In course of time Martha came to be employed at Wentworth House as maid-of-all-work, not wholly unobserved by the old governor, as the sequel proved. He arranged a feast for his sixtieth birthday, and all the great people of the colony were at his table. Of it the poet sings:

"When they had drunk the king with many a cheer,
The governor whispered in a servant's ear,
Who disappeared, and presently there stood
Within the room, in perfect womanhood,
A maiden, modest, and yet self-possessed,
Youthful and beautiful, and simply dressed.
Can this be Martha Hilton? It must be!
Yes, Martha Hilton, and no other she!
Dowered with the beauty of her twenty years,
How ladylike, how queenlike, she appears!
The pale, thin crescent of the days gone by
Is Dian now in all her majesty.

Yet scarce a guest perceived that she was there,
Until the governor, rising from his chair,
Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
'This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
My wedding-day, and you shall marry me.'

"The listening guests were greatly mystified:
None more so than the rector, who replied,
'Marry you? Yes, that were a pleasant task,
Your Excellency; but to whom? I ask.'
The governor answered, 'To this lady here,'
And beckoned Martha Hilton to draw near.
She came and stood, all blushes, at his side.
The rector paused. The impatient governor cried,
'This is the lady. Do you hesitate?

Then I command you as chief magistrate.'
The rector read the service loud and clear:
'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here,'
And so on to the end. At his command
On the fourth finger of her fair left hand
The governor placed the ring; and that was all:
Martha was Lady Wentworth of the Hall!"

THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

231

XXXII.

THE ISLES OF SHOALS.

ONE of the strangest places on the Atlantic coast is the collection of crags and reefs out in the ocean off Portsmouth harbor known as the Isles of Shoals. We start from the wharf on a little steamer to go out there. The tidal current of the Piscataqua River moves swiftly past the almost idle wharves of the town, where two or three schooners are unloading Pennsylvania coal. The front of the port gives evidence that a large commerce once existed, but has passed away, for many of the quays are now abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Yachts and row-boats dot the water, as pleasure-seekers are numerous, and over opposite is the State of Maine, its shores being a succession of islands, the white buildings of the navy-yard, its shiphouses, and dock spreading broadly across the view. The flag floats from a tall staff, and a little steam-launch briskly crosses the river toward us, making a sort of ferry, but the navy-yard itself seems almost idle, a vessel or two being outfitted, and the vast establishment, much like League Island, is waiting for the new American navy to be created, so that it may get business. The green and sloping shores of the surrounding islands frame it in and make a pleasant picture, while a corvette moored in front has her flag flying apeak, ready to go to sea. We steam down the crooked river, threading our way among the islands of the harbor, passing the abandoned forts below the town, and skirting the attractive shore of Newcastle Island and its fishing village, with the huge Wentworth Hotel rising against the southern sky. Soon we pass the lighthouses, and, leaving Whale's Back Light on our left, are out at sea. Ahead, and about six miles off shore, looms up the dim and shadowy outline of the islands, lying like a cloud along the edge of the horizon. The prow is turned toward

them as we go bounding over the long rolling billows that come up before the fresh southerly wind. As the steamboat approaches, the islands gradually rise and expand to view as they separate into their respective forms, the chief being Appledore, which rises from the sea much like a hog's back, and hence the original name of Hog Island.

