CAPE ANN.
Out in front of the region we have been describing projects the famous "ridge of rocks and roses," the gaunt headland of Cape Ann. This is a ponderous mass of hornblende granite, advanced forward twelve to fifteen miles into the ocean, with Thatcher's Island beyond, on which are the twin lighthouses that guard the mariner, forty-two miles north of the Highland Light on Cape Cod. The granite hills of the iron-bound headland are fringed with forests, while jagged reefs and rocky islets surround it, against which the sea beats in perpetual warfare. The surface is strewn with boulders, many of large size, and beds of the finest white sand are interspersed. The Indians called this promontory Wingaersheek, and when Captain John Smith came along he named it Cape Tragabizonda, in memory of a Moslem princess who had befriended him when a prisoner in Constantinople, also calling three small islands off the cape the "Three Turks' Heads." But King Charles I. would have none of this, however, and called the headland Cape Ann, after his royal mother, and thus it has remained. The haven on the southern side, Gloucester harbor, was early sought as a fishing station, being known in 1624, and it received its name in 1642, most of the early settlers coming from Gloucester in England. Champlain found it a safe harbor when in peril, and writes of it as "Le Beau Port." In August, 1892, this famous fishery port celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary with great fervor.
Along the Shore, Cape Anne, Gloucester, Mass.
The prosperity of Gloucester has come from the fisheries, it being the greatest cod and mackerel port in America, and having the most extensive fleet of fishing-boats in the world, exceeding six hundred, employing over six thousand men. The population approximates thirty thousand, and it is said their earnings on the fishery product are over $4,000,000 annually. The earliest form of the Cape Ann fishing-smack was known as the "Chebacco," two-masted, cat-rigged, and of ten or twelve tons, made sharp at both ends, and getting the name from the first place of building, Chebacco Parish, in Ipswich, adjoining the Cape. From this was developed the popular American build of vessel known as the schooner, the first one being launched at Gloucester in 1713. After sliding down the launching-ways, she so gracefully glided out upon the water that a bystander exclaimed in admiration, "See how she schoons!" and thus was she unexpectedly named, for a "schooner" has that style of vessel been ever since called. Gloucester surrounds its spacious harbor as a broad crescent, having Ten Pound Island in front sentinelling the entrance to the inner haven, so named because that was the price said to have been paid the Indians for it. The deeply indented harbor opens towards the southwest, being protected from the ocean by the long peninsula of Eastern Point, having a fort and lighthouse on its extremity. Some seventy wharves jut out from the circular head of the bay, with granite hills rising behind, up which the town is terraced. Shipping of all kinds are scattered about, including large salt-laden ships, while fishermen and sailors wander through the streets and assemble around the docks, spinning yarns and preparing for fishing ventures out to the "Banks." The odd old town around the harbor has seen little change for years, but the newer portions are greatly improved, having many imposing buildings, including a fine City Hall. The numerous churches have gained for it the title of "Many-spired Gloucester," and no place could disclose more picturesque sea views.
But the fishery interest pervades the whole town, dwarfing everything else. The main street winds about the head of the harbor, bending with the sinuosities of the shore, and from it other streets, without much regularity, go down to the wharves. Fishing-boats are everywhere, with new ones building, and on most of the open spaces are "cod-flakes," or drying-places, where the fish are piled when first landed, preparatory to being cut up and packed in the extensive packing-houses adjoining the wharves. Here many hundreds are employed in preparing the fish for market, both men and women working. The best fish are either packed whole or cut into squares, so they may be pressed by machinery into what are known as "cod-bricks," one and two-pound bricks being put into forty-pound boxes for shipment. When packed whole, the best fish are known as "white clover," in this stage of what is called the fishery "haymaking." This fish-packing is an enormous industry, and the Gloucester product goes to all parts of the world. But the fishery has its sombre side; the vessels are small, rarely over one hundred tons, and the crews are numerous, so that wrecks and loss of life are frequent. Often a tremendous storm will destroy a whole fleet on the "Banks," with no tidings ever received; and scarcely a family exists in Gloucester or its neighborhood that has not lost a member at sea. Sometimes the badges of mourning are universal.
An enormous development of rocks and boulders is seen everywhere in and around Gloucester. The houses are built upon rocks, the sea beats against rocks; but though excellent building-material is here, the houses are mostly of wood throughout the whole Cape Ann district. There is almost universally an ocean outlook over a sea of deepest blue. The outer extremity of the harbor to the westward is a long granite ridge ending in the popular watering-place of Magnolia Point. Down on the Eastern Point, alongside its terminating lighthouse, is a curious granitic formation, the rocks reproducing an elderly dame with muffled form and apron, known as "Mother Ann," this rude image being locally regarded as representing, in the eternal granite, the lady who named the Cape, the royal mother of King Charles I. The white flashing light upon Ten Pound Island between them is said to have for one of its chief duties the guiding of the mariner past the treacherous reefs of Norman's Woe, just west of the harbor entrance, which Longfellow has immortalized in his poem The Wreck of the Hesperus. One "Goodman Norman" and his son were among the first settlers near there, and hence the name, but no record is found as to the "Woe" he may have had. Neither is it known that any wreck ever occurred on this famous reef. In the winter of 1839 a terrific storm caused many disasters around Cape Ann, and forty dead bodies, one being a woman lashed to a spar, were washed on the Gloucester shore. Longfellow read in a newspaper the story of these wrecks and the horrible details, one of the vessels being named the "Hesperus," and he somewhere saw a reference to "Norman's Woe." This name so impressed him that he determined to write a ballad on the wrecks. Late one night, as he sat by the fireside smoking his pipe, he conjured up the vivid scene and wrote the ballad. He retired to bed, but, as he relates, it was not to sleep; new thoughts crowded his mind, and he rose and added them to the ballad, and at three o'clock in the morning had finished his immortal poem. There was no such wreck at the place, but his genius has associated it with the iron-bound coast of Cape Ann, and Norman's Woe is a monument consecrated to one of America's greatest poets.
"It was the schooner Hesperus