Within Narragansett Bay, the chief island is Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, about fifteen miles long and of much fertility, having the best farm land in New England, and at the southern end the noted watering-place of Newport. This island furnishes the first half of the long official title of the little State--"Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." The memory of the old Narragansett chieftain, Canonicus, is preserved in Conanicut Island, west of Rhode Island, and seven miles long, there being between the two islands the capacious anchorage-ground of Newport Harbor. This island in 1678 was named Jamestown in honor of King James, and at its southern end, near the ruins of an old British fort, is the famous Beaver Tail Light, the guide into Newport harbor, the oldest lighthouse in America, dating from 1667. Roger Williams, who founded the "Providence Plantations," distributed various names to the other islands, several of them now popular resorts, among these titles, which represent the varying phases of his early emotions, being Prudence, Patience, Hope and Despair, while some later colonists with different ideas, evidently named Dutch Island, Hog Island, and the Starved Goat. Rhode Island is the smallest State in the Union, though among the first in manufactures, and in wealth proportionately to population. It has barely twelve hundred square miles of surface, of which more than one-eighth is water, and the highest land, Durfee Hill, is elevated only eight hundred feet. THE LAND OF THE NARRAGANSETTS.