that they were nursed by particular immunities in the infancy of
their settlement. No, their freedom, their skill, their probity, and
perseverance, have accomplished everything, and brought them by
degrees to the rank they now hold.

From this first sketch, I hope that my partiality to this island
will be justified. Perhaps you hardly know that such an one exists
in the neighbourhood of Cape Cod. What has happened here, has and
will happen everywhere else. Give mankind the full rewards of their
industry, allow them to enjoy the fruit of their labour under the
peaceable shade of their vines and fig-trees, leave their native
activity unshackled and free, like a fair stream without dams or
other obstacles; the first will fertilise the very sand on which
they tread, the other exhibit a navigable river, spreading plenty
and cheerfulness wherever the declivity of the ground leads it. If
these people are not famous for tracing the fragrant furrow on the
plain, they plough the rougher ocean, they gather from its surface,
at an immense distance, and with Herculean labours, the riches it
affords; they go to hunt and catch that huge fish which by its
strength and velocity one would imagine ought to be beyond the reach
of man. This island has nothing deserving of notice but its
inhabitants; here you meet with neither ancient monuments, spacious
halls, solemn temples, nor elegant dwellings; not a citadel, nor any
kind of fortification, not even a battery to rend the air with its
loud peals on any solemn occasion. As for their rural improvements,
they are many, but all of the most simple and useful kind.

The island of Nantucket lies in latitude 41 degrees 10 minutes. 60
miles S. from Cape Cod; 27 S. from Hyanes or Barnstable, a town on
the most contiguous part of the great peninsula; 21 miles E. by S.