USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > Newport > A hand-book of Newport, and Rhode Island > Part 2
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HAND-BOOK OF NEWPORT.
The top of each of the eight columns projects con- siderably, in a singular manner, beyond the lower edge of the tower which they support, and at their bases are larger stones. Between these supports there are no doors-all is open to the wind and storm. Roofless is it, too; and though the blasts of many a score of winters must have howled around it, it shows no symptom of decay, though its great age is indubitable. Whatever has caused its mutilation, most probably has been the effects of human vio- lence, and not of any elemental forces.
Within, all is as strange and puzzling and bare as without. Three openings are seen, which might have been windows, on the west, north and south portions. In the eastern, just above the arches, is a recess, doubtless used as a fireplace, for the chimney ascends through the thick wall. There are also ca- vities in which rafters appear to have been inserted. One blackened beam yet stretches from wall to wall -the only exception to the stern, rigid stoniness of the whole place.
Unlike what happens in the case of many other deserted buildings, no human interest softens the heart whilst the eye gazes on this one. In old ruins in general, you may spend days in looking at the different parts, and still have something fresh to see ; you may climb one tower, enter one hall, mount one chamber, or descend into one dark dungeon cell after another, and still fancy that something will presently be seen to throw light upon the matter :
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an area of not many feet diameter contains all that is here to be beheld; and you may look at these massy columns, and the roofless, round and massive tower which they support, and you may look as long, as hard and as often as you please, but nothing but eight bare columns, and a supported tower as bare, can you discover.
The circumference of this remarkable ruin is ex- actly eighty-one feet; the pillars are three feet in circumference, and about ten feet high; the tower, twenty feet in altitude,-making the entire elevation from the ground, as nearly as possible, thirty feet,- and the upper wall one foot and a half in thickness.
By the inhabitants of Newport, this building goes by the name of the Old Stone Mill, and so it is marked on Mr. H. F. Walling's map of the town. For years past it has been a bone of antiquarian contention ; but of its true origin and uses, "no man knoweth until this day." Grave and learned socie- ties have discussed the topic. From far and near, searching historians and fanciful dreamers have come to wander round the circle of stones-silent and mysterious as those of lonely cairns and stern gray cromlechs; but all is conjecture ; and the "oldest inhabitant " can tell no more respecting it than the little infant who was born yesterday. A very few years since, a man aged 106 years, who died in Newport, declared that, in his boyhood, the mystery was as great as now; for old men of that time knew
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naught of the matter, and only spoke of the struc- ture as "The Old Stone Mill."
Mr. George C. Mason, in his very clever sketches of "Newport and its Environs," says :-
" It has been conjectured by many that this building must have been the work of the Northmen when settled in America ; and taken by some to be proof irrefragable that here is to be sought the famous Vineland discovered by Biorn and his companions, and visited afterwards by adventurers from Iceland, many centuries before the voyage of Verrozano, and the discoveries by the Cabots. More recent and authentic inquiries, and particularly the recovery of the will of Governor Benedict Arnold, executed in 1677, have determined the character of the structure, which was no doubt erected as a mill for grinding Indian corn and other grain, soon after the settlement of the colony in 1639. This mill, built in the style then common in England, was placed upon land either originally allotted to, or which soon came into possession of the family of Arnold. and is formed of the same material which is used in the numberless stone walls which now enclose and divide Rhode Island proper. and that, at its discovery and settlement, was loosely strown over a greater part of its surface. The cement which binds this material is as hard as the stone itself, and was formed in part of the marine shells and exuviæe then to be found in abundance on the shores of the island immediately contiguous."
The following is the clause of the will of Governor Arnold, referred to in the preceding statement :-
- Willing and appointing that, after my decease, my body may be decently interred by my executors, here- after in this writing named ; and the charge of such in- terment to be defrayed out of my personal estate. My body I desire and appoint to be buried at the north-east corner of a parcel of ground three rods square, being of
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and lying in my land, in or near the line or path from my dwelling house leading to MY STONE-BUILT WIND- MILL, in the town of Newport abovementioned."
The Governor's request was strictly complied with. He lies interred in the tract of land here described, some rods below the old ruin, in the ground imme- diately adjoining the present Unitarian Church in Mill street.
