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Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself.

For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empire; other seamen having but a right of way through it.

Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's.

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea-hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders;* parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers** did Poland. *Alexander the Great...

That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

They first caught crabs and quohogs* in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigation round...

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood!

Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--the poor little Indian's skeleton.

They resolved to follow in the same direction.

With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters.

In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons.

Thus goes the legend.

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men.

But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in...

There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper.

Look at it--a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.

See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse.* *Off the coast of England.

Take out your map and look at it.

Nantucket!