390 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



capacious reservoirs. At the lower one, in 1860, he built 

 a very fine mill for grinding wheat and bolting flour, contain- 

 ing every appliance known in those days for perfect milling ; 

 and at that time there was not in the United States a more 

 complete mill for making flour. He imported the best wheat 

 grown in Maryland, and for a time made the finest flour 

 known. 



At his death the enterprise was given up, though the mill 

 remains in perfect order, but only used for giinding corn, as 

 no wheat was ever grown to supply it. With that supine 

 indifference common all over the State, the farmers of the 

 Vineyard prefer to buy their flour at a cost of twice what 

 they could produce it for ; and from 1850, when they raised 

 the enormous crop of forty-five bushels, there has not been 

 enough grown on the island to make an entry in the census 

 returns down to the present time. Mr. Whiting, with a de- 

 sire to stimulate wheat-raising, has grown over thirty bushels 

 to the acre, and from one acre's produce received six barrels 

 of superfine flour from this mill. On the south slope of the 

 island from these hills are four large brooks emptying into 

 the. sea, and two on the north side. 



Gay Head, the high point on the western end of the island, 



— so named from the singular and brilliant appearance it 

 presents from the ocean, the bluff, one hundred and fifty 

 feet high, seamed down to the water's edge with ridges of 

 variegated clays of different colors hornblende and lignite, 



— gives its name to the small township, of rough but excel- 

 lent pasture-land, and also to the light-house which crowns 

 its summit. It contains an inexhaustible supply of fire clay, 

 about two hundred tons of which are annually exported to 

 Providence for fire-brick ; kaolin or porcelain clay of the 

 finest kind is also there found. 



The last of the pure-blood Gay Head Indians died some 

 years ago ; the population left, of brave and daring boatmen 

 and fishermen, is some Indian, some white, and more negro 

 blood, intermixed beyond the power of any ethnological 

 Harvey to trace the circulation. 



There are upon the island, in various places, large deposits 

 of muck, peat, vegetable deposit and swamp mud, of more 

 or less value to compost formanurial purposes, together with 



