A Book of the United States. Various
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and their thick woods and rank weeds rendered them impenetrable to man. At present, they are under cultivation and well inhabited; and as the voyager glides along their shores in a steam-boat, he is enchanted with the prospect of their lively verdure, interspersed with thick clumps of palmettoes, live oak, and laurel, and flowering groves of orange trees. The long sandy beaches which border these islands towards the sea, are covered with thousands of water-fowl. Georgia is also bordered with a range of small islands and marshy tracts, intersected by channels and rivulets which are navigable for small vessels. These islands consist of a rich gray soil called hammoc land. In their natural state, they are covered with forests of live oak, pine, and hickory, but under cultivation they produce the best cotton in the world, called Sea-Island cotton. There are many small islands scattered along the coast of Florida; and off the southern extremity, at some distance from the land, lies a cluster, on one of which, Key West, the United States have established a naval station.
The Chandeleur Islands lie on the eastern coast of Louisiana; they are little more than heaps of sand, covered with pine forests. West of the Mississippi are many others scattered along the coast. Here is the island of Barataria, formerly noted as a nest of pirates. It lies in a bay which receives the waters of a lake of the same name. The soil of these islands is generally rich; most of them are low and level. There are some very fertile islands in the Mississippi,26 and in the Great Lakes.
The Island of Michilimackinac, in the strait connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, is important in a political point of view, being the Gibraltar of the north-west. It is of an elliptical form, about seven miles in circumference, rising gradually to the centre; its figure suggested to the mind of the Indians its appropriate name, Michi Mackina,27 (Great Turtle.) The greater part of the island is almost an impenetrable thicket of underwood and small trees, which contribute materially to the defence of the garrison. Fort Holmes stands on a summit of the island, several hundred feet above the level of Lake Huron, and is now one of the most formidable positions in the western country. The French were the first settlers, and their descendants, to a considerable number, reside near the Fort.
Maniton Island is situated near the eastern coast of Lake Michigan; it is six miles long and four wide, and is held sacred by the Indians. The Castor Islands are a chain of islets, extending from Grand Traverse Bay nearly across the lake; they are low and sandy, but afford a shelter for light boats in their passage to Green Bay. Grosse Isle is a valuable alluvion of several thousand acres, being five miles long, and from one to two wide.
GENERAL REMARKS ON ISLANDS.
It has been well observed, that a large island is a continent in miniature, with its chains of mountains, its lakes, rivers, and not unfrequently its surrounding islets. The smaller islands are found single, or in groups. Among the low or flat islands, there are some which are only banks of sand, scarcely raised above the surface of the water; sometimes they consist of masses of shells or petrifactions, as the Isles of Lachof to the north of Siberia, which are nothing but masses of ice, sand, and the bones of the mammoth. The Pacific contains a great many islands formed of coral reefs, which are sometimes covered with sand, and afford nourishment to a few plants.
Among the more elevated islands we find very many which owe their foundation, in a great measure, to volcanic agencies. Submarine islands, as they have been sometimes called, or immense sand-banks, covered with shoal water, are not unfrequent. Chains of islands in the neighborhood of continents seem to be often formed by the action of the waters washing away the less solid parts, which once occupied the spaces between the mountains and rocks. In this manner were probably formed the islands along the coast of the United States, which still appear above the surface of the waves.
One of the chief advantages that islands derive from their situation is, that the climate is generally rendered mild and salubrious, from the vapors of the surrounding sea, which generally moderate the violence of heat and cold, both of which are sensibly less than on the continent in the same latitude. Another advantage is found in their accessibility on every side, by which islands are open to receive and export commodities, and at times when the ports of the continent are closed. An island has on all sides the most extensive and effectual frontier, subsisting forever without repairs and without expense; and, which is still more, derives from this very frontier, a great part of the subsistence of its inhabitants, and a valuable article in its commerce, from fisheries.
The island of Acroteri, famous in ancient history, is represented to have risen from the sea, in a violent earthquake; its surface is composed of pumice-stone incrusted with a covering of fertile earth. Four neighboring islands have been attributed to a similar cause, and yet the sea about them cannot be fathomed by any sounding line. These have risen at different periods, the last in 1573, the first long before the birth of Christ. Similar eruptions of islands have occurred in the group of the Azores. Thus in December, 1720, a violent shock of an earthquake was felt at Tercera. During the night, the top of a new island appeared, which ejected a huge column of smoke. The pilot of a ship who attempted to approach it sounded on one side of the new formed island, but could not reach bottom with a line of sixty fathoms. On the opposite side, the sea was deeply tinged with various colors, white, blue and green, and was very shallow. This island gradually diminished in size, and finally altogether disappeared.
History abounds with accounts of floating islands, but they are either false or much exaggerated. These islands are generally found in lakes, and are composed of the light matter floating on the surface of the water in cakes, forming, with the roots of plants, collections of different sizes, which, not being fixed in any part to the shore, are driven about by the winds. In the course of time, some of them arrive at considerable size. The floating islands, however, mentioned by the old writers, have now disappeared or become fixed.
CHAPTER X.—CAPES AND PENINSULAS.
Cape Ann, the northern limit of Massachusetts Bay, is a rocky promontory, fifteen miles in length, containing several good harbors. The peninsula of Cape Cod, in the south-east part of Massachusetts, is about sixty-five miles long, and from one to twenty miles broad; its shape is nearly that of a man’s arm bent inward at the elbow and wrist. The greater part of the peninsula is a barren desert; in the south-western portion the land, though sterile, is under some little cultivation; but the northern part consists almost wholly of hills of white sand. The houses are built upon stakes driven into the ground, with open spaces between for the sand to drift through. The cape is well inhabited, notwithstanding its sterility, and supports a population of twenty-eight thousand, who derive their subsistence chiefly from the fisheries. The coast is beset with numerous shoals, and has long been the dread of mariners. At the first settlement of the country, there was an island east of the cape, about nine miles out at sea, which was twenty acres in extent, and covered with savin and cedar trees; for a century this island has been entirely submerged, and the water is above six fathoms deep.
The peninsula of Nahant, a few miles north of the harbor of Boston, is connected with the main land by Lynn beach, a smooth and level floor of sand two miles in length. It is divided into Great Nahant, Little Nahant, and Bass Neck: the two former being connected by a delightful beach ninety rods long. These beaches are hard and smooth, and of sufficient width at low water to accommodate thousands with a pleasant walk or ride. Great Nahant contains three hundred and five acres of land. The shores of this peninsula are bold and rocky. On its southern side is a large and curious cavern called the Swallows’ House, inhabited by a great number of swallows, which here make their nests. On the northern shore is a chasm thirty feet deep, called the Spouting Horn, into which, at about half-tide, the water rushes with great violence and a tremendous sound.
Nahant presents some of the most striking sea views in the world. After an easterly storm, the violent dashing of the huge waves against the rocks presents a spectacle possessing all the elements of the sublime. During the heat of summer, Nahant is a favorite place of resort for invalids, and people of fashion, on account of its cool and refreshing breezes.
Cape May, on the coast of New Jersey, and the northern point of the mouth of Delaware Bay, is the termination