Tales of the Chesapeake by George Alfred Townsend
page 19 of 335 (05%)
page 19 of 335 (05%)
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go ashore on that coast, where five successive lighthouses warn the
commerce of the Atlantic off, but are unable to intimidate the storms which sweep the low shores and almost threaten to leap over the peninsula and submerge it. Chincoteague lies like a tongue between two inlets, and partly protrudes into the sea, but is also sheltered in part by the bar of Assateague, whose light has flamed for years. Chincoteague is about ten miles long, and behind it an inland bay stretches continuously, under various names, for thirty miles, protected from the ocean, and scarcely flavored with its salt, except near the outlet at Chincoteague, where the oysters lie in the brackish sluices, and all sorts of fish, from shrimps to sharks, hover around the oyster beds. In the green depths they can be seen, and there the crab darts sidewise, like a shooting star. In the sandy beach grows the mamano, or snail-clam, putting his head from his shell at high tide to suck nutrition from the mysterious food of the sea, and giving back such chowder to man as makes the eater feel his stomach to possess a nobility above the pleasures of the brain. The bay of Chincoteague is five or six miles wide, and the nearest hamlet is in Virginia, as is Chincoteague island also. The hamlet takes the name of Horntown, and not far from there is the old court-house seat of Snow Hill, in Maryland. Every soul on Chincoteague was native there or thereabout, except Issachar the Jew. He had appeared amongst them after a sudden storm, the solitary survivor of a wreck that had partly drifted ashore, and, as he said, gone down with all his fortune. The mild air and easy livelihood of the spot pleased the Jew, after his first despair, and he set about making another fortune. Capable, solitary and active, he soon outstripped all the people of the islands, and neither beloved nor unbeloved, lived grimly, as chance ordained, and until now, had never |
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