Isle aux Noix

“ The rocky isle in front, with its neat farm-houses at the eastern point, and its high bluff at the western extremity, crowned with the telegraph—the middle space occupied by tents and sheds for the cholera patients, and its wooded shores dotted over with motley groups—added greatly to the picturesque effect of the land scene. Then the broad, glittering river, covered with boats darting to and fro, conveying passengers from twenty-five vessels, of various size and tonnage, which rode at anchor, with their flags flying from the mast-head, gave an air of life and interest to the whole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In approaching Norfolk Island there is no danger: Lieut. Ball anchored in nineteen fathoms, over a bottom of coarse sand and coral, the north-east end of the island bearing west south-west quarter west; the easternmost rocks east south-east, about a mile distant from the nearest shore: at this place Capt. Cook landed. Ships have anchored also at south end of the isle in twenty-two fathoms, the westernmost point of Phillip Isle south south-east, the body of Nepean's Isle east north-east half east, and the south point of Norfolk Isle north-east by east. ”

“ On the 20th of October, La Nymphe frigate arrived here from the Isle of France, and the same day the packet sailed. On the 2d of November, we passed the Island of St. Helena, with a strong gale at south-east; and on the 7th, we saw the Island of Ascension. We crossed the equator in 20° 18' longitude west of London. The south-east trade carried us as far as 5° north latitude, when we got the north-east trade, which did not come to the eastward of north-east until we got near the western islands. ”

“ Thus Desceliers’ map of 1546163 (Fig. 9) , a museum of strangely-named sea islands, makes the latitude of “Maidas” 47° and the longitude that of St. Michaels, but not long afterward Nicolay (1560;164 Fig. 6) and Zaltieri (1566) 165 transferred the island to Newfoundland waters. Nicolay calls it “I man orbolunda,” and places it just south of the Strait of Belle Isle. It is accompanied by Green Island and by Brazil, a little farther out on the Grand Banks where the Virgin Rocks may still be found at low tide. Taken together these three islands look like parts of a disintegrated Newfoundland. ”

“ The islands are clustered together at its narrowest part, by far the largest being Belle Isle, a finely wooded island with a mansion in the centre, and a noted stronghold of the Royalists during the Civil War, at which time it was in the possession of the ancient Westmorland family of Phillipson. We did not walk alongside Windermere, but passed by the head of the lake to the old-world village of Hawkshead, and called at the quaint old-fashioned inn known by the familiar sign of the "Red Lion." ”

“ Jersey was originally Czar’s-ey, meaning “Cæsar’s Island,” so called by the Romans in honour of Julius Cæsar; the Isle of Wight denoted in the long, long ago the Island of the Wyts, or Jutes; just as Gothland indicated a settlement of the Goths. Heligoland expresses the Danish for “holy island settlement.” Anglesea is really a corruption of Anglesey, signifying, in accordance with the suffix ey, the Isle of the Angles [see Chelsea] . The Isle of Man is the modern designation of Mona Island, by which was meant, agreeably to the Celtic mæn, a stone “rocky island.” ”

“ Well, they multiplied, with this encouragement, till their numbers threatened to exceed the capacities of the isle, when a considerate British Government transported them to another island, ever so far superior, and set them up in housekeeping. They flourished; but the new island was the great world, and the gentler spirits among them sighed for their worldlet once more. ”

“ This grand inland sea is generally from twenty to thirty miles wide, and is 91 enclosed by Long Island, the ancient Isle of Nassau of the Dutch, stretching for one hundred and thirty miles eastward from New York harbor, and being likened to a fish lying upon the water. It has a generally bluff northern shore along the Sound, and the southern coast, which is low and level almost to the eastern extremity, lies nearly due east and west, the island finally breaking into a chain of narrow peninsulas and islands facing the rising sun. ”

“ Patrick's Island, indeed, whether viewed at close quarters from the little pier on the opposite side of the harbour—where sometimes at night one almost stumbles over piles of freshly caught fish that are left there to glimmer and glint in the moonlight—or seen from a distance from the coast to the north of Peel Bay, is probably the most striking object in the whole Kingdom of Man. ”

“ Such are the stories told of the five successive hordes of adventurers who first attempted to colonize our wooded Island. Whatever moiety of truth may be mixed up with so many fictions, two things are certain, that long before the time when our Lord and Saviour came upon earth, the coasts and harbours of Erin were known to the merchants of the Mediterranean, and that from the first to the fifth Christian century, the warriors of the wooded Isle made inroads on the Roman power in Britain and even in Gaul. ”

“ The narrator of the voyage takes this occasion to describe certain parts of the coast and waters of Newfoundland, the island of St. Catherine, Blanc Sablon, Brest, the Isle of Birds, and a numerous group of Islands called the Islets. But these memoranda are not connected with any observations or discoveries of importance. Speaking of Bird and Brest Islands, he says, they afford "great store of godwits, and crows, with red beaks and red feet," who "make their nests in holes underground, even as conies." Near this locality "there is great fishing." ”

“ Is an extremely pretty place, and still very populous, though much less so than formerly, when it enjoyed the consequence of a city, guarded by the only fortress in the island to which the inhabitants could fly for refuge in the moment of invasion: it rises on a hill opposite that on which stand the venerable ruins of the Castle: and in the intervening valley a beautiful stream winds its course towards Newport, sufficiently copious to turn several mills—the springs supplying water highly esteemed for its purity. ”

