Narragansett Bay is one of the finest harbors on the New England coast. It stretches thirty miles inland, the rivers emptying into it making the water-power for the numerous and extensive textile factories of Rhode Island, which embraces the shores surrounding and the islands within the bay. It opens broadly, having beautiful shores, lined with pleasant beaches which dissolve into low cliffs and water-worn crags; for the character of the coast gradually changes from the sandy borders of Long Island Sound to the rocks of New England. Its western boundary, stretching far out into the sea, is the famous Point Judith, a long, low, narrow and protruding sandspit thrust into the Atlantic, a headland dreaded by the traveller, to whom "rounding Point Judith" and its brilliant flashing beacon, thus changing the course over the long ocean swells, when voyaging upon a Sound steamer, means a great deal in the way of tribute to Neptune. This headland was always feared by the mariner, and we are romantically told that in the colonial days a storm-tossed vessel was driven in towards this shore, her anxious skipper at the wheel, when suddenly his bright-eyed daughter, Judith, called out, "Land, father, I see the land!" His dim vision not discerning it, he shouted, "Where away? Point, Judith, point!" She pointed; he was warned; and quickly changing the course, escaped disaster. This story was often repeated, so that in time the sailors gave her name to the headland. It is an interesting tale, but there are people, more prosaic, who insist that the Point was really named after Judith Quincy, wife of John Hull, the coiner of the ancient "pine-tree shillings," who bought the land there from the Indians. But, however named, and whoever the sponsor, Judith is usually well-remembered by those circumnavigating the dreaded Point.