Antiquarians, like doctors, are apt to disagree. There are many learned men who are by no means disposed to embrace the prosaic and unromantic WINDMILL theory, and believe profoundly that the Danes fairly claimed it as a work of their early an- cestors.
Professor Rafn, in the Memoires de la Societé Royale des Antiquaires du Nord for 1838, 1839, says :-
" There is no mistaking in this instance the style in which the more ancient edifices of the North were con- structed, the style which belongs to the Roman or Ante- Gothic architecture, and which, especially after the time of Charlemagne, diffused itself from Italy over the whole of the West and North of Europe, where it continued to predominate until the close of the 12th century ; that style which some authors have, from one of its most striking characteristics, called the Round Arch style, the same which in England is called Saxon, and sometimes Norman architecture.
"Of the ancient structure in Newport, there are no ornaments remaining which might possibly have served to guide us in assigning the probable date of its erection. That no vestige whatever is found of the pointed arch, nor any approximation to it, is indicative of an earlier, rather than of a later, period. From such character-
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istics as remain, however, we can scarcely form any other inference than one, in which I am persuaded that all, who are familiar with old Northern architecture, will con- cur : THAT THIS BUILDING was erected at a period, deci- dedly not LATER THAN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. This remark applies, of course, to the original building only, and not to the alterations that it subsequently received ; for there are several such alterations in the upper part of the building which cannot be mistaken, and which were most likely occasioned by its being adapted, in modern times, to various uses-for example, as the superstructure of a wind-mill. and latterly, as a hay magazine. To the same times may be referred the windows, the fire-place, and the apertures made above the columns ; that this building could not have been erected for a wind-mill is what an architect will easily discern."
Longfellow, the poet, referring to this high autho- rity of Rafn's, in allusion to a poem-"The Skel- eton in Armor"-in which he intimates a poetical use for the stone building, says :-
" I will not enter into a discussion of the point. It is sufficiently well established for the purpose of a ballad ; though doubtless many an honest citizen of Newport, who has passed his days within sight of the round tower, will be ready to exclaim with Sancho : 'God bless me ! did I not warn you to have a care of what you were do- ing, for that it was nothing but a wind-mill ? and no one could mistake it, but one who had the like in his head !"
Mr. Longfellow informs us that, having heard of a skeleton being dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor, the idea occurred to him of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport. He has thus linked the one with the other in most har- monious verse ; Viking's supposed skeleton is ad- dressing the poet in reply to his apostrophe :
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" As with his wings aslant, Sails the fierce cormorant, Seeking some rocky haunt, With his prey laden ; So toward the open main, Beating to sea again, Through the wild hurricane, Bore I the maiden.
"Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloudlike we saw the shore Stretching to leeward ; There, for my lady's bower, Built I this lofty tower, Which. to this very hour, Stands looking scaward!
" There lived we many years ; Time dried the maiden's tears ; She had forgot her fears ; She was a mother ! Death closed her mild blue eyes ; Under that tower she lies ! Ne'er shall the sun arise On such another !"
Poets have a prescriptive right to use licenses. We apprehend the lady must have had a bleak bower of it, and fear that unless she was a hardy blossom, she was early nipped. To be sure roses and eglan- tine would have tempered the rough gales and ren- dered the grey stones less repulsive, but, on the whole, we incline to believe that the prosaic Raf .. would not have assigned to the Newport ruin so elegant an origin as that hinted at by the genius of America's great poet.
