NANTUCKET, A MORAINAL ISLAND 229 



which lies between Tom Never's and Sankaty Heads. Greta 

 Point is made from the waste of the cliffs on the eastern side. 

 Coatue Beach represents the tendency of the waves to straighten 

 the north shore. 



These shore forms are changing rapidly. The spit, formerly 

 lying in front of Tuckernuck, for example, has been driven back 

 and the island cliffed, sending out two wing bars, the western 

 reaching a little beyond Muskeget. 1 At "South Shore" the fore- 

 land has been aggrading, while the blunted cusp near Tom Never's 

 Head has worn nearly away. 



Ten years ago Professor Shaler wrote: 2 "About one third 

 of the coast line of Nantucket appears now to be undergoing 

 erosion. At the eastern extremity of the island the erosive 

 action appears at present to be limited to the section from the 

 southern end of the Sankaty bluffs to a point just beyond Haulover 

 Beach at the head of Coatue Bay. In 1873 Professor Henry L. 

 Whiting found by a resurvey of this portion of the shore that 

 the eastern or sea side of the coast at the Haulover had receded by 

 an average of about one hundred feet since 1846. Between Sacha- 

 cha Pond and the Haulover, especially at Squam Head, the 

 wasting is evidently at this day quite rapid, probably amounting 

 to at least a foot a year. The southern coast westward from 

 Tom Never's Head, especially the section west of Weedweeder 

 Shoal, is also the seat of considerable, though apparently incon- 

 stant, wear. A remarkable but probably temporary change has 

 recently taken place in the long spit which forms the western 

 extremity of the island as it is delineated on the Coast Survey 

 maps. Twenty years ago this spit at low tide constituted an 

 almost complete bridge extending from Nantucket to Tucker- 

 nuck Island. Of recent years this point has in good part been 

 washed away almost down to its base near Further Creek. It 

 seems possible that the existing separation of Tuckernuck from 

 Nantucket may have been brought about by the action of marine 

 currents within a relatively short time." 



1 U. S. Coast and Geod. Surv. chart, No. 7, 1S9S. 



2 Op. cit., p. 51. 



