Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 27

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF FIRST CHURCH.[149]]

Other executions took place in August and September, swelling the number of victims hanged to nineteen. Giles Corey was, by the old English law, pressed to death for standing mute when told to plead.

John Adams mentions a visit to this hill in 1766, then called Witchcraft Hill. Somebody, he says, within a few years had planted a number of locust-trees over the graves. In 1793 Dr. Morse notes that the graves might still be traced. I felt no regret at their total disappearance.

Would that the b.l.o.o.d.y chapter might as easily disappear from history!

FOOTNOTES:

[142] Considerable changes were necessary so long ago as 1674-'75, when it became the property of Jonathan Corwin, of witchcraft notoriety. In 1745, and again about 1772, it underwent other repairs, leaving it as now seen.

[143] A scene from life in the old Copp's Hill burial-ground at Boston.

[144] In the library of Harvard College is a book having the name of Parris on the fly-leaf.

[145] She approved Governor Phips's conduct, but advised the utmost moderation and circ.u.mspection in all proceedings for witchcraft.--"Ma.n.u.script Files."

[146] Samuel Sewall, afterward chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the province.

[147] Some of the pins said to have been thrust by witches into the bodies of their victims are still preserved in Salem.

[148] This incident appears in Hawthorne's "Seven Gables." The tradition is that Noyes was choked with blood--dying by a hemorrhage.

[149] The frame of the old First Church of Salem has been preserved. It is now standing in the rear of Plummer Hall, a depository of olden relics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IRESON'S HOUSE, OAk.u.m BAY, MARBLEHEAD].

CHAPTER XVI.

MARBLEHEAD.

"_Launcelot._ Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but at the next turning of all on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew's house."--_Merchant of Venice._

Marblehead is a backbone of granite, a vertebra of syenite and porphyry thrust out into Ma.s.sachusetts Bay in the direction of Cape Ann, and hedged about with rocky islets. It is somewhat sheltered from the weight of north-east storms by the sweep of the cape, which launches itself right out to sea, and gallantly receives the first bufferings of the Atlantic. The promontory of Marblehead may once have been a prolongation of Cape Ann, the whole coast hereabouts looking as if the ocean had licked out the softer parts, leaving nothing that was digestible behind.

This rock, on which a settlement was begun two hundred and forty odd years ago, performs its part by making Salem Harbor on one hand, and another for its own shipping on the east, where an appendage known as Marblehead Neck[150] is joined to it by a ligature of sand and shingle.

The port is open to the north-east, and vessels are sometimes blown from their anchorage upon the sand-banks at the head of the harbor, though the water is generally deep and the sh.o.r.es bold. At the entrance a light-house is built on the extreme point of the Neck; and on a tongue of land of the opposite sh.o.r.e is Fort Sewall--a beckoning finger and a clenched fist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREAT HEAD.]

The harbor, as the "Gazetteer" would say, has a general direction from north-east to south-west. It is a mile and a half long by half a mile wide, with generally good holding ground, though in places the bottom is rocky. La Touche Treville lost the _Hermione's_ anchor here in 1780, when he brought over M. De Lafayette, sent by the king to announce the speedy arrival of Rochambeau's army.[151] Probably the good news was first proclaimed in the narrow streets of Marblehead, though it has. .h.i.therto escaped a spirited lyric from some disciple of Mr. Browning.

The geologist will find Marblehead and the adjacent islands an interesting ground, with some tolerably hard nuts for his hammer. The westerly sh.o.r.e of the harbor is indented with little coves niched in the rock, and having each a number, though the Marbleheaders have other names for them. One or two wharves are fitted in these coves, but I did not see a vessel unlading or a bale of merchandise there. The flow of the tide as it sucked around the wooden piles was the only evidence of life about them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE CHURN."]

The varying formations of these sh.o.r.es go very far to redeem the haggard landscape. Even the coves differ in the materials with which their walls are built, feldspar, porphyry, and jasper variegating their rugged features with pleasing effect. The floor of one of these coves is littered with fractured rock of a reddish brown, from which it is locally known as Red Stone Cove. Captain Smith says this coast resembled Devonshire with its "tinctured veines of divers colors." The Rev. Mr.

Higginson, of Salem, in 1629, speaks of the stone found here as "marble stone, that we have great rocks of it, and a harbor hard by. Our plantation is from thence called Marble Harbor." His marble was perhaps the porphyritic rock which it resembles when wetted by sea moisture.

The beach is the mall of Marblehead. It opens upon Nahant Bay, and is much exposed to the force of south-east gales. Over this beach a causeway is built, which from time to time has required extensive repairs. Under the province, and as late even as 1812, the favorite method of raising moneys for such purposes was by lottery, duly authorized. In this way a work of public necessity was relegated to the public cupidity.