“ The facilities for getting about are good, for though in the northern part of the island the roads are sometimes a little rough, with stones not deeply enough set, they are always dry, being sandy; and west of Newport, and south, and also in the south-eastern corner, over quite three-quarters of the island in fact, they are excellent, dry, smooth, and firm. ”

“ On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the trees—when there are any trees—all bend away from the sea; and, even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair,—bowing grievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to save themselves from falling. ”

“ In short, nothing can exceed the gaiety of the scene, when the weather is at all fine: as it is made the occasion of a general festivity by the inhabitants—and resorted to as a holiday by great numbers from Newport, and the eastern parts of the island.
The Shore presents, when the tide is at its lowest ebb, a wide expanse of sand, stretching for miles both eastward and westward of the Pier, preserving upon an average the breadth of a mile: here and there interspersed with ledges of rock, and the banks beautifully feathered with groves and shrubberies. ”

“ From this point, which is the extreme west, to Foreland Farm, near Bembridge, which is the extreme east, the whole island measures only twenty-four miles in length; and its greatest breadth, which is from Cowes Castle to Rock End, near Black Gang Chine, is only twelve miles. It is, therefore, extremely creditable to this little island to have made such a noise in the world as it has done; and its celebrity shows that, small as it is, it contains a great many things worth looking at. ”

“ Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures. ”

“ At ten o'clock in the morning of the 19th, we saw an island bearing west by north six or seven leagues distant: the latitude at noon, was 1° 44' south, and the longitude 150° 39' east. With a fine breeze at east-south-east, we steered for the island, as it lay directly in our course, and soon perceived that it was inhabited, as we saw a number of people standing on the south point, and a great many canoes were coming off to meet us; but as the vessel approached them they paddled towards the shore ”

“ I could see the steeples of Portsmouth and of Newburyport, the bluff at Boar's Head, and the smoke of a score of inland villages. Following with the eye the south coast where it sweeps round Ipswich Bay one sees Cape Ann and Thatcher's Island outlying; the gate-way of the busy bay beyond, into which all manner of craft were pressing sail. Northward were Newcastle, Kittery, and York, and farther eastward the lonely rock of Boon Island. Shoreward is Appledore, with the turret of its hotel visible above; and right below us the little harbor so often a welcome haven to the storm-tossed mariner. ”

“ The day after leaving the Clyde, we were coasting along the not very attractive-looking island of Islay, inhabited by the Macdonalds. It was often the scene of forays, which one clan was wont to make on another, in the good old days, as people delight to call them, when the ancestors of the present race were scarcely more civilised than the South Sea islanders. Though rock-girt, Islay is fertile, and a large portion has been brought under a state of cultivation. ”

“ With a felt lining it forms a warm, durable, and cheap roofing, easily erected without skilled labour. When whole houses were erected of it I could never lose the idea that they were the mission chapels of dissent at home. The North Island is a barren and sterile desert when compared to the prosperity and population of the South Island, but then the North Island belongs chiefly to the Maoris, and this to the English in the north, and the Scotch in the south. To have seen only the North Island would be to see New Zealand in its primitive state ”

“ There are, however, several islets scattered around, whose productions show that they belong to the same sub-region;—the principal being, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe's Island, and the Kermadec Isles, on the north; Chatham Island on the east; the Auckland and Macquarie Isles on the south;—and if these were once joined to New Zealand, there would have been formed an island-continent not much inferior in extent to Australia itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those which grow on the south-east point of the island, where the land is low, are those which have hitherto been made use of.
Norfolk Island, if correctly laid down in a plan, with all the hills and vallies represented accurately, would very much resemble the waves of the sea in a gale of wind; for it is composed wholly of long, narrow, and very steep ridges of hills, with deep gullies, which are as narrow at the bottom as the hills are on the top, so that there is scarcely any level country upon it ”

“ The Population of the Northern Island is certainly very great; the Southern is much more thinly populated; quite a different Race of Men; they are much blacker; they are a very inferior Race of Men altogether. I had an Idea of colonizing Cloudy Bay myself.
Where is that?
That is on the Southern Island. What deterred you from that?
The Circumstance of Captain Stewart having gone down to assist those Natives deterred me; I was afraid to go among them after that. I expected that they would take every Ship connected with New South Wales and Great Britain. ”

“ The butt-end of the island, of poor, rough, wind-beaten hills, is redeemed by the fine harbour of Port Nicholson, which vies with the Waitemata in utility to New Zealand commerce. Broken as is the surface, poor as is the soil of certain tracts, there is but little of the island which will not ultimately be cultivated with profit as pumice and clay-marl yield to labour. Everywhere the settler may count on a sufficient rainfall, and—except on the plateau and the mountain highlands—mild winters and genial summers. The pleasant climate has certain drawbacks ”

“ Therefore we furnished our selves with such wares as were vendible in those parts, as Tobacco, Pepper, Garlick, Combs, all sorts of Iron Ware, &c. and being laden with these things, we two set forth, bending our course towards the Northern Parts of the Island, knowing very little of the way; and the ways of this Countrey generally are intricate and difficult: here being no great High-ways that run thro the Land, but a multitude of little Paths, some from one Town to another, some into the Fields, and some into the Woods where they sow their Corn ”