Mr. Joshua Toulmin Smith, in his " Northmen in New England, or America in the Tenth Century," rig-
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orously insists that this tower was built by the North- men. He asserts that, though it has been called a mill, in old deeds, no one ever heard of its being one, nor is there any record of its having been a mill. " We know," he says, "that no Indians ever did, or ever could build it. It is certain that it has not been built by an Anglo-Saxon hand since this country was colonized from England, else some record must re- main ; and none does exist, or has existed, within the memory of man. It commands a full view of the harbor and the opposite coast, thus forming a most admirable place for look-out. We have seen it demonstrated from the manuscript documents, the evidence of which we have examined, that the North- men resided in this neighborhood (Newport), for, at any rate, some years ; and it would certainly appear, from the manner in which it is stated, that each one, after Leif asked of him the uses of dwellings which he had built, and which he agreed expressly to lend, but not to give them,-thus implying that they would be available at a future day to himself; that the buildings erected here by the Northmen were sub- stantial, most probably of stone, as dwellings erected by them are found to have been in Greenland. The strength and thickness of these walls correspond pre- cisely to the structure of the ruins found in Green- land. These points, then, presenting so many coin- cidences, and such difficulties existing as to the origin of the structure, the question arises, to give these coincidences additional force : By whom can this
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tower possibly have been built, except by the North- men ? We know that they were capable of building it, because we find structures, of the same age, and equal strength, and requiring as much skill, which are known to owe their origin to them. The obvious utility of such a building, as a place of look-out to them, I need not state."
One more opinion from a source entitled to all re- spect.
All the reading world is aware that Fenimore Cooper, in his "Red Rover," commenced with some graphic sketches in Newport. In the very stone ruin of which we have been speaking one of the early in- cidents is laid. To the edition of the tale recently published, Mr. Cooper added a preface, dated Jan. 1, 1850, in which he says, with reference to that inci- dent :-
" Those who are not content to accept a simple solution of this antiquarian problem, have assailed the innocent manner in which we have termed it a mill, and have claimed for the little structure an origin as remote as the times of the Northmen, who are supposed to have pre- ceded Columbus in his voyage to the Western Hemi- sphere. We pretend to no exclusive knowledge on the subject, never having seen this much-talked-of ruin but once, and then only in a hurried visit of a single half hour. It must be confessed that it struck the writer as the very obvious remains of a wind-mill, and as nothing else ; though there may be better reasons than he can give to the contrary, for supposing it to have been erected for a fortress several centuries ago. We can imagine the use in placing a mill on arches, as it is a very simple pro- cess, and one often had recourse to, in order to prevent the ravages of the mice ; but it is not so easy to see why
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the extra labor of forming arches, the loss of room, and the additional risk from fire, should all be voluntarily in- curred to raise up a fortress against savages. Under no circumstances would it seem, could such a tower be less expensive, less difficult to construct, and less secure, by building it up as a solid structure from the ground, than by raising it in the air, on senseless but useless pillars, as must have been the case if we are to suppose the build- ing for the purposes of defence. The lower apartment, which, on this antiquarian theory, would be thrown away, might have been of great daily utility, as it certainly would have added to the strength of the tower ; thus re- ducing these poor Northmen to the dilemma of having it inferred that their intelligence was of so low a stamp as to lead them to expend their time and labor in raising an elaborate structure that would be less likely to effect all their objects than one more simple.
We have given our reasons here for disbeliev- ing the theory of the citadel of the Northmen. If others prefer to tilt with a windmill we commend them to their own gallantry and the sympathy of Sancho Panza. Thank Heaven ! we have never published anything which in- volves the necessity of believing that four vessels, with their topsails aback, drifted round the earth in two hours and a half, in straight lines, regardless of isles and con- tinents, which creates the necessity of supposing that a crippled craft will drift to windward; or have asserted that any particular battle, the property of the whole nation, belongs to ' the naval annals of New York.' They who have maintained such historical and philosophical tours de force are quite right to top off their mental labors by maintaining that the 'Newport Ruin' was a dwelling of the Cæsars."
So much for conflicting opinions. In all proba- bility the question of windmill or fortress,-Look- out or Lady's bower, will remain a vexed one so long as one stone of the old tower shall stand on another.
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The reader must form his own conjectures, and to such we leave him.
We close our remarks with a few original lines.
-
On the Old Stone Courr.
Upon the hoary cliffs, in splendor, Is fading evening's rosy beam ; And whilst ten thousand stars attend her, The moon ascends o'er town and stream ! On the dim sward the shadow falls Of this old tower's mysterious walls ; As if it were some gnomon vast, To chronicle the ages past !
