NARRAGANSETT PIER.

THE reader who will take the trouble to look at a State or county map of Rhode Island (they come to the same thing) will notice that Narragansett Bay is divided at its mouth by a long, narrow island-Canonicut. At the southern point of the island is the well-known Beaver Tail Light-house, just opposite Newport Harbor. West of the light, on the mainland, a little estuary, Narrow River, or

Pettaquamscott Inlet, makes in through the rocks and sand, and then, breaking into a T, sends one arm due north, where it turns into a fresh-water river, and another about two miles southward. Parallel to this branch runs the strip of sandy coast now so well known as Narragansett Beach. At its southern extremity, where the shore breaks up into rock and pebbles, is the village-the "Pier" proper. Between the beach and the inlet the ground swells into a gentle ridge of farm

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian: of Congress, at Washington.

Vol. LIX.-No. 350.-11

from the old Indian and colonial days. Over by Silver Lake is a mound which the farmers declare must have been an Indian barrow. From the Heights one can descry, dim and blue on the northern horizon, the peculiar rounded outline of Mount Hope; and brave, unfortunate King Philip is a favorite figure in local legend.

All through the pleasant country-side the canny Quakers met, trafficked, and hobnobbed with the guileless red man, spinning the socio-commercial copper in that comfortable game which always turn

ing land, where Senator Sprague has set his villa-a graceful complex of summer architecture, forming one of the most charming residences in the State. Still further inland, west of the inlet, and looking directly down on it, rises the steep bluff of Narragansett Heights, the southern spur of a chain of low hills running far up into the State, and crowned at its southern extremity by Tower Hill Hotel, with its cottages and out-buildings. From the Heights the land slopes still further westward, with open pastures and gentle indentations, till at about three miles inland we come to the more wooded and bro-ed out heads for the Quaker and tails for ken regions of Wakefield Village, Peacedale, and Kingston. South of these settlements runs a chain of ponds, beginning with Silver Lake (fresh-water), and then a string of continuous salt lakes or inlets, opening into the sea just inside Point Judith, where the coast begins to trend sharply to the west. Indeed, the whole region is dappled with just such pretty sheets of water, of greater or smaller magnitude. There is Warden's Pond, and Weston's Pond, and Wash Pond, and Cedar Lake, and Potter Pond, and such a host of others that to say they form a preponderating feature of the scenery, however bad a pun, would be good geographical truth. This pleasant and peaceful country was once the site of an active and wealthy rural community. Relatively, at least, it was far more important in the social economy of the State than now. Old residents can still spin you endless yarns of the busy, genial, comfortable life and people of the olden time. The land is redolent of traditions drawn

the savage. Up and down the coast roamed that pirate bold, Captain Kidd, seeking a hiding-place, for his unlawful gains. Right at the foot of Tower Hill, too, where in my time sweet Emma K and her childish playfellows used to pick blackberries and cull flowers, he is said to have come to his taking off by judicial sus. per coll. Far up the coast, toward Bristol, is the sequestered farm-house where the regicide Whaley is supposed to have sheltered himself from the pursuit of Restoration reaction and the minions of Whitehall.

The old post-road from Bristol to New York used to pass through Kingston and Wakefield, and of course supplied the local annals with plentiful sprinkling of murder, robbery, counterfeiting, and other dramatic complication. Boston Neck, the strip of land between the inlet and the shore, was formerly the seat of rather a peculiarly well-to-do and aristocratic community. One or two solid old gambrelroofed houses on the ridge still speak from their ruins of old-time comfort and geni

ality.

sit in the centre of the web, steadily drawing to themselves the main elements of growth.

I would gladly have the reader seat himself with me on the broad shady piazza

Sitting on the Tower Hill piazza, a shrewd Providence lawyer, who might wear, in Athenian fashion, a Narragansett grasshopper in his hat, so deep-rooted is he in the soil, has told me how long the oldfashioned traditions subsisted in this out-of the Tower Hill House, and give himself of-the-way community, and how, in his grandmother's family, the pillion on which she used to ride behind her husband on occasional journeys was, almost in his own

up for a brief space to the sweet influences of the surroundings. The one thing which will seize him at first glance is the sense of vastness and limitless breathing space.

time, a familiar bit of furniture. If one needed a proof that the inhabitants were a substantial race who loved their ease and took it, we might glean one from the fact that hereabouts was born Gilbert Stuart, the painter. Later, too, the neighborhood gained a celebrity in national history by the birth of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.

