40 The Story of the New England Whalers 



he was obliged to fly. Embarking his family in 

 an open boat, with a friend named Edward Star- 

 buck, Macy sailed across Massachusetts Bay, 

 rounded Cape Cod, and, braving the perils of the 

 open sea, crossed to Nantucket Island. There, 

 "as the Indians were not sufficiently enlightened 

 to abhor his crime, the dispenser of unlawful 

 hospitality was kindly received and permitted to 

 live in peace." 



The first white explorer to see Nantucket was 

 Bartholomew Gosnold, who went cruising among 

 the islands south of Cape Cod in 1602. The 

 title which his discovery gave to the British was 

 found in the hands of the Earl of Stirling in 1641. 

 The earl's American agent sold the island on 

 October 13 of that year to Thomas Mayhew, a 

 merchant of Watertown, Massachusetts, for 40. 

 Mayhew still owned the island when, in 1658 or 

 ^1659, Thomas Macy fled from Salisbury; but no 

 one had been able, up to that time, to secure a 

 foothold among the red inhabitants a fact that 

 gives interest to the story of Macy's choice of a 

 location and his success in obtaining a welcome. 



Finding the island very much to his liking, 



