The Fountain of Youth, legend has it, was first sought in that region of North American coast known as Florida. In the centuries that followed, not supernaturally endowed waters, but the sight of primeval forets to be exploited, vast acreages to be brought under cultivation, and great mountains to be searched for mineral wealth, has rejuvenated and stimulated American spirit from generation to generation even down to the present, making our humble and often untutored forebearers God-like creators of a new world. Those who are pleasantly titallated by traveling about in the well-ordered and highly civilized communities of the Old World and this, need a large amount of historical imagination, in the best sense, to understand the emotions of one like Bartholomew Gosnold, as he beheld for the first time the temperate zone of Ameica which he hoped to colonize, building there a new English nation.
Men of vision before him -- Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Hakluyt, Captain Edward Hayes -- had gathered together from fragmentary reports a considerable amount of information about this temperate region and had made plans on paper for its settlement. The most useful of these reports were made by Englismen who had reached the northern part of Main from Newfounddland, but none had gotten to the Land of Promise found by Verrazzano, Now Gosnold was to see it with his own eyes and perhaps begin a traffic that would bring to England all the things needed for her prosperity.
After the Concord had passed safely through the rocky shoals off the eastern shores of Cape Cod and Nantucket, the ship was turned westward, to coast along the south side of the "somewhat wooded" islands -- Nantucket ("the Place near the Rough Water") and Tuckernuck ("the Place like a Round Loaf of Bread") -- to the little island of ever-shifting sands, Muskeget ("on the Grassy Place"), a distant Massachusetts cousin of the muskeg of the Arctic. By the dead-reckoning of his navigator, Gosnold knew these to be the islands that enclosed on the south the great sheet of inland water which he had seen from the hill on Cape Cod. These islands had been below the horizon from that elevation, but had betrayed their presence to his trained eye, by affecting the appearance of the sea, as they do to observers of today.
Here, south of the islands, the Concord was in deep water eight to ten fathoms two or three miles off shore, with a smooth, sandy bottom. The in-rolling seas do not break into surf until they strike the sharply-shelving beach. At the southwestern corner of Muskeget Island, however, twelve leagues from Cape Cod, a sand-bar juts out at right angles to the beach, with places where the water is scarcely two fathoms deep.
Seeing this southwestern corner of Muskeget Island as a "point", with the breakers of an opening a good distance beyond it, Gosnold thought that by tacking around it, his sailing-master could take the ship into the enclosed waters north of the islands. Before this could be accomplished, however, the seamen discerned the hidden sand-bar beneath them, with only a few feet of water between their keel and the treacherous sands. Speedy and skilful action got the ship about and withdrawn again into deep water; they had "well quitted themselves" of the place. Archer, here telling the story with unusal detail, thought that the point ought to be remembered as Point Care, a reminder that caution was needed in these unknown waters. At the same time, one Tucker (who may have been a "gentleman" rather than a member of the crew) evinced such excited fright that Archer named the breach through which they passed "Tucker's Terror." (The breach, of course, was the break in the boiling surf that stretches across a good part of the six-mile-wide opening into Nantucket Sound from the south.) Beyond the breach, they "bore up again with the land."
This land on the further, or western, side of the Muskeget Channel is the island called Chappaquiddick. It lies at the eastern end of Martha's Vineyard, separated by a bay with an opening in the north of the sound, and at its southern end opening to the ocean through a channel that cuts through the connecting tongue of land at one location or another, according to the whim of the shifting sands. The anchorage off this Chappaquiddick shore was made after nightfall, the Concord having sailed well over a hundred miles since departing from the bottom of Cape Cod Bay and previous evening. The anchor was dropped "in eight fadome, the ground good."
On the following day, the mariners found themselves surrounded by a lively but not dangerous surf. In these present days fishermen with an eye to the sport stand on this shore and make a long cast with their lines out in the breakers, on the chance of hooking a fighting bass or bluefish, and some venture out in sturdy motor-boats to do their casting farther off shore. Except in a southeast gale, the waters here are ordinarily not dangerous. Gosnold and his crew, unaware of these facts, "continued that day without remoove." Possibly there was a southeaster.
The next day, "being faire", it was possible to launch the ship's boat for soundings. These, according to Archer, were made in or over a breach that in their course "lay off another Point, by us called Gilberts Point." This was the point opposite Point Care, at the western end of the Muskeget Channel into Nantucket Sound. The soundings showed a depth of from four to seven fathoms, making the passage reasonably safe for a ship the size of the Concord.