There are nine islands in the group. The largest is Appledore, covering about four hundred acres, and the whole of them do not aggregate much over six hundred acres. Star Island has one hundred and fifty acres. Haley's, or Smutty Nose, with Malaga and Cedar, which are connected by a sort of bar or breakwater, together have about one hundred acres. There are four smaller islets-Duck, White, Seavey's, and Londoner's-and upon White Island is the lighthouse for the group, with a great revolving light having alternating red and white flashes, elevated eightyseven feet and visible fifteen miles out at sea. A covered way leads back over the crags from the tower to the keeper's cottage. The Isles of Shoals are a remarkable formation-rugged ledges of rock out in the ocean, bearing scarcely any vegetation. On some of them not a blade of grass is seen. Four of them, stretching in a line, make the outside of the strange group-bare reefs, with waterworn flinty surfaces, against which the sea beats with all the force of thousands of miles of gathering waves. Not a tree grew on any of the group until a little one was planted on Appledore in front of the hotel, and another dwarf was coaxed to grow in the little graveyard on Star Island. Their best vegetation was low whortleberry-bushes until somebody thought of gathering soil enough to make some grass patches for a cow or two. No one can describe the utter desolation of these rocks, thus cast off, apparently, from the rest of the world.

THE STRANGE FORMATION OF THE ISLES. 233

THE STRANGE FORMATION OF THE ISLES. Yet the Isles of Shoals have their admirers. Celia Thaxter the poetess was the daughter of the lightkeeper, and to her glowing pen much of their fame is due, which has culminated in establishing on these wind-swept rocks an abiding-place for summer fashion. "Swept by every wind that blows," she writes, "and beaten by the bitter brine for unknown ages, well may the Isles of Shoals be barren, bleak, and bare. At first sight nothing can be more rough and inhospitable than they appear. But to the human creature who has eyes that will see and ears that will hear Nature appeals with such a novel charm that the luxurious beauty of the land is half forgotten before one is aware. The very wildness and desolation reveal a strange beauty to him. In the early morning the sea is rosy and the sky; the line of land is radiant; the scattered sails glow with the delicious color that touches so tenderly the bare, bleak rocks."

The curious name of these islands first appears in the log of their early discoverer, Champlain, the geographer for the noted Frenchman, Sieur des Monts, who had a grant for all this region. Champlain found them as he coasted along in 1605. From the earliest times they were prolific fishing-grounds, and the name of the Isles of Shoals is generally believed to have been given from "the shoaling, or schooling, of the fish" around them. In a deed from the Indian sagamores to John Wheelwright and some others in 1629 they are called the "Isles of Shoals." The redoubtable Captain John Smith, who had so much to do with early American exploration, visited and described them in 1614, and tried to attach to them the name of "Smith's Islands," but he was not successful. The State boundary-line between New Hampshire and Maine passes through the group between Star and Appledore. Owing to their peculiar grouping, quite a good harbor, and the only secure one, is formed between these two, opening to

the westward, and being enclosed by Smutty Nose, Star, and Cedar Islands, so that it is amply protected from the sea. Into this our steamer glides, halting first at Appledore and then at Star Island to land its passengers. The curious development of rocks and desolation, relieved by a little artificiality in the form of flower-beds, strikes the beholder with amazement. These rugged crags resemble the bald and rounded peaks of a sunken volcano thrust upward from the sea, with this little harbor forming its crater. When Nathaniel Hawthorne was induced to come out here he gazed upon their curious and impressive formation, and then wrote, "As much as anything else, it seems as if some of the massive materials of the world remained superfluous after the Creator had finished, and were carelessly thrown down here, where the millionth part of them emerge from the sea, and in the course of thousands of years have become partially bestrewn with a little soil." The savagery of these isolated rocks during violent storms, when surrounded by almost perpetual surf and exposed to the ocean's greatest fury, becomes almost overwhelming, and they actually seem to reel beneath one's feet. The peculiar novelty of the position impresses the visitor. The eternal plash and boom of ocean's waters on every side are the constant sounds, and it is easy to believe you are far out at sea.

THEIR ODD HISTORY.

Star Island has some history, and until they were sent away and their cottages removed to make way for the summer hotel it had a village of fishermen. It was the town of Gosport, and has its little church, visible with its tiny bell-tower many miles over the water. The original Gosport church was built of the timbers from the wreck of a Spanish vessel in 1685, and was rebuilt shortly afterward, and burnt by the islanders in 1790. The present little stone church is as old as this century. This charge had