Home > Work > Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890
1 " On an island of paradoxes, the Quaker whalemen were perhaps the most paradoxical. At once pacifist whalehunters, plain-dressed millionaires, abolitionist floggers of common seamen, and devoted family men who were never home, these “Quakers with a vengeance” embodied a truly mind-boggling array of contradictions. "
― Nathaniel Philbrick , Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890
2 " Although the hill is not high enough to enable one to see Nantucket in its entirety, Altar Rock is the best seat in the house when it comes to imagining how the island originally came into being. Between 22,000 and 16,000 years ago, a giant glacier stretching across what is now Nantucket Sound bulldozed Saul’s Hills into a rough approximation of their present form. This is where the icy shovel of the bulldozer stopped, dumping the boulder we see beside us. "
3 " As the climate continued to warm (and the ocean continued to rise), plant life inevitably began to spring up among these hills, providing the basis for an ever-improving soil. Thirteen thousand years ago, jack pines and spruce trees began to grow; a few thousand years later, oaks appeared. What is now Nantucket Sound was then a valley of ponds, lakes, and forests. It was not until just 5,000 years ago—a drop in the bucket of geological time—that the ever-encroaching ocean flooded this valley and Nantucket became an island. "