This entrance into Nantucket Sound is now very little used except by fishing vessels. In 1776, however, when the British Admiralty made very precise charts of this part of the American coast, a course through Muskeget channel was plotted on the chart for this area. The advantage of an entrance into the Sound throught this narrow channel, with dangerous sand shoals to the east, was that the approach -- through the open sea -- held no dangers whatsoever, in contrast with the perils of entering the Sound from the east, where many miles of outlying rocky shoals and uncertain waters guarded the entrance."
There must have been wild excitement and rejoicing on board the Concord when it was announced that the latitude of "Gilberts Point" was 41º 40' -- exactly the latitude of Giovanni da Verrazzano's haven that "lieth open to the South." It happens, as a matter of fact, that the obervation giving this latitude erred above the average. By this rockoning with the faulty instrument, he was given good reason to believe that he had actually found the opening to the great bay, facing south, at the "right" latitude. It seemed to be the dramatic climax of the long months of preparation and the many weeks of sailing through strange waters, to find himself finally at his chosen destination. To be sure, the entrance was four times as wide as Verrazzano had reported, and there was no "rocke of free stone" ready for fortification in the center of the opening, but these were unessential details that Verrazzano might not have remembered accurately. Gosnold had seen the great bay, and here was a southern entrance to it in the latitude where Verrazzano had said it was to be found.
A few days later, Gosnold was to be disillusioned. When he had sailed the circuit of Nantucket Sound and continued westward through Vineyard Sound, he knew that he had not entered the estuary of a river, and although he had passed many islands, there were not five small islands within the bay, to be counted as Verrazzano had counted them. Nevertheless, he believed to the end that he had reached the vicinity of Verrazzano's discovery, since in a letter to his father, written after the return of the expedition, he wrote of the Indians whom he had encountered that a description of them would be found in Verrazzano's Letter.
Archer gave no reason for the use of the name of Gosnold's co-captain in the naming of Gilbert's Point; Archer did not like Gilbert, it seems, and probably with good reason. Possibly Captain Gilbert assumed a personal responsibility for the soundings off the point that bore his name. Earlier it was noted that a reasonable explanation of Captain Gilbet's presence on the ship may be that he was a representative of the owner of the Concord; if that is so, he would have been particularly concerned for the safety of the ship in passing this dangerous place.
While the long-boat was out making these soundings, Indians paddled up in their dug-out canoes. A canoe of this sort was fashioned out of the bole of a great tree, frequently on oak, three or four feet in diameter. Such trees are known to have grown in the swamps of the Vineyard, as stumps of that size have been found. The canoe was made by a process of alternately burning and scraping with a chpped-stone scraper or chisel, until it was hollowed out, leaving sides of the desired thickness. Both ends were shaped to make a handsome, elevated prow. These canoes varied of course in size and carrying capacity. While Gosnold and his company were ashore at Cuttyhunk they were visited by a party of fifty Indians, who arrived in nine canoes, indicating that the average dug-out could carry five or six natives comfortably.
The use of dug-out canoes, around the island, rather than those covered with bark, is mentioned in the story of two Quakers who visited the Vineyard in 1657. They complained that a constable thrust them out of the meeting where they had tried to speak and turned them over to an Indian, "in order to be carried in a small canoo, or hollowed piece of timber, to the mainland over a sea nine miles broad (dangerous enough for any to pass over), having first took their money from them to pay the Indian." (The Indian had to wait three days for a calm day to do the freeying, anyway.)
The savages who boarded the Concord, according to Archer, were apparelled much as those previously seen at Savage Rock, They were more timid about coming aboard, but once there, were more active in petty thieving. They were adorned with copper pendants hanging from their ears, and one had a plate of rich copper about twelve inches by six that he wore as a breastplate. They offered for barter tobacco, pipes "steeled with Copper" (with copper stems), skins of animals, artistically strung beads, and other trifles. One, probably a pawwaw (powwow) or medicine-man, had his face painted, and feathers stuck in his hair.
