Between the Elizabeth Islands and Martha's Vineyard is the great route of vessels passing to and from New England waters, and the lighthouse keeper at the entrance has counted more than a thousand of them passing in a single week. Aquatic birds skim the waters, and all about the Sound are islands great and small, their granite coasts contrasting with the blue waters they protect from the severity of ocean storms. A tale is told of the origin of the names of some of the islands, which is original, if apocryphal. The story comes as a tradition from the "oldest inhabitant" of these parts, who is said to have been the owner of all these islands, and who determined, before he died, to bestow the chief ones upon his four favorite daughters. Accordingly, Rhoda took Rhode Island; Elizabeth took hers; Martha was given "the Vineyard;" and there was left for Nancy the remaining large island—so "Nan-took-it."
Martha's Vineyard is shaped much like a triangle, and is twenty-three miles long and about ten miles broad in the widest part. Vineyard Haven, its chief harbor, is deep and narrow, opening like a pair of jaws at the northern apex of the triangle, the entrance being guarded by the pointed peninsulas of the East Chop and West Chop, each provided with a lighthouse. Within is one of the most fairly constructed natural harbors ever seen, a spacious haven of protection, often crowded with vessels, which run in there to escape rough treatment outside. Here is the pleasant village of Vineyard Haven, prettily located upon the sloping banks of a small cove inside, and having down at the end of the harbor a Government Marine Hospital. "The Vineyard's" famous western promontory of Gay Head is composed of ponderous cliffs, falling off steeply to the water, and presents an interesting geological study. The inclined strata rise about two hundred feet above the sea, being gaily colored in tints of red, white, yellow, green, and black. About forty-five hundred people reside on this island, including fishermen, sailors and farmers, but mostly gaining a livelihood by ministering to the wants of the large population of summer visitors. The first colonist was Thomas Mayhew, a Puritan from Southampton, who came in 1642, being then the grantee both of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Cottage City is the chief settlement, built upon the eastern ocean shore of "the Vineyard," a wonderful place attracting twenty to thirty thousand people in the summer. The bluff shore rises precipitously for thirty feet from the narrow beach forming the verge of the sea, and there are myriads of cottages, many hotels, and a complete summer town spreading over a large surface. Here are held the great Camp Meetings which are the attraction in August—one Methodist and the other Baptist. The former is the "Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association," first established and meeting in the Wesleyan Grove, back from the sea. The other is the "Oak Bluffs Association," out by the ocean's edge. This place, thoroughly alive in summer, is dormant, however, for nearly nine months of the year. From it a railroad runs several miles southward along the shore to the little village of Edgartown, the place of original colonization, and the county-seat of Dukes County, Massachusetts, which is composed of all these islands. Towards the southeast, out of sight, is the distant island of Nantucket. Nearer is seen the misty outline of old Chappaquadick Island, called "the Old Chap," for short, with its long terminating extremity of Cape Poge. To the northward is the hazy mainland of Cape Cod, a streak upon the horizon, whence, long ago, these islands are supposed to have been sliced off during the glacial epoch, and going adrift, were thus anchored out in the ocean.
NANTUCKET.
The island of Nantucket, dropped in the Atlantic, everyone has heard of, but few visit. We are told by tradition that it was originally formed by the mythical Indian giant, Manshope, who, when he was tired of smoking, emptied here into the sea the ashes from his pipe. It was also the smoke from this pipe which created the fogs so plentifully abounding around the place. These fogs are very dense, and it is said of a certain noted Nantucket skipper going away on a long voyage that he marked one of them with his harpoon, and returning to the harbor three years later, at once recognized the same fog by his private mark. Old Manshope, the giant, was the tutelary genius of all the Indian tribes on the islands of Vineyard Sound and the adjacent mainland, and his home was on the cliffs of Gay Head, in an ancient extinct volcanic crater, now called the Devil's Den. He feasted here on the flesh of whales, which he broiled on live coals, obtaining fuel by uprooting huge trees. His firelight, thus made, is said to have been the earliest beacon seen by superstitious sailors passing the headland, and as it flickered in his midnight orgies, they solemnly shook their heads, saying, "Old Manshope is at it again." This powerful giant seems to have waded around Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds and regulated all the affairs of the neighborhood. But finally the sailors and colonists became so numerous that he waxed very wroth. With a single stroke of his ponderous club he separated "No Man's Land" from "the Vineyard," and then transformed his children into fishes. His wife lamented this cruelty, and he seized and threw her over to the mainland on Sakonnet Point, where she still lies, a misshapen rock. Then the disgusted giant vanished forever.
The Norsemen first named the island Nautikon, appropriately meaning the "Far Away Land." From this, on an early map, it appears as Natocko, then as Nantukes, and finally it became Nantucquet, from which the present name is derived. When Gosnold came along in 1602, he first saw its great eastern promontory, Sankaty Head, describing the island as covered with oak trees and populous with Indians. After the original grant was made to Thomas Mayhew, he sold it in 1659 to the "ten original purchasers" for £30 and two beaver hats, one for himself and one for his wife, he reserving one-tenth. These purchasers colonized the island, Thomas Macy, a Quaker who fled from Puritan persecution in New England, beginning the first settlement, and Peter Foulger, who came there somewhat later, had a daughter, who was the mother of Benjamin Franklin. John G. Whittier, the good Quaker poet, thus sings of Macy's flight to the island:
"Far round the bleak and stormy cape
The vent'rous Macy passed,
And on Nantucket's naked isle
Drew up his boat at last."