Early Days on Nantucket 71 



of the average size of 93 tons. During that year 

 they took 14,331 barrels of oil worth $358,200. 



The ship owners of other ports, seeing Nan- 

 tucket's prosperity, had tried to share in it. Their 

 success was fairly good, but Nantucket owned at 

 this time as many whale-ships as all the other 

 ports of America combined. The whale-ship 

 owners of the other ports were obliged to send to 

 Nantucket to get men fit to serve as captains and 

 mates. The Nantucket men accepted the offers 

 thus made, but they were Nantucket men still; 

 for they called all the inhabitants of the mainland 

 "Coufs," an uncomplimentary designation they 

 had learned from the Indians. 



Travellers from Europe, in those days, were 

 astonished to find that America was a land where 

 "no one begged." To its lasting honor Nantucket 

 was a community not only where no one begged, 

 but where every man was a laborer, and where 

 every man was a capitalist, or, at worst, had 

 capital within immediate reach. 



"It is a fascinating theme. Nowhere in the 

 whole history and evolution of peaceful commerce 

 has such actual romance emanated as glowed in 