The next day, waiting no doubt for a favorable tide, the ship worked its way three or four miles up the channel into the Sound, and anchored in the quiet waters between the eastern shore of Chappaquiddick and Muskeget Island. The men had two outlets, and thought these might possibly be streams from the interior carrying freshwater to the ocean. They could not see, even from the masthead, that these were merely channels for salt-water flowing into and out of a great bay and a pond -- the former between Chappaquiddick and Martha's Vineyard, and the latter a pond enclosed by beaches on the northern side of Chappaquiddick. The second of these channels, an outlet from the southern part of the pond known as Cape Poge Pond, was closed by shifting sands in a hurricane in 1723, and has since remained closed. It is therefore not to be found on any present day chart.
As the ship lay at anchor the rest of this day and all of the next in the quiet waters of the Sound, great auks (then known as penguins) swam about the ship, exhifiting their speed in swimming and their skill in diving for fish. Some of the ship's company shot them for pleasure. These birds, long since extinct, were edible, if one could stand the fishy taste, and failed to survive on the North American coast because they could be taken so easily.
The Concord passed the whole of the next day, May 20th, at anchor in this spot. It is easy to guess that they awaited a clear day with a good breeze for the circumnavigation of Nantucket Sound. The Sound, like Muskeget Chanel, is full of shallow, sandy places, amongst which a ship can be conned with a man at the masthead accustomed to gauging the depth of water by its changing colors. This sort of navigation must wait, of course, on a day of clear atmosphere and brilliant sunshine.
On May 21st, Gosnold started out easterly, looking, Archer reports, for the "supposed islands." AS there is nothing in the way of small islets at the eastern end of Nantucket Sound, no doubt the explorers, when they "trended" the outer coast southerly a league or two off-shore in the open sea, had observed on the meeting line of water and sky high dunes or "hummocks", which appeared from that distance to be islands. These were located on the Great Point of Nantucket and on Monomoy Island, which extends southward from the eastern part of Cape Cod. The explorers were looking of course, for the islands described vy Verrazzano as being within the bay.
At the eastern end of Nantucket the shore facing the Sound turns northward, and the Concord had to alter its course accordingly. Presently the explorers came to the beginning of an opening -- the eastern opening into Nantucket Sound ten miles wide from north to south, possibly a bit more in Gosnold's day. Archer avers that Gosnold had described this opening from the hill on Cape Cod and taken it to be the end of the Sound. Of this the most that can be said is that Gosnold probably saw a merging of water into sky here on the horizon which he took to be an opening. Actually, the opening is a bit beyond the limit of vision from the hill which it is assumed that Gosnold climbed.
The Concord sailed the length of this opening, on the inside -- that is, remaining in the Sound. About a league off-shore -- Archer did not report which shore -- the ship was hove to, to take a sounding. They found the depth to be three and a half fathoms, not enough to assure a safe passage through. AS a name for the place, Archer again used "Shoal Hope", the name rejected at Barnstable Harber. It seemed good that Gosnold had not tried to enter the Sound from the east.
Sailing on north beyond the opening, the explorers found themselves again in proximity to the mainland of the Cape, but now in the Sound south of it. This shore ran southwesterly, or rather west by south to west-southwest, and taking their course from it, the explorers sailed in that direction. After four hours or so they raised ahead of them, well-separated from the mainland, the high sandy bluffs of the so-called East Chop of Martha's Vineyard. (This designation for the "chops" or "jaws" of a harbor or channel was given to Vineyard Haven by very early settlers -- and was one of the earliest recorded uses of the word in that sense.)
The explorers "bore with" this promontory -- that is, they sailed directly for it and anchored off its shore in eight fathom of water. Archer immeddiately announces that they named it Martha's Vineyard. He is a bit premature with his information, as he furnishes a name before the explorers had seen the vines at the second place of landing, vines which suggested the name. Yet it is probably a mistake to blame Archer for this inadventence. As shown earlier, there is internal evidence that Archer's narrative has been subjected to editing., and in the course of deletions and dislocations the naming was awkwardly inserted where there is nothing in the context to explain it.
Gosnold, Brereton, and the others who landed on this promontory apparently found nothing interesting about it. It is a high, sandy plateau with no springs, and therefore not adapted either to Indian or white-man's habitation, except that in these latter years there have been built upon it summer cottages provided with "town water" piped from nearly three miles away. While there are stands of old oak trees near the broad base of the peninsula, it is doubtful whether the greater part of the upland was ever forested. Gosnold probably got a clear view of the place by walking ten or fifteen minutes to its highest points.
