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 shore, 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 ship, 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 circumnavigated 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 Massachusetts, 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 ship was a trim one as ever did swim,
His comrades were hearty and brave,—
Twelve pistols he carried, that freebooter grim,