NEWPORT

THE ISLE OF PEACE

BY SUSAN COOLIDGE

HE Isle of Peace lies cradled in the wide

THE

arms of a noble bay. Fifteen miles long and from four to five miles in width, its shape is not unlike that of an heraldic dragon, laid at ease in the blue waters, with head pointed to the southwest. From this head to the jutting cape which does duty as the left claw of the beast, the shore is a succession of bold cliffs, broken by coves and stretches of rocky shingle, and in two places by magnificent curving beaches, upon which a perpetual surf foams and thunders. Parallel ridges of low hills run back from the sea. Between these lie ferny valleys, where wild roses grow in thickets, and such shy flowers as love solitude and a sheltered situation spread a carpet for the spring and early summer. On the farther

uplands are thrifty farms, set amid orchards of wind-blown trees. Ravines, each with its thread of brook, cut their way from these higher levels to the water-line. Fleets of lilies whiten the ponds, of which there are many on the island; and over all the scene, softening every outline, tingeing and changing the sunlight, and creating a thousand beautiful effects forever unexpected and forever renewed, hangs a thin veil of shifting mist. This the seawind, as it journeys to and fro, lifts and drops, and lifts again, as one raises a curtain to look in at the slumber of a child, and, having looked, noiselessly lets it fall.

The Indians, with that fine occasional instinct which is in such odd contrast to other of their characteristics, gave the place its pretty name. Aquidneck, the Isle of Peace, they called it. To modern men it is known as the island of Rhode Island, made famous the land over by the town built on its seaward extremity-the town of Newport.

It is an old town, and its history dates back to the early days of the New England colony. City, it calls itself, but one loves better to think of it as a town, just as the word "avenue," now so popular, is in some minds

forever translated into the simpler equivalent, "street." As the veiling mists gather and shift, and then, caught by the outgoing breeze, float seaward again, we catch glimpses, framed, as it were, between the centuries, quaint, oddly differing from each other, but full of interest. The earliest of these glimpses dates back to an April morning in 1524. There is the cliffline, the surf, the grassy capes tinged with sun, and in the sheltered bay a strange little vessel is dropping her anchor. It is the caravel of

Vezzerano, pioneer of French explorers in these northern waters, and first of that great tide of "summer visitors" which has since followed in his wake. How he was received, and by whom, Mr. Parkman tells us :

Following the shores of Long Island, they came first to Block Island, and thence to the harbor of Newport. Here they stayed fifteen days, most courteously received by the inhabitants. Among others, appeared two chiefs, gorgeously arrayed in painted deer-skins; kings, as Vezzerano calls them, with attendant gentlemen ; while a party of squaws in a canoe, kept by their jealous lords at a safe distance, figure in the narrative as the queen and her maids. The Indian wardrobe had been taxed to its utmost to do the strangers honor,-coffee bracelets and wampum collars, lynx-skins, raccoon-skins, and faces bedaubed with gaudy colors.