By following the east shore of the Chop, Gosnold would have come to a creek flowing out of a salt-water pond, which have come to a creek flowing out of a salt-water pond, which in turn was fed by a fresh-water pond -- the drainage basin of a swampy area to the south of the pond. There he would have seen the southernmost of these ponds disappearing in the southwest behind a screen of hige trees. Likewise, if Gosnold followed the western shore south, he would have come first to ponds at the north end of a large lagoon and then to the lagoon itself. These ponds on the east and west sides of the base of the peninsula come within three-quarters of a mile of meeting and therefore give a well-defined boundary on the south. Brereton, who walked about the Chop, estimated the circuit to be four miles.
The ponds on the east side of the Chop, before contamination by civilization's drainage, were herring-ponds, ponds with a fresh-water source to shich berring ascended for their spawning. It is not suprising, therefore, that the explorers found the remains of a fish-weir they saw at close hand their first Indian wigwam -- "a little old house", Brereton wrote, "made of boughes, covered with barke." This construction marked it as a summer construction, since wigwams for winter occupation were covered with two thicknesses of woven-straw mats. They also saw "one or two places, where they [the Indians] had made fires."
This was obviously an isolated place to shich Indians came to catch fish when the herring were running. Why the weir had been allowed to fall into disrepair is hard to say; possibly a great storm had closed up the outlet from the lower pond to the Sound, as happened from time to time two centuries later.
The shore here, incidentally, as well as the sandy cliffs a bit to the north, is subject to rapid erosion; the shoreline in Gosnold's day may have been as much as three or four hundred feet farther to the east than it is now, but the configuration and the general aspect of the place has merely moved inland, and not changed in characteristics or appearance. The writer has known this shore intimately for fifty years and more, and is aware by surveyor's measurements that the shoreline has receded at least fifty feet during his lifetime but to a casual eye it looks just about as it did half a century ago.
The explorters next landed, on the following day, in a place with very different physical features. There is no statement, as has already been pointed out, explaining how they got there, but there is no mistaking the locale. The explorers must have weighed anchor early in the morning of the twenty-second, sailed past East Chop and the entrance to Vineyard Haven Harbor, and skirted an island on the north side of Vineyard Sound which is mentioned in Brereton's narrative as a place where they saw many Indians on the shore. Gosnold, who seems to have been adverse to landing on the shore where he might be thronged or even overwhelemed by Indians, then crossed the Sound back to its Vineyard shore. Here, about seven miles from East Chop, there is an inviting place for anchorage now called Lambert's Cove. The depth of the water where the Concord halted was eight fathoms.
While this cove, as sen on the maps, is only a slight indentation in the shoreline, it is interesting to mention in passing that for two or three generations it served the early settlers of the Island as the only harbor, or port, on the north shore. This is difficult to understand, as Vineyard Haven, which Gosnold and his company had passed by, became in the course of the years one of the best known harbors on the coast, and a refuge for all sorts of coastal shipping. The explanation lies in the fact that there was early established in the centerof the island, about twenty-five years after the setlement at Edgartown on the island's eastern shore, an agricultural comminity. This farming village grew rapidly, before there was any sort of community at the head of Vineyard Haven. The consequence was that this inland community, in the place now called West Tisbury, found it more convenient to keep their boats and small vessels at Lambert's Cove than to drive five for six miles farther along through the sand to the harbor now called Vineyard Haven. Consequently two or three wharves were built at Lambert's Cove before there were any in Vineyard Haven horbor. The settlement that flourished at Lambert's Cove in colonial days surrendered not long ago to the incursion of a "summer colony", and practically all the land around Gosnold's landing-place is now occupied by the owners of vacation estates. Fortunately, this has kept it a region of woods and open spaces, almost as it was in Gosnold's day.
The two reporters of the scene at Lambert's Cove were enthusiastic in their descriptions. They spoke of great trees -- beeches and cedars -- and of the fruit-bearing bushes in "the outward parts", three or four feet in height, bering raspberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, with strawberries on the ground better, says Brereton, than those in England. (In the heyday of commerce at Lambert's Cove, an enterprising resident loaded up his small vessel every summer with these assorted berries and transported them to Nantucket, where they found ready sale.)
