The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-08-16


&c &c. In the afternoon we drove to the
point and inspected the light house, fog
| trumpet, &c. This house rears its head
one hundred and sixty one feet above the
level of the sea, and is furnished with a
! first -class Fresnel lantern. The outer
frame makes revolution once in six min
utes, and with its three lenses makes a
flash every two minutes. There from sun
flashes over the stormy ocean. The keeper
of this light is manned soldier, who lost
his hand in the naval fight below New
Orleans, and now receives for his services
about this light and the fog trumpet the
magnificent sum of seven hundred dollars
a year and no "back pay" He has two
assistants and the pay of the whole three is
twelve hundred year. Two of our party
were born on the Eastern Shore in Evans
old district, and when we told our friends
that to Elkton's distinguished citizen,
Hon. Alexander Evans, the commerce of
the world was indebted for this perfect
light, you may be sure that Eastern Shore
stock went up. Prior to Evans law, this
important point was lighted with fourteen
miserable fish oil lamps.
At the suggestion of 1.-THE keeper of the
light started up the engine and blew the
fog trumpet. The machinery is so arrang-
ed that this trumpet emits yell Of eleven
seconds in length every fifty seconds. The
noise made by this machine is simply in
fernal, and j found that, though with a
word he might awake this bowling devil,
to silence it was not SO easy. At last in
very despair, he called out, "Wont some
body silence that dreadful horn" 1t is
said that this trumpet can be heard at
Block Island, about eighteen miles away.
What nice time the light keepers family
have, trying to sleep on a foggy night,
with this noise like the concentrated howl
Of all the damned in their ears at intervals
of fifty seconds. But / suppose they con-
slider their big pay and are happy. Again
with what terror must these people wit
ness the approach of winter. The nearest
house three or four miles away, their dwell
ling stuck up on point of land nearly a
hundred feet above the ocean, around them
only the wild waste of waters and the
bowling wind and storm,
Listening now to the tide in its broad
! flung ship wrecking roar;
| Now to the scream of maddened beach
dragged down by the wave"
| The point was, some years ago, the favor
tie resort of the hunters after Kidd's bur-
led treasure, and there is one excavation
from which not less than a hundred wagon
loads of earth were taken. But" said
our informant, "Gould's boys got more
| money than the treasure hunters" they
having been hired to assist the diggers.
We returned to Stretton's for supper,
and soon laid our tired bodies down on his
comfortable beds, and were sung to sleep
by that lullaby which the old Atlantic is
ever singing, but sometimes with such
laundering bass. | walked about daylight
to the awful silence of lone country house,
broken only by
"-the voice of the long sea-wave as it
swell'd
Now and then in the dim gray dawn"
A mania for rhyming and drawing seems
to possess the visitors to Stretton's, for the
register is filled with the most villanous
doggerel and the rudest sketches. One of
our party contributed the following under
the names.
Six travellers of such a caste
| Were rarely seen in all the past.
The clergymen just numbered three,
And three comprised the laity.
These six, for old East Hampton town,
Were by John Parsons driven down,
They claimed our driver, like highwaymen,
And parsons thus outnumbered laymen."
| AS we went on to the point we had no.
ticed large post, about ten or twelve feet
above ground, with an iron staple in the
top of it, and the perpetrator of this horri-
BILE doggerel was Immediately sentenced to
be hung thereon by the neck until he
should be dead. On our way back three
others of the party received like sentences
for big yarns, but the malefactors being in
a majority revoked the sentences. A sail
on the ocean produced the only mishap of
the occasion. One of the Eastern Shore
men had slowed away quantity of blue
| fish for breakfast, and these claiming affin-
ity with their "school" fellows beneath
the blue waves, he was left in the condi-
tion Of the Federal army at Bull Run, i. e.
with breakfast, and at the first opportunity
fell back towards Washington. At three
o'clock of the second day we sat down to
dinner, of which the first course was pair
of Spanish mackerel, only few hours from
the water. As there was to be no more
boating, and all danger from sea sickness
being gone, the Teller from the Eastern
Shore event for " those mackercl with a
smile that was bland if not altogether
childlike.
The scientific results Of this expedition
may be summed up in new survey of
Block Island, which, by actual measure,
by an accomplished engineer, of the party,
is found to be twelve miles in length in
stead of eight miles, as heretofore set down
by geopraphers.
In my next will you some account of
East Hampton. w.
HYGIENE FOR SEDENTARY PEOPLE,
Dr. Dio Lewis publishes the following ex-
celent rules in his periodical, 1o-Day:
| HYou are occupied saw eiolt hours q day