We cannibals must help these Christians."
CHAPTER 14
Nantucket
Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning;
so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.
Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner
of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore,
more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it--
a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background.
There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a
substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you
that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally;
that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond
seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood
in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome;
that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under
the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis,
three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes,
something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up,
belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island
of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams
will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles.
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