The most impressive feature of this place to this company of Englishmen looking for profitable products were the wild grape vines running up the trees and along the ground in such confusion that, as Brereton remarked, they "could not goe for treading upon them." In the list of commodities appended to Brereton's Relation appears the phrase, "Vines in more plenty than in France." These wild grape vines, even to this day fairly plentiful on the west side of the pond at Lambert's Cove, held the promise that in these new lands there might be developed cultivated vineyards which would supply England with wines to replace those imported from France and Spain. It was an idle day-dream, but had its propaganda value when incorporated in the name of Marths's Vineyard. For some reason, the settlers of this island with English antecedents apparently never even tried to cultivate grapes here, either through lack of skill or will. Present-day residents whose forebears came from the Azores make a wine of these wild grapes.
The Vineyard became, as a matter of fatherly sentiment, the namesake of Gosnold's little daughter Martha, perpetuating in the name of this beautiful and enduring island the given name of the child's grandmother, Martha Golding, of whom much has been said in earlier chapters.
Brereton was particularly interested in "a great standing lake of fresh water, neere the sea side, an English mile in compasse, which is mainteined with the springs running exceeding pleasantly thorow [through] the woddie grounds which are very rockie [boulder-strewn]." This lake is now known as Great James Pond, or simply James Pond -- "Great", according to Massachusetts custom and law, indicates a pond of such size that it is not subject to individual ownership.
The northern end of the lake is only about three or four hundred feet from the salt water of the Sound. A sluggish creek wends its way through the sands to form its outlet. The surrounding terrain is just as Brereton described it. Most of the springs -- six or seven of them -- bubble out the hill on the western side of the pond and send little rivelets down to replenish its fresh-water. Breeton correctly called it a "standing" lake, as it shows no preceptible flow of water -- in fact, in midsummer it is apt to develop the scum of a semi-stagnant pool. The explorers saw it in the springtime, when it was overfilled with fresh-water. The tracks of many animals both large and small were seen all about the poond. Both narrators reported that here they saw deer.
Archer was interested in the game-birds he saw nesting on the sandy, boulder-filled cliffs just west of Lambert's Cove. Brereton gave a somewhat more extended list of them than Archer, and between them the lists include cranes, heron, shovellers [spoon-bill ducks], bitterns, mallards and teals.
Archer waxed enthusiastic about the great "store" of cod which they caught from the ship in the Cove. He declared them even better than those caught at Cape Cod. This was perhaps because the cod here had been feeding longer on the oily herring which came to swim up the outlet to spawn.
For the better part of two days -- May 22 and 23rd -- the whole ship's company ambled and gambolled, after the manner of sailors ashore, about this garden spot of the Vineyard. Some probably climbed the adjacent hill, which affords a magnificent view out over the waters, leaving no possible doubt tht the voyagers had come into the great sound, lying between the island on which they stood and the Elizabeth Islands to the north. It is passing strange that no Indians arrived to interrupt this sylvan idyll. There was an Indian village located, at this time, probably not more than two or three miles away. The savages here, like those who boarded the ship four days before, may have been somewhat timorous. Or else the place where these landings were made might have been under some sort of religious taboo, making the region a sort of game-preserve with the abundant fauna under the protection of the great god, Manittou. This is suggested by the fact that the great hill overshadowing the place bore a name in the Indian language which means Manittou's Hill. A level place on one of the shoulders of this hill has always been known to the Island's white settlers as the Indians' "dancing floor", although nothing isknown of the ancient rites that were presumably conducted there.
In mid-afternoon of the second day at this place, the Concord weighed anchor and sailed on to the west, coasting along the northern shore of the Vineyard. Towards night, reported Archer, they "came to anchor at the Northwest part of the Iland." From the mention of fresh-water fish, and of red and white clay, in Brereton's account of this landing, it may be safely assumed that it was near the outlet of an innocuous, gurgling little stream, now known by the impressive name of "Roaring Brook."
When Gosnold and his party went ashore the next morning thirteen savages came running to them, armed with bows and arrows and all naked, "saving", Brereton wrote, "tehy cover their privy parts with a black tweed [dressed] skin, much like a Black-smiths apron, tied about their middle and between their legs behinde." These Indians offered the white-men a wicker basket filled with boiled fresh-water sish, probably served with sorell, which the Indians used as a salad. Among their other gifts, the Indians of this place presented their visitors with deerskins, a mark of honor, as the wearing of these was a privilege reserved for nobility in these tribes.
