Bamstable, Yarmouth, Harwich,
Chatham, Eastham, Pamet, Namset, or Province town, at the extremity
of the Cape.
Yet these are very populous, though I am at a loss to
conceive on what the inhabitants live, besides clams, oysters, and
fish; their piny lands being the most ungrateful soil in the world.
The minister of Namset or Province Town, receives from the
government of Massachusetts a salary of fifty pounds per annum; and
such is the poverty of the inhabitants of that place, that, unable
to pay him any money, each master of a family is obliged to allow
him two hundred horse feet (sea spin) with which this primitive
priest fertilises the land of his glebe, which he tills himself: for
nothing will grow on these hungry soils without the assistance of
this extraordinary manure, fourteen bushels of Indian corn being
looked upon as a good crop. But it is time to return from a
digression, which I hope you will pardon. Nantucket is a great
nursery of seamen, pilots, coasters, and bank-fishermen; as a
country belonging to the province of Massachusetts, it has yearly
the benefit of a court of Common Pleas, and their appeal lies to the
supreme court at Boston. I observed before, that the Friends compose
two-thirds of the magistracy of this island; thus they are the
proprietors of its territory, and the principal rulers of its
inhabitants; but with all this apparatus of law, its coercive powers
are seldom wanted or required.
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