After Captain Bartholomew Grosnold had discovered Cape Cod in May, 1602, he coasted along its shores, and coming down into what is known as Vineyard Sound, found himself in an archipelago of islands. He halted at the one called "No Man's Land," and gave it the name of Martha's Vineyard, which is now applied to the largest of these islands. Who his favorite Martha was, and why she should have been immortalized, old Bartholomew never told, thus disappointing many industrious people who have vainly sought the lady's personal history. "The Vineyard," as it is familiarly called, lies southeast of Buzzard's Bay, across which is the extended and narrow range of the Elizabeth Islands, trending far away to the southwestward, and ending with Cuttyhunk, where the first English spade was driven into New England soil. It was upon this, the outermost island, that Gosnold landed and planted his colony, naming it Elizabeth, in honor of his queen, a title afterwards given the entire range. The island had a pond in which was a rocky islet, and here, as they feared the Indians, the colonists built a fort and resided while they gathered a cargo of sassafras for their ship, that being then a much-prized specific in Europe. The settlement was brief; frightened by savage threats and rent by quarrels, they soon abandoned the place, loading their ship and returning to England disheartened. This settlement antedated by eighteen years the arrival of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth. The Elizabeth group is a range of sixteen islands, stretching in a long line from the Cape Cod shore for eighteen miles southwest to the extremity of Cuttyhunk. It makes the southeastern boundary of Buzzard's Bay, with Martha's Vineyard beyond, there being between them the long and rather narrow channel of Vineyard Sound. The mariner going eastward out of Long Island Sound passes Sakonnet Point at the eastern verge of Narragansett Bay, and finds in front a chain of beacons posted across the route. Two of these are lightships, marking reefs to which are given the bucolic names of the "Hen and Chickens" and the "Sow and Pigs." If the shipmaster wishes to enter Buzzard's Bay for New Bedford, he sails between these two unromantic shoals, passing a lightship on either hand, and being further guided by a lighthouse on the extremity of Cuttyhunk. But if he wishes to follow the great maritime route to the eastward around Cape Cod, he gives the "Sow and Pigs" a wide berth to the northward and passes between it and the splendid flashing red and white beacon on Gay Head, the western extremity of Martha's Vineyard, south of Cuttyhunk. Gosnold was the first Englishman who saw the brilliant and variegated coloring of this remarkable promontory when the sun shone upon it, and appropriately called it the Gay Head. Its magnificent Fresnel lens, the most powerful in this region, is elevated one hundred and seventy feet above the sea, and is thirty miles east of Point Judith. The breadth