Gay Head contains eleven hundred acres, seven of which are the birthright of every Indian child; but it is not generally divided by fences, the cattle of the whole tribe grazing together in amicable companionship.  Much of the value of the property lies in the cranberry-meadows, which are large and productive, and in the beds of rich peat.  A great deal of the soil, however, is valuable for cultivation, although but little used, as the majority of the men follow the example of their white co-islanders, and plough the sea instead of the land.  They make excellent seamen, and sometimes rise to the rank of officers, although few white sailors are sufficiently liberal in their views to approve of being commanded by “a nigger,” as they persist in calling these half-breeds.

The wigwams, which, no doubt, were at first erected here, have given place to neat and substantial frame buildings, as comfortable, apparently, as those in many New England villages.  There is also a nice-looking Baptist church, of which denomination almost every adult is a member.  Near this is a parsonage, occupied until lately by a white clergyman; but the spirit of Experience Mayhew is not common in these days; and his successor, finding the parish lonely and uncongenial, removed to a pleasanter one,—­his pulpit being now filled by a preacher from among the Indians themselves.

Mysie took occasion to call at one of these quasi wigwams, soon after her arrival, but could discern only one aboriginal vestige in either inhabitants or customs.  This existed in the shape of a dish of succotash, (corn and beans boiled together,) which the good woman was preparing for breakfast,—­very possibly in ignorance that her ancestors had cooked and eaten and named the compound ages before the white intruders ever saw their shore.

Mysie pursued her morning walk in a somewhat melancholy mood.  It is a sad and dreary sight to behold a nation in decay; saddest when the fall is from so slight an elevation as that on which the savage stood.  Greece and Rome, falling into old age, proudly boast, “Men cannot say I did not have the crown”; each shows undying, unsurpassable achievements of her day of power and strength,—­each, if she live no longer in the sight of the world, is sure of dwelling forever in its memory.  But the aboriginal, when his simple routine of life is broken up by the intrusion of a people more powerful, more wicked, and more wise than himself, is incapable of exchanging his own purely physical ambitions and pursuits for the intellectual and cultivated life belonging to the better class of his conquerors, while his wild and sensuous nature grasps eagerly at the new forms of vice which follow in their train.  Civilization to the savage destroys his own existence, and gives him no better one,—­destroys it irremediably and forever.  The life sufficient for himself and for the day is not that which stretches its hand into the future and sets its mark on ages not yet born; it dies and is forgotten,—­forgotten even by the descendants of those who lived it.