Chapter 7

"--I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far
As that vast shore wash'd with the furthest sea,
I would adventure for such merchandise."

Romeo And Juliet.

A happy mixture of land and water, seen by a bright moon, and beneath the
sky of the fortieth degree of latitude, cannot fail to make a pleasing
picture. Such was the landscape which the reader must now endeavor to
present to his mind.

The wide estuary of Raritan is shut in from the winds and billows of the
open sea, by a long, low, and narrow cape, or point, which, by a medley of
the Dutch and English languages, that is by no means rare in the names of
places that lie within the former territories of the United Provinces of
Holland, is known by the name of Sandy-Hook. This tongue of land appears
to have been made by the unremitting and opposing actions of the waves, on
one side, and of the currents of the different rivers, that empty their
waters into the bay, on the other. It is commonly connected with the low
coast of New-Jersey, to the south; but there are periods, of many years in
succession, during which there exists an inlet from the sea, between what
may be termed the inner end of the cape, and the main-land. During these
periods, Sandy-Hook, of course, becomes an island. Such was the fact at
the time of which it is our business to write.

The outer, or ocean side of this low and narrow bank of sand, is a smooth
and regular beach, like that seen on most of the Jersey coast, while the
inner is indented, in a manner to form several convenient
anchoring-grounds, for ships that seek a shelter from easterly gales. One
of the latter is a circular and pretty cove, in which vessels of a light
draught are completely embayed, and where they may, in safety, ride secure
from any winds that blow. The harbor, or, as it is always called, the
Cove, lies at the point where the cape joins the main, and the inlet just
named communicates directly with its waters, whenever the passage is open.
The Shrewsbury, a river of the fourth or fifth class, or in other words a
stream of a few hundred feet in width, and of no great length, comes from
the south, running nearly parallel with the coast, and becomes a tributary
of the Bay, also, at a point near the Cove. Between the Shrewsbury and the
sea, the land resembles that on the cape, being low and sandy, though not
entirely without fertility. It is covered with a modest growth of pines
and oaks, where it is not either subject to the labors of the husbandman,
or in natural meadow. But the western bank of the river is an abrupt and
high acclivity, which rises to the elevation of a mountain. It was near
the base of the latter that Alderman Van Beverout, for reasons that may be
more fully developed as we