nificent ocean view that opens suddenly before one is a sight 

 few places in the world can parallel. The vastness of the 

 ocean seen from such a height, its beauty both in calm and 

 storm, and its appeal to the imagination yield nothing even 

 to the boldest mountain landscape, while the presence of that 

 cool northern sea, surging back and forth and deeply pene- 

 trating the land with its great tidal flood, gives the air a stim- 

 ulating and refreshing quality comparable only to that found 

 elsewhere upon alpine heights. And as on alpine heights the 

 herbaceous plants that shelter their life beneath the ground 

 in winter bloom with a brilliancy and flourish with a vigor 

 rarely found elsewhere, so here the ocean presence and long 

 northern days of summer sun combine with the keen air to 

 make the gardens of the Island famous and the national park- 

 lands singularly fitted to serve as a magnificent wild garden 

 and plant sanctuary, at once preserving and exhibiting the 

 native plants and wild flowers of the Acadian region which 

 the Monument so strikingly represents. 



This native quality of the place is noted, curiously, in 

 Governor Winthrop's Journal, when he came sailing by one 

 early summer day in 1630 on his way to Salem, bringing its 

 Charter to the Massachusetts Colony whose Governor he was 

 to be, and found '/fair sunshine weather and so pleasant a 

 sweet air as did much refresh us; and there came a smell 

 from off the shore like the smell of a garden." 



As a bird sanctuary, too, these parklands, placed as they 

 are directly on the great natural migration route of the 

 Atlantic shore and widely various in favorable character, 

 need proper guardianship only to become a singularly useful 

 instrument in bird life conservation, while adding not a little 

 through the presence of the birds to their own interest and 

 charm. 



Geologically, the Monument, with its adjacent coastal 

 rocks and headlands, forms a wonderful exhibit. Essentially, 

 it is a bold and rugged group of granite peaks, immensely old 

 though far less ancient than the primeval sea-laid rocks — 

 hard, bent and twisted sands and clays — up through which 



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