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