A VISIT TO MARTHA’S VINEYARD.

We have all, in our days of atlases and “the use of the globes,” been made aware of the fact, that off the southern shore of Massachusetts lies a long and narrow island, called Martha’s Vineyard, one of the many defences thrown out by the beleaguered New England coast against its untiring foe, the Atlantic.

But how many are those who know more than this?  How many have visited it, inquired into its traditions, classified its curiosities, mineral, saline, and human?  How many have seen Gay Head and the Gay-Head Indians?  Not many, truly; and yet the island is well worth a visit, and will repay the tourist better for his time and labor than any jaded, glaring, seaside watering-place, with its barrack of white hotel, and its crowd of idle people.

In the first place, the delicious suggestiveness of the name,—­Martha’s Vineyard!  At once we ask, Who was Martha? and how did she use her vineyard?  Was she the thrifty wife of some old Puritan proprietor of untamed acres?—­and did she fancy the wild grapes of this little island, fuller of flavor, and sweeter for the manufacture of her jellies and home-made wine, than those which grew elsewhere?—­and did she come in the vintage season, with her children and her friends, to gather in the rich purple clusters, bearing them back as did the Israelitish spies, to show the fatness of the promised land?

It was one of the fairest days of the Indian summer, when Caleb, Mysie, and the Baron (a young gentleman four years old) set gayly forth to explore this new and almost unknown region.

The first stage of their journey was New Bedford; and at the neat and quiet hotel where they spent the night, Caleb ascertained that the steamer “Eagle’s Wing” would leave its wharf, bound to the Vineyard.

Pending this event, the trio wandered about the quiet wharves, inspecting the shipping, and saturating themselves with nautical odors and information.  They discovered that whaleships are not the leviathans of the deep which Mysie had supposed them, being very rarely of a thousand tons, and averaging five hundred.  They were informed that whaling has ceased to be a profitable occupation to any but the officers of the ships, the owners frequently making only enough to repay their outlay from a voyage which has brought the captain and first mate several thousand dollars each.

Every member of a whaleship’s crew, from the captain down to the cabin-boy, is paid, not fixed wages, but a “lay,” or share of the profits of the voyage.  Formerly, these “lays” were so graduated, that the chief advantage of the expedition was to the owners; but, of late years, matters have altered, so that now it is not uncommon for the captain to receive a twelfth, tenth, or even eighth of the entire profit, and the other officers in proportion.

The attention of our travellers was now directed to numerous squares and plateaus of great black objects buried in seaweed; these, they were informed, were casks of oil, stored in this manner instead of in warehouses, as less liable to leakage.