458 Striped Bass. 



to Martha's Vineyard. We make an early start, and, as the weather 

 is fair, get a good view of the island of Pune, or Penikese, and its 

 elegant buildings (the Anderson School of Natural History, formerly 

 superintended by Professor Agassiz), which the fog had hidden from 

 sight when we arrived. Skirting along the coast of Nashawena, 



BACK FROM THE BEACH. 



and giving Quick's Hole a wide berth on account ol its strong cur- 

 rents, we came to the island of Pasque, or Pesk, as the natives call 

 it, and, rounding its easterly point into Robinson's Hole, we drop 

 anchor in front of the Pasque Island club-house. Some of the mem- 

 bers of this club are old friends, and we avail ourselves of a long- 

 standing invitation to drop in upon them and see what they are 

 doing with the bass. 



Pasque Island does not differ in its general features from Cutty- 

 hunk. Here there are the same bleak-looking hills, bare of trees, with 

 the exception of a little clump of locusts, named, after the aboriginal 

 owner of the island, " Wamsutta's Grove." Early accounts, which 

 represent these islands as covered with a growth of beech and 

 cedars, would be incredible, in view of their present cheerless aspect, 

 were it not that stumps of those trees are occasionally unearthed at 

 the present day. Besides the club-houses, there is but one building 

 on the island, and this dates so far back in the dim past that the 

 accounts of its origin are but legendary. We should like to pin our 

 faith to the story that it was erected by some straggler from Gos- 

 nold's band, which would make it the oldest building in New Eng- 

 land ; but we fear that this claim rests on the same airy basis, and 

 must be placed in the same category, as that which carries the 

 old mill at Newport back to the time of the Norsemen. The club 