To me, the sombre pile thus viewing, These stones, (to careless eyes so mean,) Take the sad grandeur of a ruin By quick imagination seen ! And here by memory's moon descried, Forms, mailed, or crown'd, to fancy, glide ; Each former occupant's mute ghost Swelling a disembodied host !
As when uprose this structure first,- -A tall, strange column, 'gainst the sky ! So doth it, in its newness, burst On fancy's retroverted eye ; A pillar built of island stone ; Its use to roving tribes unknown ; A mystery on Aquidneck's shore, To Sachem and to Sagamore!
Oh ! that from out this pillared cirque, Some voice might issue-and to me Reveal who wrought this stonen work, In the vast hoar antiquity !
1
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Tell why, within the forest shade, Pillar, and arch, and wall, were made ? And, when the toil was o'er at length, Whose dwelling was this tower of strength ?
Vain wish ?- nought breaks the stillness here, Save night winds as they o'er me sweep, Bearing, unto my pensive ear The murmurs of the distant deep! Or hoot of owl, on shadowy wing O'er the dim landscape hovering ; Or scream of sea-bird, far away Sounding, o'er Narragansett bay !
We trace some planet's radiant course ; Tell when the comet shall return ; Measure the wind's resistless force ; And nature's mighty secrets learn ;- Yet vain our toil when we begin Old tower, to trace thy origin ; And as thou art, thou aye wilt be A marvel, and a mystery !
3
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CHAPTER IV.
COAST SCENERY-PECULIAR FORMATION OF ROCKS-GEO- LOGICAL SPECULATIONS-EASTON'S POINT-THE BLUFF - PURGATORY - LEGENDS - THE DEVIL AND THE SQUAW-THE LOVER'S LEAP.
WHEN Mrs. Hemans, in her fine poem of the " Pil- grim Fathers," described them as having landed on " The wild New England shore," she well de- scribed, though she had never seen it, the character of that iron-bound coast. Finer specimens of such bold scenery are nowhere to be seen than in the neighborhood of Newport. Gazing on the map of the islands of Narragansett Bay, a geologist might well imagine that in some far remote age, a mighty convulsion of nature violently separated them from the main land of which possibly they once formed a part, leaving them with jagged-edged shores, which, in the course of centuries, have been worn into high bluffs, rounded ledges, and smooth beaches, by the silent but surely progressive actions of wind and wave.
The formation of the rocks which bound the south- ern shore of Rhode Island, and those particularly to the west of Newport, are of a peculiar organization.
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About a mile and a half from the town is a remark- able range of cliffs formed of pudding-stone, exactly like that which abounds in the neighborhood of Bos- ton. These cliffs are upwards of forty feet in height, and contain a natural curiosity which we shall pres- ently describe.
Some years ago, an American Savant, who visited these rocks and was struck with their strangeness, gave it as his opinion that they were undoubtedly derived from the petrifaction of vegetable matter ; and he supposed that the progress of petrifaction had been going on probably a million of years ; perhaps two million ; and not improbably five or six. This hypothesis, however, will scarcely be entertained by any one who remembers that vegetable matter con- tains in itself no principle of petrifaction. A great deal might be said in contradiction to this philoso- pher's opinion, but this is a guide-book, not a geo- logical treatise-it is sufficient to say that such stones as are always found in the embosoming mass, and which represent the plums of the pudding-stone, are the very same, and lie in just such clusters as those embedded in the earth around them; the pudding- stone is formed by the efficacy of a fluid, cementing, and thus petrifying, the earth ; and that its substance is not vegetable matter.
PURGATORY.
In the range of cliff's-there is, as we said, a na- tural curiosity-one of the "show places " of New-
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port, and well worthy is it of a visit. Those whose tastes are rather dependent for their gratification on the productions of nature than on those of art, will prefer a ramble on the rocks to the examination of a ruin. Both possess their charms. We have, in the matter of the stone tower, spoken of man's work -let us now devote a page or two to the description of a specimen of that of the Divine Architect's doing.
We will, for the purpose of acting as a guide to "PURGATORY "-start not, reader, we are not about to guide you, like Dante, to that place mysterious, where Hamlet's father tells us, sins are " burnt and purged away "-but to an absolutely mundane scene. We will, we say, take a central starting place from the town, and no more conveni- ent one offers than that point where the Bath-road stretches from Touro-street.