A run over the Neck revealed many points of interest. There are rock cavities of gla.s.sy smoothness, worn by the action of pebbles, chasms that receive the coming waveband derisively toss it high in air; and there are precipitous cliffs which the old stone-cutter and lapidary can never blunt, though he may fret and fume forever at their base. Looking off to sea, the eye is everywhere intercepted by islands or sunken ledges belted with surf. They have such names as Satan, Roaring Bull, Great and Little Misery, Great and Little Haste, Cut-throat Ledge, the Brimbles, Cat Island, and the like. Each would have a story, if it were challenged, how it came by its name. The number of these islands is something surprising. In fact they appear like a system, connecting the craggy promontory of Marblehead with the cape side. At some time the sea must have burst through this rocky barrier, carrying all before its resistless onset. The channels are intricate among these islands, and must be hit with the nicest precision, or a strong vessel would go to pieces at the first blow on the sharp rocks.

The Neck is the peculiar domain of a transient population of care-worn fugitives from the city. The red-roofed cottages were picturesque objects among the rocks, but bore marks of the disorder in which the winter had left them. They seemed shivering up there on the ledges, though it was the seventh day of May, for there had been a light fall of snow, followed by a searching north-west wind. Not even a curl of smoke issued from the chimneys to take off the prevailing chilliness. Down at the harbor side there was an old farmstead with some n.o.ble trees I liked better. On the beach I had trod in Hawthorne's "Foot-prints." I might here rekindle Longfellow's "Fire of Drift-wood:"

"We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, An easy entrance night and day.

"Not far away we saw the port, The strange old-fashioned silent town, The light-house, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses quaint and brown."

The light-keeper, whom I found at home, indulged me in a few moments'

chat. He could not account, he said, for the extraordinary predilection of the Light-house Board for whitewash. Dwelling, covered way, and tower were each and all besmeared; and the keeper seemed not overconfident that he might not soon receive an order to put on a coat of it himself.

He did not object to the summer, but in winter his berth was not so pleasant. I already felt convinced of this. To a question he replied that Government estimated his services at five hundred dollars per annum; and he pointedly asked me how he was to support a family on the stipend? Yet he must keep his light trimmed and burning; for if that goes out, so does he.

All the light-houses are supplied with lard-oil, which burns without incrusting the wick of the lamp; but the keeper objected that it was always chilled in cold weather, and that he usually had to take it into the dwelling and heat it on the stove before it could be used. A good deal of moisture collects on the plate-gla.s.s windows of the lantern when the wind is off-sh.o.r.e, but if it be off the land the gla.s.s is dry. In very cold weather, when it becomes coated with frost, the light is visible but a short distance at sea. To remedy this evil, spirits of wine are furnished to keepers, but does not wholly remove the difficulty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRYING FISH, LITTLE HARBOR.]

Afterward we spoke of the commerce of Marblehead. The only craft now in port were five or six ballast-lighters that had wintered in the upper harbor; with this exception it was deserted. The keeper had been master of a fishing vessel. I could not help remarking to him on this ominous state of things.

"I have seen as many as a hundred and twenty vessels lying below us here, getting ready for a cruise on the Banks," he said.

"And now?"

"Now there are not more than fifteen sail that hail out of here."

"So that fishing, as a business--"

"Is knocked higher than a kite."

Will it ever come down again?

We commiserate the situation of an individual out of business; what shall we, then, say of a town thrown out of employment? Before the Revolution, Marblehead was our princ.i.p.al fishing port. When the war came this industry was broken up for the seven years of the contest. Most of the men went into the army, one entire regiment being raised here. Many entered on board privateers or the public armed vessels of the revolted colonies. At the close of the war, great dest.i.tution prevailed by reason of the losses in men the town had sustained; and as usual a lottery was resorted to for the benefit of the survivors. The War of 1812 again drove the Marblehead fishermen from their peaceful calling to man our little navy. At its close five hundred of her sons were in British prisons.

Fisheries have often been called the agriculture of the seas. Sir Walter Raleigh attributed the wealth and power of Holland, not to its commerce or carrying trade, but to its fisheries. Captain John Smith was of this opinion; so were Mirabeau and De Witt. Franklin seemed to prefer the fisheries of America to agriculture; and Edmund Burke paid our fishermen the n.o.blest panegyric of them all:

"No sea but is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people--a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood."[152]

Add to this Napoleon's opinion that the American was the superior of the English seaman, and national self-complacency may safely rest on two such eminent authorities.

The light-keeper, who had been on the Banks, informed me that it was still the custom, when lying to in a heavy blow, to pour oil on the waves alongside the vessel; and that it was effectual in smoothing the sea--not a wave breaking within its influence. Dr. Franklin's experiments are the first I remember to have read of. A single tea-spoonful, he says, quieted the ruffled surface of near half an acre of water in a windy day, and rendered it as smooth as a looking-gla.s.s.[153] This man would have triumphed over nature herself.

Without doubt Marblehead owes a large share of her naval renown to her fishery; to those men who entered the sea-service at the bowsprit, like the great navigator, Cook, and not at the cabin windows. They gave a distinctively American character to our little navies of 1776 and 1812.

Southey, while writing his "Life of Nelson," flings down his pen in despair to say: "What a miserable thing is this loss of a second frigate to the Americans. It is a cruel stroke; and, though their frigates are larger ships than ours, must be felt as a disgrace, and in fact is disgrace. It looks as if there was a dry-rot in our wooden walls. Is it that this captain also is a youngster hoisted up by interest, or that the Americans were manned by Englishmen, or that our men do not fight heartily, or that their men are better than ours?"