48 THE ISLAND OF NANTUCKET. 



It affords the compiler much pleasure to be able to 

 here insert, with the permission of its talented author, 

 — Rev. Dr. F. C. Ewer, of New York, — the following 

 article, which appeared in the Nantucket Inquirer and 

 Mirror, Dec. 24, 1881: — 



An Essay towards accounting for the Formation oj 

 Nantucket. 



The writer of this essay does not pretend to any 

 originality other than the little that may be involved 

 in applying to Nantucket the results of the most re- 

 cent scientific observations and conclusions, in order 

 to account for the origin of the island. As a boy he 

 often wondered, as he stood on Saul's Hills or San- 

 coty, or watched the sunset from the Cliff, where Nan- 

 tucket came from, and how it happened that it stood 

 there surrounded by the sea; and as a man he has not 

 lost interest in these questions. 



There was a time when, in all probability, Nan- 

 tucket was not an island at all, and when Saul's and 

 Trot's Hills were almost mountains; when, at any rate, 

 their summits stood some seven hundred feet above 

 the level of the sea. At that time the breakers rolled 

 on a shore fully sixty or seventy miles to the south. 



Paradoxical as it may seem, we must look for the 

 cause of Nantucket afar north, and in the' western 

 part of Labrador. The fragments of stone and other 

 materials that enter into the composition of the body 

 of the island, exclusive of the shores and points, 

 doubtless came from a very much nearer locality. If 

 one draws a line on the map from Maddequet to the 



