Part 51 (1/2)
My pilgrimage among the haunts of the Narragansets and Wampanoags of old fame extended no farther. Setting my face again toward the sea, when on board one of those floating hotels that ply between Fall River and New York, I thought of the prediction I had cut from the Boston _Daily Advertiser_ of just half a century ago: ”We believe the time will not be far distant when a steamboat will be provided to run regularly between New York and Taunton River, to come to Fall River and Dighton, and perhaps to the wharves in Taunton, a mile below the village. This route from New York to Boston would in some respects be preferable to that through Providence.”
FOOTNOTES:
[301] It was the fortress of the British left wing. Two large and elegant country houses at its base, included within the lines, were occupied by the officers.
[302] He was the son of John, the son of G.o.dfrey Malbone.
[303] The first bridge spanning what was known as Howland's Ferry was completed in 1795. It was of wood, destroyed and swept to sea by a storm; rebuilt, and again destroyed by worms. The present stone structure was built in 1809-'10, and, though injured by the gale of 1815, stands firm.
[304] The battle was fought in the valley below Quaker, sometimes called Meeting-house, Hill. Sullivan commanded in chief, though Greene is ent.i.tled to a large share of the credit of repulsing the British attack.
It was a well-fought action. Pigot, by British accounts, had six thousand regular troops. Lafayette was mad as a March hare at their fighting without him.
[305] Lechford, writing between 1637 and 1641, says: ”At the island called Aquedney are about two hundred families. There was a church where one Master Clark was elder: the place where the church was is called Newport, but that church, I hear, is now dissolved. At the other end of the island there is another town called Portsmouth, but no church. Those of the island have a pretended civil government of their own erection without the king's patent.”
[306] To be exact, the sh.o.r.es adjacent to the rock are in the town of Berkeley, formerly part of Dighton.
[307] A copy of the inscription, made by Professor Sewall, is deposited in the Museum at Cambridge. There is another copy, by James Winthrop; see plate in vol. iii., ”Memoir American Academy,” and description of method of taking it, vol. ii., part ii., p. 126. Many others have been taken, more or less imperfect; the best one recollected is in the hall of the Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW LONDON IN 1813.]
CHAPTER XXVII.
NEW LONDON AND NORWICH.
”It seems that you take pleasure in these walks, sir.”--Ma.s.sINGER.
New London is a city hiding within a river, three miles from its meeting with the waters of Long Island Sound. On the farthest seaward point of the western sh.o.r.e is a light-house. Before, and yet a little eastward of the river's mouth, is an island about nine miles long screening it from the full power of Atlantic storms, and forming, with Watch Hill,[308]
the prolongation of the broken line of land stretching out into the Sound from the northern limb of the Long Island sh.o.r.e. Through this barrier, thrown across the entrance to the Sound, all vessels must pa.s.s.
The island is Fisher's Island. It seems placed on purpose to turn into the Thames all commerce winging its way eastward. Across the western extremity of Fisher's Island, on a fair night, New London and Montauk lights exchange burning glances. From Watch Hill the low and distant sh.o.r.e of Long Island is easily distinguished by day, and by night its beacon-light flashes an answer to its twin-brother of Montauk. These two towers are the Pillars of Hercules of the Sound, on which are hung the long and radiant gleams that bridge its gate-way.
South-west of Fisher's Island are the two Gull Islets, on the smallest of which is a light-house. The swift tide which washes them is called the Horse-race. Next comes Plum Island, separated from the Long Island sh.o.r.e by a narrow and swift channel known as Plum Gut, through which cunning yachtsmen sometimes steer. In 1667, Samuel Wyllys, of Hartford, bought Plum Island for a barrel of biscuit and a hundred awls and fish-hooks.
Any one who looks at the long ellipse of water embraced within Long Island and the Connecticut sh.o.r.e, and remarks the narrow and obstructed channel through which it communicates with the Hudson, the chain of islands at its meeting with the ocean on the east, must be impressed with the belief that he is beholding one of the greatest physical changes that have occurred on the New England coast. As it is, Long Island Sound lacks little of being an inland sea. The absence of any certain indications of the channels of the rivers emptying into the Sound west of the Connecticut favors the theory of the union, at some former time, of Long Island at its western end with the main-land.
To resume our survey of the coast, we see on the map, about midway between Point Judith and Montauk, the pear-shaped spot of land protruding above the ocean called Block Island.[309] It is about eight miles long, diversified with abrupt hills and narrow dales, but dest.i.tute of trees. A chain of ponds extending from the north and nearly to the centre, with several separate and smaller ones, const.i.tutes about one-seventh of the island. There is no s.h.i.+p harbor, and in bad weather fis.h.i.+ng-boats are obliged to be hauled on sh.o.r.e, though the sea-mole in process of construction by Government will afford both haven and safeguard against the surges of the Atlantic; for the island, having no rock foundation, is constantly wasting away. Cottages of wood, whitewashed every spring, are scattered promiscuously over the island, with wretched roads or lanes to accommodate every dwelling. The total disappearance of the island has often been predicted, and I recollect when the impression prevailed to some extent on the main-land that the islanders had only an eye apiece.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW LONDON HARBOR, NORTH VIEW.]
Ascending now the river toward New London, wind, tide, or steam shall sweep us under the granite battlements of Fort Trumbull, on the one side, and the gra.s.sy mounds of Fort Griswold on the other.[310] Near the latter is standing a monument commemorating the infamy of Benedict Arnold and the heroism of a handful of brave men sacrificed to what is called the chances of war.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW LONDON LIGHT.]
New London is seen straggling up the side of a steep and rocky hill, dominated by three pointed steeples. Descending from the crest, its princ.i.p.al street opens like the mouth of a tunnel at the water-side into a broad s.p.a.ce, always its market-place and chief landing. Other avenues follow the natural shelf above the sh.o.r.e, or find their way deviously as streams might down the hill-side. The glory of New London is in its trees, though in some streets they stand so thick as to exclude the sunlight, and oppress the wayfarer with the feeling of walking in a church-yard.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The destruction of New London by Arnold's command, in 1781, has left little that is suggestive of its beginning. Its English settlement goes no farther back than 1646. In that year and the next a band of pioneers from the Ma.s.sachusetts colony, among whom was John Winthrop, Jun.,[311]