Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

by Samuel Adams Drake

SHAG AND MINGO ROCKS, DUCK ISLAND.

It being the first day of summer, the passengers were so few as to be easily taken in at a glance. They were chiefly workmen employed on the great hotel at Star Island, or, as they chose to style themselves, convicts going into servitude on a desert rock: so cheaply did they hold the attractions of the isles. Perhaps one or two of the passengers had no more business at the islands than myself.

It is not easy to have a more delightful sail than down the Piscataqua, or to find a more beautiful stream when its banks are clothed in green. It has often been described, and may again be, without fear of exhausting its capabilities. The movement of shipping to and fro; the shifting of objects as you glide by them, together with the historic renown with which its shores are incrusted, fill the eye while exciting the imagination. A few miles above Portsmouth the river expands into a broad basin, which receives the volume of tide, and then pours it into the sea between narrow banks.

We gained the narrows of the river with Peirce's Island on the right and Seavey's on the left, each crowned with grass-grown batteries thrown up in the Revolution to defend the pass. Here the stream is not a good rifle-shot in breadth, and moves with increased velocity within the contracted space, the swirl and eddying of the current resembling the boiling of a huge caldron. Its surface is ringed with miniature whirlpools, and at flood-tide the mid-channel seems lifted above the level of the river, as I have seen the mighty volume of the Missouri during its annual rise. It is not strange the place should have received the anathemas of mariners from immemorial time, or boast a name so unconventional withal as Pull-and-be-d—d Point.

Clearing the narrows, we left behind us the city steeples, the big ship-houses, lazy war ships, and tall chimneys on Kittery side. The wind being light, the skipper got up a stay-sail from the fore-hatch. As it was bent to the halyards, a bottle labeled "ginger ale," but smelling uncommonly like schnapps, rolled out of its folds. We were now slowly forging past Newcastle, or Great Island. The sun came out gloriously, lighting up the spire of the little church at Kittery Point and the masts of vessels lying at anchor in the roads.

Glancing astern, I remarked four wherries coming down at a great pace with the ebb. They kept directly abreast of each other, as if moved by a single oarsman, while the rowers talked and laughed as they might have done on the pavement ashore. I could see by the crates piled in the stern of each boat that they were lobstermen, going outside to look after their traps. As they went by they seemed so many huge water-spiders skimming the surface of the river.

Fort Constitution, with its dismantled walls and frowning port-holes, is now passed, and Whale's Back, with twin light-houses, shows its ledges above water. We open the mouth of the river with Odiorne's Point on the starboard and Gerrish's Island on the port bow, the swell of ocean lifting our little bark, and making her courtesy to the great deep.

The islands had appeared in view when we were off Newcastle, the hotel on Star Island, where it loomed like some gray sea-fortress, being the most conspicuous object. As we ran off the shore, the "cape of the main-land" and the "cul-de-sac" of Champlain came out, and fixed themselves where he had seen them. One by one the islands emerged from the dark mass that involved the whole, and became individuals. The wind dying away off Duck Island, I was fain to take an oar in the whale-boat towing astern. We rowed along under Appledore into the little haven between that island and Star, with no sound but the dip of our oars to break the stillness, and beached our boat as the evening shadows were deepening over a stormy sea.