The varying formations of these shores go very far to redeem the haggard landscape. Even the coves differ in the materials with which their walls are built, feldspar, porphyry, and jasper variegating their rugged features with pleasing effect. The floor of one of these coves is littered with fractured rock of a reddish brown, from which it is locally known as Red Stone Cove. Captain Smith says this coast resembled Devonshire with its "tinctured veines of divers colors." The Rev. Mr. Higginson, of Salem, in 1629, speaks of the stone found here as "marble stone, that we have great rocks of it, and a harbor hard by. Our plantation is from thence called Marble Harbor." His marble was perhaps the porphyritic rock which it resembles when wetted by sea moisture. The beach is the mall of Marblehead. It opens upon Nahant Bay, and is much exposed to the force of south-east gales. Over this beach a causeway is built, which from time to time has required extensive repairs. Under the province, and as late even as 1812, the favorite method of raising moneys for such purposes was by lottery, duly authorized. In this way a work of public necessity was relegated to the public cupidity. A run over the Neck revealed many points of interest. There are rock cavities of glassy smoothness, worn by the action of pebbles, chasms that receive the coming waveband derisively toss it high in air; and there are precipitous cliffs which the old stone-cutter and lapidary can never blunt, though he may fret and fume forever at their base. Looking off to sea, the eye is everywhere intercepted by islands or sunken ledges belted with surf. They have such names as Satan, Roaring Bull, Great and Little Misery, Great and Little Haste, Cut-throat Ledge, the Brimbles, Cat Island, and the like. Each would have a story, if it were challenged, how it came by its name. The number of these islands is something surprising. In fact they appear like a system, connecting the craggy promontory of Marblehead with the cape side. At some time the sea must have burst through this rocky barrier, carrying all before its resistless onset. The channels are intricate among these islands, and must be hit with the nicest precision, or a strong vessel would go to pieces at the first blow on the sharp rocks. The Neck is the peculiar domain of a transient population of care-worn fugitives from the city. The red-roofed cottages were picturesque objects among the rocks, but bore marks of the disorder in which the winter had left them. They seemed shivering up there on the ledges, though it was the seventh day of May, for there had been a light fall of snow, followed by a searching north-west wind. Not even a curl of smoke issued from the chimneys to take off the prevailing chilliness. Down at the harbor side there was an old farmstead with some noble trees I liked better. On the beach I had trod in Hawthorne's "Foot-prints." I might here rekindle Longfellow's "Fire of Drift-wood:"