are five islands, the largest of which from its resemblance to the Lion's Mount at the Cape of Good Hope I called Sir Roger Curtis's Island, who then commanded on that Station. It is high and inaccessible on the north-west side and covered with small bushes at the top. Two other islands like haycocks, only higher and more perpendicular, standing a considerable distance from each other, the largest of which bore us south-east 1/4 south distant 16 or 17 miles and the other south-east by east about 10 miles. ”

“ Though there is no pass, the surf at high tide breaches over the gaps between the islands. The largest island is only a mile and a half long, and none of them are more than half a mile across. Dotted about the surface of the lagoon are a number of motu—tiny islets—each with its flock of sea fowl, its clump of palms, and shining beach of coral sand. Set in a lonely stretch of the Pacific, the place is almost cut off from communication with the outside world; twice or three times in the course of a year a trading schooner calls to leave supplies and take off copra. ”

“ They have discovered the western side of Ellesmere Island and the intricate system of fiords, as well as three large islands west of Ellesmere Island; they have explored the northern coast of North Devon; they have connected Belcher’s work with the coasts of Jones Sound; they have reached a point within 60 miles of Aldrich’s farthest; and they have discovered that land north of the Parry Islands, the existence of which was conjectured, as far west as the longitude of the eastern coast of Melville Island. This includes the discovery of the northern sides of North Cornwall and Findlay Islands. ”

“ The numerous patches of foul ground lying off the coast, between New River and Jacob’s River, were made visible by only a slight break on the rocks awash, and by the presence of some quaint-looking peaks in their midst. These dangers are chiefly to the eastward of Centre Island. This island is not of great height in any part, but it slopes from its summit gently to the north and east: and it is asserted that these islands in Foveaux Straits—Ruapuke, for instance—enjoy a better climate, and a more genial soil, than do some of the contiguous parts of the mainland. ”

“ The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fishing. ”

“ From Cape Elizabeth on the west to Quoddy Head on the east, there are over a thousand large and small islands, nearly all of which are of bold formation and most of them wholly or in part covered with a growth of spruce and fir. The shores of these islands, as well as the mainland, are mainly rock-ribbed, with many high cliffs, at the foot of which the ocean surges beat unceasingly. Deep fissures and sea caverns into which the green water, changed to yeasty foam, ever churns and rushes by day and night, are common; and when storms arise it bellows and roars like an angry bull. ”

“ All the eastern coast is covered with trees; that to the west is arid, dry, full of grasshoppers, and impossible of settlement. This is all I have reconnoitered to the north of Angel Island. To the southeast of said island following the estero is as follows:
To the east of this island, at a distance of about two leagues, there is another, steep and barren, without any shelter, which divides the mouth of the channel in two80, through which the sea enters to a distance of about twelve leagues. The width of this channel is in some parts, one, two, and three leagues ”

“ Through Emerson’s eyes we can see this little island ‘a prize for the best race,’ its singular people, chained to their logic, willing ‘to kiss the dust before a fact,’ strong in their sense of brotherhood, yet fond each of his own way, incommunicable, ‘in short every one of these islanders an island in himself.’ They have a ‘superfluity of self-regard’—which is a secret of their power ”

“ I did not allow this to interfere further with the harmony of the boat's crew and everything soon became quiet. We here procured some oysters and clams, also some dog-fish caught in the holes of the rocks, and a supply of water.
Leaving this island, which I named Sunday Island, we continued our course towards Endeavor Straits. During our voyage Nelson became very ill, but gradually recovered. Next day we landed at another island, to see what we could get. There were proofs that the island was occasionally visited by natives from New Holland. ”

“ To the south the bare peaks of Desolation Island, beginning from Cape Pilar, rose with terrific boldness, unscaleable shafts and towers of rock that recalled the shapes of the Coolin hills in Skye or the still loftier summits of the Lofoten Isles in Norway. To the north a mysterious fringe of islands and foam-girt reefs, grey and dim among their mists, hid the entrance to Smyth's Channel and the labyrinth of almost unexplored sounds and inlets along the Chilean coast beyond. ”