Oh, worthy Coddington, why did you reject the appellation of the Indian? Or why decree such clumsy transformation to that of the daring Dutchman?
I shall cling to the old title—“Isle of Peace”; though in later times less apt than when the Warapanoag bathed his bronzed limbs in the tranquil waters of the Narraganset, and paddled his light canoe around its rock-girt shores.
Since then, Aquidnec! too often hast thou felt the sore scathing of war. Where now thy virgin woods that rejoiced the eyes of Verrazano, fresh from Tuscan scenes? Where thy grand oaks elms, and maples? Thy green pines and red cedars? Thy birches that gave bark, thy chestnuts affording food; thy sassafras laurel, restorer of health and life?
Gone—all gone! Swept away by the torch and axe of the ruthless soldier-destroyer.
Despite thy despoliation, Aquidnec, thou art still a fair spot. Once more the Isle of Peace, the abode of Love—its very Agapemone; every inch of thy turf trodden by lovers’ feet—every ledge of thy cliffs listening to the old, old story.
Newport, in the year of our Lord 18—, in the “height of the season.”
An apartment in that most hospitable of American hostelries, the Ocean House, with a window looking westward.
On the troisième étage, commanding a continuous balcony, with a view of the Atlantic, spreading broad and blue, beyond the range of the telescope. Sachuest Point on the left, with the spray, like snowflakes, breaking over the Cormorant Rock; on the right, Beaver Tail, with its beacon; between them a fleet of fishing-craft, dipping for striped-bass and tautog; in the far offing the spread sails of a full-rigged ship, and the plume-like smoke soaring up from a steamer—both broadside to the beholder, on their way between the two great seaports of Shawmut and Manhattan.
A noble view is this opening of the great estuary of Narraganset—one upon which beautiful eyes have often rested.