Archer stressed the fact that this group of natives came "fast running". From this manner of approach, it is probably to be inferred that they constituted a welcoming committee stationed on the summit of Prospect Hill, which lies about half a mile from Roaring Brook and is the hishest hill on the Vineyard (308 feet). They would have been placed there to observe what the strange visitors might do at dawn. When they made out just where the landing boat was to be beached, they rushed to the spot ready for battle or peace, according to the mind of the invaders. It is probably significant, although not mentioned in the narratives, that at both of Gosnold's landing-places on the main part of the Vineyard there were high hills, higher than any on Cape Cod, within easy climbing distance from the shore. These two widely separated hills give views that between them cover most of the island, although inland there is little to be discerned but an unbroken sea of green treetops. Gosnold may have been attracted to the shores where he saw the possibility of climbing hills that wouold enable him to liik out over the interior of the island.
Brereton, who seems to have been a confirmed smoker, took particular interest in the Indians' tobacco. This was made of green leaves, he observed, "dried into powder." He found it very strong and pleasant and much better than anyt he had tasted in England. The "necks" of their pipes were made of clay, hard dried; "the other part" was a piece of hollow copper, "very finely closed and cemented together." The clay of these pipes led Brereton to comment on the abundant "store" of red and white clay on "that Island" -- not on the island beyond, Gay Head, which Gosnold called Dover Cliff.
Along Roaring Brook is a bed of clay which, for several generations in the last century, served as a source of supply for a brickyard. This, with the aid of a great water-wheel placed in the brook to supply power, and a kiln with a towering chimney, produced locally-made red brick for the chimneys of the island. A half mile to the west of the brickyard is a great outcropping of white clay at the foot of a high sandy cliff. Here, in the last century, a China Clay works was started also, but its career was breif. Nevertheless, Brereton was quite justified in remarking that the "store" of clay, both red and white, was great.
Brereton was interested, too, in the shaly beach, where he found many huge bones and ribs of whales, and saw all sorts of stones fit for building, many of them glistering and shining like mineral stones. He noted that this beach was "verie rockie". By this he meant that it was covered by samll, found boulders, as it is today.
Gosnold and his men gave their new Indian friends "certeine trifles, as knives, points [laces, much used instead of buttons], and such like, which they much esteemed", and rowed off to their ship to sail on westward. They passed the creek leading out from the large Menemsha Pond, which seemed to make an island of the land beyond, on which were located the many-hued Gay Head cliffs, unique deposits made by a riverin the tertiary geological age. They doubled the point of this promontory, getting a full view of the pure white cliffs at the extreme western end of the island, which caused them to call the place Dover Cliff and established the fact that they had come to the end of the island -- or rather, from their point of view, the islands -- on the south side of Vineyard Sound. Possibly they sailed the few miles southward necessary to get a good look at the outlying Noman's Land, which they could see had no harbor, and little else to invite closer inspection.
The next anchorage mentioned by Archer, where they rode all night, was unmistakably on the Vineyard Sound side of the island known now as Cuttyhunk. This island was reached by sailing northwest across the wide opening at the western end of Vineyard Sound. Brereton made no mention of Dover Cliff (Gay Head), and therefore shed no light on its doubling, or encircling. He merely remarked, "From hence [i.e. from the place where the Indians had presented them with boiled fish] we went to another Island, to be Northwest of this, and within a league or two of the Maine." Archer, however, having placed the Concord in the open sea beyond Dover Cliff, reported in a curiously misleading phrase that they "then came into a faire Sound" -- obviously withholding the information that they had just left this same "faire Sound", having sailed the full length of it. He evidently felt it necessary at this point to acknowledge the existence of this magnificent stretch of water. (It had dropped out from the earlier part of his narrative, along with a passage which had described the length of the Vineyard, and of its Sound as well.)
Little did Archer or his editor recon that ten thousand times ten thousand words would be written to replace his parsimonious, single-word description of Vineyard Sound! The logs of innumerable ships, from the humble packets of the seventeenth century to the swift steam passenger vesels of the twentieth, the tales of shipwrecks and battles in these waters, the annals of yachting, and latterly the honeyed words of travel and vacation agencies, not to mention the studied, official aids to navigation, have made known to the world very deep fathom and mile of this celebrated inland waterway. But for reasons that seemed good at the time, Gosnold and his companions, after their return to England, decided that they wanted none ot know the full story of his Martha's Vineyard and its encompassing waters.
