All Appledore, indeed all the Isles of Shoals are built of this rock, which is white in the distance, but which near to shows silver fleckings of mica that flash in the sun. Through the granite run narrow veins of quartz that is as hard as flint, but that has scattered among its crystals also a silvering of these mica flecks which are in strange contrast to the tiny pin points of a softer, darker rock which one finds evenly sprinkled through the white. This dark rock softens to wind and weather first and leaves these white cliffs honeycombed with the tiniest of fissures, so that they are as rough to the hand as sandpaper. Dykes of trap run through the island, and as this rock too is softer than its casing the winds and waves of centuries have worn it away, leaving chasms down which you may walk to the tide, between the sheer cliffs. One such chasm runs quite across Appledore from east to west near the northern end of the island, almost cutting off a round dome of granite from its fellow rock. The soil lies rich in this narrow hollow between ledges, and many things grow in it, lush with leaves and beautiful with bloom. Here the shadbush had already ripened its fruit. Here the island’s one apple tree grows vigorously, though it dares not lift its head above the level of the rocks against which it snuggles, lest the zero gales of winter nip it off. Crowding round it grow wild cherry and wild rose, elder and sumac and huckleberry and chokeberry, all eager to fend it from rough winds in that friendliness which seems, like foliage, to flourish in the place. Here is a soft turf of grass in which grow violets and dandelions, both spring and fall, and plantain, cinquefoil and evening primrose have come to make the place homelike. If rough winds blow here rougher rocks fend them off, and though they may whistle over the tops of these in the little valley between there is quiet, and floods of sunshine gather and well up till the place is full.