Proceeding along this thoroughfare, and passing on our way pleasant mansions-rural cottages, and broad fields, we arrive at Ocean Cottage, with its neat verandah running around it, and perched on a prominence from whence a glorious view bursts upon the eye. Beneath and beyond us stretches the broad sea beach,-the blue Atlantic waves, crested with white sparkling foam, rolling gently along its yellow sands, or foaming around tiny rocks, sea- weed clad, where some clam-seekers are at work. Far away to the right, until lost in the horizon, sweep the billows; and on the left lie the still
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waters of the Big or Easton's Pond-a very wintry paradise for skaters. Right before us, stretches out Easton's Point into the ocean, forming the barrier of the lovely bay. Easton's beach we must speak of hereafter. So descending this hill, and, through shin- gles and shells, picking our pathway past the bath- ing houses, we travel pleasantly and at length ar- rive at a clear stream which forms the outlet from Easton's Pond, and which dancing over pebbles, and streaming in divided channels over the "ribbed sea sand," mingles its limpid waters with the brine of the Atlantic deep.
There is no bridge by which you, our fair com- panion, may cross this foot-deep stream-no boat to ferry you across towards Purgatory ; but fear not, nor look with eager eyes at yonder wagon drawn by oxen, in the hope that it is coming hitherward and so enable you to ride across this pond-fed rivulet. See -it stops to take up a far less lovely load-a heap of stones. But, mark you, " Hope enchanted smiles, and"-beckons us a little way up the stream. Step- ping stones ! yes-here is an archless bridge-a pathway of large, unconnected fragments of rock- some round, and just glossed over with the running translucent water; some with sharp spiny backs emerging from the stream-others so flat that one might dance a hornpipe on them. Come, ven- ture with us, and our life on it, you shall go over dry shod. There, your hand ! and now, we have stepped safely half across-never mind a shaking
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stone or so; another jump-a wide one to clear the next sunken rock, and,-here we are on land- having safely crossed a bridge of laughter and not one of sighs !
Another walk on the sand, not so smooth as that behind us, for it is becoming studded with stones, and our path is now and then blocked up with boulders. Now we ascend the rough slope and stand on the breezy summit of Easton's Point ! How soft feels the short turf beneath our feet ! How pure the air which our rejoicing lungs inhale ! How mag- nificent the prospect which delights our eyes !
" The sky is blue-the air is clear ; The waves are dancing fast and bright ! Blue isles and sunbright ocean wears The purple noon's transparent light .??
Far as the eye can reach in one direction is old Ocean rejoicing in its multitudes of waves. Right and left stretches out bold coasts whose crested summits are bright with verdure. White glistening dwellings with their green jalousies dot the landscape, and from clusters of trees peep out rural homes. Cattle are browsing on the meadows and on the hill-sides ; and the murmurs of the everlasting deep, like low dis- tant music, rolls its unceasing diapason upwards, and charms us with its natural melody.
What is it which has just glided within our range of vision ? Near us white-sailed barks are dancing over the billows like sea-birds, but yonder a larger
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vessel than is wont to visit us is plunging through the brine.
" Onwards it goes, a monstrous bark Without sails or oarsmen toiling ; Tall masts spring from its mighty hull, And a chimney, from which a coiling Dense smoke doth go, as if below The devil's-pot was boiling !"
It is an ocean steamer-yes ! from this commanding eminence we behold one of those magnificent ships which have made the name of Collins illustrious in more hemispheres than one. Yonder is one of the great Atlantic ferry-boats-a floating bridge between the old world and the new. Frequently are the ships of the Collins's line seen from here, as they speed their way to or from New York. Sometimes a a mirage effect shows them when at a much greater distance, and then, 'tis said that the distant golden haze, like a gigantic camera screen, shows the refract- ed image of vessels sixty miles distant !
By far the pleasantest way to the place we are bound for is around the borders of the cliff's ; if time be an object, a direct path may be taken across the base of this tongue of land. Following the edge we arrive at the cast side of Easton's Point, and from hence we are presented with a striking bit of land- scape.
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