ery, peaceful, indeed slumbrous self. The bustle of the day comes
with the arrival of the steamer at four o'clock. From then until
darkness falls Main street is busy. The curfew, falling in sweet
tones from the old watch tower, voiced by the silver-tongued
"Lisbon bell," lulls all to sleep, and indeed long before that
only an occasional footfall resounds from the flagging. At seven
the same bell rouses all to the morning's leisurely bustle, and
again at twelve it rings a noon somnolence in upon Main street
that is even more startling to the stranger than the evening
quiet.

*****

For the full length of the noon hour one may stand at the door of
the Pacific Bank and look down the broad cobble-paved, elm-shaded
stretch of Main street to the door of the Pacific Club and be
quite deafened by a step on the brick sidewalk and fairly shy at
the shadow of a passer, so lone is the place. If it were not for
the travelling salesmen, a score or so of whom come in with every
boat, flood with their tiny tide the two hotels that are open and
ebb again the next morning with the outgoing boat, there were even
less visible life at this season. Yet Nantucket has today a
permanent population of about three thousand, which is swelled to
thrice that number when the summer hegira is at its height. That
means, including the island, which is at once all one town and
with a few tiny off-shoot islands along its shore, all one county,
the only instance in Massachusetts where county and town have the
same boundaries.

Geologically Nantucket is a terminal moraine, a great hill of till
which the once all-prevalent glacier scraped from the mainland and
dropped where it now lifts clay cliffs and stretches sandy shoals
to the warm waves of the Gulf Stream. Bostonians who know their
geology should feel at home in Nantucket, for, while it is
superficially allied to Cape Cod, the pebbles of the stratified
gravel on the north being in a large part derived from the group
of granite rocks known on the neighboring mainland, perhaps half
of the mass being of that nature, the remainder is of the felsite
and felsite-porphyries so common in the region about Boston. Here
and there are a few big boulders, believed by geologists to have
been dropped by stranding icebergs and without doubt natives of
Greenland.

The island holds vegetation also imported from far distant areas
and established long before man, civilized man at least, came to
it.

*****

On