But most of these glories have passed away. The centralizing tendency of civilization has gone over the country, curdling the scattered forces of the rural community into ganglia of commercial or social activity. Providence, Bristol, New London, Newport, Wickford, and other pushing young places have spread out their spider lines of economic traction in railways, post-roads, and steamers, and

Nowhere else in all sea-side resorts will he be likely to get so much air and elbowroom. The ocean view, vast as it is, forms but the setting to a foreground of such endless variety, such exquisite delicacy and minuteness, that it takes some days for the stranger to fully comprehend its endless capabilities, and blend them to one coherent picture in his thought. Right beneath us the land slopes sharply eastward from the bluff, through rugged pastures, to the head of the inlet. Just beyond, in the middle distance, lie the rich meadows of the Sprague villa, with its graceful roofs and cupolas peering out above the greenery. Further to the right the Pier spreads out its straggling cluster of hotels and boarding-houses, offering, as they glow and gleam in the afternoon sun,

ANGLING.

more open sea-line, almost down to Montauk Point; and then, farther to the southwest, the land shuts us in, and the view is filled by the varied lines of the Salt Ponds, with their pretty miniature capes and knolls and wooded banks-a perfect mosaic of rich and brilliant tints. But to the minds of most readers the name of "the Pier" carries with it a savor of social rather than of merely æsthetic interest. So in quitting our nature-studies for the moment, we will leave the macrocosm of sunlight and scenery, pack our valises, and go down the hill for a peep at the microcosm-the whirl and gayety of "society" at the beach.

Eight or ten years ago there was, in the modern sense at least, no Pier at all. There was a beach and some rocks, a straggling village of the smallest pattern, a dock and breakwater, a few coal and lumber sloops, and two or three plain farmers' houses, where a few quiet summer boarders took shelter for a season's rest, bathing, and fresh air. But somewhere back in the dark ages of 1870-these Argonautic migrations are always a little mythical-some aristocratic Jason, seeking less, perhaps, a new fleece than fleeing from that of the Newport hotels, wandered over to these Colchian shores. He looked upon the land and found it good, and, what is more, he told all his friends. He must have done so, for just at this period we read that the Trimontane and Gothamite Hellas was stirred to its depths. Old and young, grave and gay, beaux and belles, dandies and dandyesses, packed their Saratoga trunks, shouldered their croquet mallets, and came trooping over to the new land of promise, where living was cheap,

a dazzling mass of light and color, and | if not good, and the too-affectionate mosgiving to the picture the light of human interest. Turning farther to the right, we see, breaking the horizon line, the low wooded knoll of the " Haunted Castle," and over the tree-tops, due south, we can make out to-night the gleam of Point Judith Light. Next in order, after a little space of clear sea, come the dim outlines of Block Island, studded, as we can see by morning light, with hotels and fishing villages, and swarming with coasters.

quito a thing of tradition. Straightway. as in a night, the one-time lonely shore blossomed with boarding - houses. Old farm - houses were enlarged, new clapboard and shingle caravansaries hastily run up, sidewalks laid, permanent bathing - houses erected, and due provision made for both spiritual and fleshly wants by the building of two or three chapels at one end of the village and a restaurant Then and drinking saloon at the other. A lit

tle steamer, a very little steamer-hardly sharp corner by the bathing beach into a more than a tea-kettle in a coal-box- group of others, in which the Metatoxet, was set to run between Newport and the Elmwood, Delavan, and Seaview are the Pier. Two or three years after, the grow- most prominent. Even in this early peing needs of passenger travel and the Haz- riod of its socio-municipal history the ard Mills brought about a branch rail- place is already taking on its class tradiroad from Kingston, on which in summer tions. Each of the houses begins to show a bustling little locomotive with one pas- a certain specific character and social flasenger-carriage comes whistling and fum- vor. The Mount Hope, spacious and

ing down the valley several times a day | well appointed, is crowded, bustling, and from Wakefield. The town seems in the full tide of growth, and no one can well say where it will stop. Just now it looks like a regiment in battle array, with long, shallow, company front, and slight show of reserves or camp equipage in the rear. All along the shore stretches the row of hostelries, beginning at the railway station with Whaley's Cottage, continuing north-bound with the Mount Hope, Continental, Rodman's, Atlantic, Atwood's, Taylor's, and Matthewson, and turning a

showy, the great house of call for transient visitors, and a welcome haven of refuge to belated strangers from Mesopotamia and the parts beyond Jordan. The Continental, similarly large and comfortable, claims aristocratic position for its wealthy New-Yorkers, Southerners, and Philadelphians, of which last there are generally enough to give it a definite local color. Rodman's, a sort of agglutinating, gradual-evolution style of barrack, so far as the building goes, has yet