and the Maritime Provinces. l y < 



and subsists largely on soufflccs and ice cream, like all the rest of the giddy 

 world. Perhaps it is just as well, at this time, for Martha has naturally a 

 " Gay Head," and attracts readily by her blandishments. Not only have 

 the old retired sea captains made Edgartown their asylum, but the entire 

 wave-cinctured island has become a cosmopolitan elysium, a populous 

 summer garden, where the blare of trumpets and the hilarion of the out- 

 door girl rings out from Squibnocket to Chappaquidick. Seaview houses 

 and hotels occupy all the breezy points. Flags stream from jackstaffs on 

 the high bluffs. Rows of bathing houses line the pebbly shores. Steam- 

 boats ply to New Bedford, Wood's Holl, Nantucket, and all contiguous 

 points. A noisy railway motor industriously weaves its social web, as 

 shuttle-like, it threads its way along the beach, between the ancient oil 

 town and the old campmeeting site now occupied by Cottage City and the 

 Highlands, with their parks and plazas and asphalt walks, their domes, 

 spires, and minarets, their parterres of flowers, bandstands, soda fountains, 

 and tennis courts, all blithe with bunting, and so gay and jaunty all through- 

 out that the scene looks more like "Vanity Fair " than a staid and pious 

 campground. Then there are booths and news stands, and cabs and 

 lunch counters, and lines of horse cars running to Vineyard Haven, where 

 multitudes of yachts glide in betimes and make the harbor brilliant with 

 their anchor lights at night, whose jaunty crews in blue and gilt enjoy to 

 come ashore, with a nautical hitch of the trowsers, and interview the ci-de- 

 vant ship captains, flinging their sea vernacular recklessly to windward. 

 Everything is animated and restless, like bees swarming. Thirty thousand 

 people enjoying together the delights of frivolous pastime and easily keep- 

 ing cool in torrid weather, while less fortunate ones are sweltering else- 

 where, for there is not a spot along the Atlantic coast where refugees can 

 be so certain of exemption from excessive heat as on this sea-girt isle. 



Oh ! it is a beautiful isle, my mates ! with its pictured cliffs flashing 

 with chrome and carmine, and its green heights crowned with cedar: a 

 plaything of the ocean, tossed by the great waves, lashed by the tumbling 

 surf, and fanned by the soft winds of summer. It is at its best in July and 

 August, when the air scintillates with a golden haze, and gulls hover over 

 the reefs; and I could tell you of many a stroll along the shore then, and 

 what the receding tide revealed ; or of jaunts overland to South beach 

 where there is delectable surf bathing and feeding-grounds for snipe; of 

 flying trips around the entire island on a smart smack with a wet sheet and 

 flowing sea, with lines out astern half the time for ocean bluefish ; of a 

 morning cruise after mackerel, starting before daybreak and returning with 

 a spanking breeze in the afternoon; and of clam dinners at Katama, and 

 excursions to Gay Head, with its incidental ride to the lighthouse "in an 

 ox cart driven by an Indian guide," as the bills read, albeit the last sur- 

 viving Indian died in 1822, and the last with any trace of Indian blood, in 



