New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1879-08-18
OLD AND NEW NANTUCKET.

THINGS IN WHICH SHE WAS flhSl-iiib HO' IL
WHO SEEM NOT TO DIE
fvRoN AN OCCASIONAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE rRIBUSE
N,xrrCKyT. Aug. 13.-It was Goethe, believe,
who compared life TO a Summer residence at a
watering place. When you arrive, he says, you
first become acquainted with those who have already
been there some weeks and who leave i'll few days.
This separation is painful Then You turn to the
second generation with which Won live good while
and become really intimate But tins goes also, and
leaves Won lonely with the third, which comes Just
as Won are going away, and with which you have
properly nothing to do. The poets ODseryaIOhs'
although recorded i'm another country, reflect UNI
versal experience. A fashionable spa Yields HttIe
to your leisure that is not futile, vague ana ephe-
neral Hence the class that yearly wlthdriWs ltseu
from crowded Summer resorts is constantly ncreds-
ing It's numbers are popping the forests OF Maine
and are fast pOpulatng D1e canons oil Colorado
The very isles of the sea are glad because OF them
for theirs is no vagrant train rcapng where they
have not sown, vulgar barriers OF scenery as
Lowell calls them. They are the stald solid tolk Oh
great cities whose exodus IS an emigration. lhey
bring their families back to the old home reverse
all the conditions Of their life to the sweet habits Of
youth and awake at the end of Summer as from
restful dream.
And what more delicious creamery. if l may coin
from which write to-day, Here life is sleep and
forgetting. and if il were possible to realize tho
fable of the enchanted city surely here would be its
site. The tickle sea slips past it unbeedmg. The
spell of its past lies over it like benedlctlon II
Is the same sea that once brought the ends of the
Garth TO its gates, but for Nantucket the tide oil
commercial prosperity has ceased to flow and It's
fate may be summed up in the lament OF Pantheus.
'Fuit Ilium, ct ngens gloria Ieucrorum."
At the present time the population OF Nantucket
is less than 5000 souls. Thirty years ago there
were three times that number. To-day handful
of fishing craft constitute the shipping Of the haT
Dor In 1910 there were 600 ships engaged IN the
whale fishery and more than seventy smaller coast
ing vessels plying between this port and the great
commercial centres of the country. Then there
were candle factories and depots for ship supplies
and the hun of machinery, the clink-clank of ham
mers and the rumbling Of ponderous wagons
through the crowded ways and along busy wharyes
made music all day long. Now dIsmantlcd store
houses, mOss-gfown and Wondering, ruined docks
from which even the rats have retired as from
doomed ships, iufrequcnt carts announced by
peal of seigh-bes and over and after ali silence
and the mourners go about the streets.
The al. of antiquity that pervades this pace-an
antiquity of heroic achievements and unequalcd
enterprise-is not fictitious. 1 have been at some
pains to collect the first things in which Nantucket
and her sons have borne part The list might be
longer but instance the most important. The first
ship 10 reach latitude 100 in the Arctic Ocean was
the Penelope commanded by Captain Trstrlm
Gardner in June, 1888. The first ship TO display
the thirteen stripes of America IN the River Thames,
February 6, 1883, was the Bedford OF Nantucket
Coptain William Mooers. a Nantucket sailor, Cap
tain Daniel Coffin, carried the first load of cotton
TO Liverpool in 1880 The first American vessel 10
double Cape Horn and enter the Pacific Ocean, was
the Falkland, Captain Obed Paddock, Of Nam
tucket who sailed from DuDkirk, November, 1870.
A Nantucket sailor, Captain Joseph Allen. OF the
shin Marc was the first to take whales off the coast
of Japan in 1920 and another, commander OF the
whale ship Gangcs, first entered the northwest
coast of America in 1886 The first missionaries to
the Sandwich Islands were taken there in October,
1922, by the ship Thames, Captain Reuben CLASSIFY,
of Nantucket. Captain Folger OF the ship Topaz,
first touched Pitcarn's Island in September 1903,
eighteen years after its occupation by the mutt
neers of the ship Bounty. The first lighthouse in
America was erected on Brandt Point in 1904. 1t
was supported for forty-ve years by the cOntribu-
tons of Nantucket merchants.
Besides these first things il may be told with
a reservation that the two tea ships, the Dartmouth
and the Beaver, sailed out of Nantucket and re-
turned to Boston from London with their obnoX-
ious cargo December 49, 1878. They were owned
by the famous William Rotch Nantucket Quaker,
and commanded BY Nantucket citizens. As an off
set to this in connection with Nantucket Friends
if is pleasant TO record that the first important
fugitive slave case occurred this island October
%. 1922. The facts are not generally known and
in these post-gaulsOn days will bear rehearsal.
One CamIllus Griffith came from Virginia in
1922 in pursuit of the fugitive slave Cooper and
his wife, Lucy. The Quakers of Nantucket were
Abohtionists of the s:rctest sort and they met
Griffith with the friendhest of thumps, blows and
counter wrts, so that the naughty SOutherner was
glad to escape from their " thees and thOus with
a whole skin. Afterward-Oh, the irony of IL =
Griffith was convicted of technical assault on the
negroes, and he owed his escape from fine and i'm
prisonment on the second trial to the plead
ings Of Plny Mernck, who had opposed
to him such Interpreters of constitutional
law as Governor Marcus Morton, William
Baylies and 1heophilus Parsons, of Massachusetts,
Camllus went back to Virginia boiling over with
ind gnatIOn at the Nantucket kidnappcTs, but the
lugitves taITIed behind on this hUSpitable island
unTll their death. Cooper died In 1852 and his
wife followed hun ten years later at the age of lO7
SO much for the past OF Nantucket The deeds OF
her knights and her sea-klngB though written IN
water have been translated INTO the language of
poets orators, statesmen and historians and a. long
as their testimony Is before the world she need not
fear oblivion.
Abirds-eye view of Nantucket is easiest seen
from the hOuse-tops. They are commonly sur
mounted by a rallied platform, called walk,
sometimes extending the length of the roof. There
j. suggestion of the tropics well the ships IN
their breezy lookout. Thence on clear day the
Islands indcntcd outline may be traced against tho
horizon trimmed on the southern side by a line of
breakers from Coatue 10 'Scouset. With glass the
harbor at Falmouth has been seen, and even the
hosts of vessels at Martha's Vineyard, twenty miles
away The houses shingled from cellar to caves.
and set /" four-square to every wind that blows"
have an air of non-cOnformity characteristics of
their Quaker builders "Medlcys In drsbD they