[Illustration: WHITE ISLAND, LOOKING SOUTHWEST FROM APPLEDORE.] _Among the Isles of Shoals._ BY CELIA THAXTER. With Illustrations. [Illustration] “Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine.” TENNYSON. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1873, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY ROLAND THAXTER COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY ROLAND THAXTER AND JOHN THAXTER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. [Illustration] WHITE ISLAND, LOOKING SOUTHWEST FROM APPLEDORE _Frontispiece._ TRAP DIKE, APPLEDORE Page 18 WHITE ISLAND “ 120 VIEW FROM THE SOUTHEASTERN POINT OF APPLEDORE “ 180 [Illustration] It is with reluctance that I suffer these fragmentary and inadequate sketches of the Isles of Shoals to appear in book form. Except that some account of the place, however slight, is so incessantly called for by people who throng these islands in summer, I should hardly venture to offer to the public so imperfect a chronicle, of which the most that can be said is, that it is, perhaps, better than nothing. [Illustration] [Illustration] AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. In a series of papers published not many years ago, Herman Melville made the world acquainted with the “Encantadas,” or Enchanted Islands, which he describes as lying directly under the equator, off the coast of South America, and of which he says: “It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group.” But their dark volcanic crags and melancholy beaches can hardly seem more desolate than do the low bleached rocks of the Isles of Shoals to eyes that behold them for the first time. Very sad they look, stern, bleak, and unpromising, yet are they enchanted islands in a better sense of the word than are the great Galapagos of which Mr. Melville discourses so delightfully. There is a strange charm about them, an indescribable influence in their atmosphere, hardly to be explained, but universally acknowledged. People forget the hurry and worry and fret of life after living there awhile, and, to an imaginative mind, all things become dreamy as they were to the lotus-eaters, to whom “The gushing of the wave Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores.”