112 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



One reaches Entry from Amherst harbor by the help of a fisher- 

 man's shallop, and though isolated from the rest of the little archi- 

 pelago, it is easy enough to reach in a summer's breeze, less easy in a 

 summer's blow, and the island is quite off the world in the gales that 

 blow up without warning on the uncertain gulf. Entry is the park 

 and arcadia of the Magdalens. The very beauty of its isolation, the 

 fertility of its soil, the alluring grace of its contours, the air of rela- 

 tive prosperity among its slender population, invite to studious re- 

 pose. It is a little seagirt domain where no one asks a favor of 

 the outside world, save to get there and to get away again. Its 

 proportions are slender, measuring two miles in diameter both north- 

 south and east-west; taking on a rather five-sided shape, with the 

 east shore due north and south. From its northwestern angle a 

 long sand spit reaches out toward the great nine-mile spit from 

 Amherst (Sandy Hook), these long arms almost clasping hands 

 across the narrow channel in which by fair weather lies the steamer's 

 path. 



Entry island in profile, seen from the west 



The eastern shore is lined and buttressed by the range of de- 

 moiselles. The sea has eaten into them making all that shore a row 

 of sheer and inaccessible cliffs. The island remains, it may well be 

 said, because these hills have defied the storms of the gulf and have 

 guarded the lower lands behind them against the tooth of the sea. 



The views from the shore cliffs and uplands of the island are of 

 wondrous sweep and beauty — toward the west and north the cliffs 

 and low-lying shores of the other islands, the gray rocks of Amherst, 

 the red walls of Grindstone, the more distant hills of Alright fading 

 with distance into the blue sands of Grand Entry and Old Harry; 

 on the south the misty outline of St Paul's island and Cape Breton 

 fifty miles away, and at the east the vast expanse of waters of the 

 gulf. Of a fair day in summer the island is a gem of emerald in an 

 idyllic Aegean setting. In autumn's storms it is a foothold against 

 the seething uproar of the gulf, aiid in winter it lies chained to its 

 sister islands by bands of ice which sever it and them from the world 

 outside, save for the cable and the marconi. 



History and settlement. In my previous paper I have taken 

 occasion to refer incidentally to the fact that since the days of the 



i 



