Out of the World on the Atlantic Coast.

Visit and Back You Are Carried a Full Century in the Progress of the American People.

QUEER FOLKS WHO LIVE ON ASSATEAGUE ISLE.

Thought Robbing the Crew of the Despatch No Offence, as She Was "Wracked" -- Wild Horses in Droves -- Wild Ducks Shot Over the Town Hall.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE

ASSATEAGUE ISLAND, Va., Oct. 17. 1891 -- "Hello, you! Thar's a wessel ashore on Ass'teague!"

Good luck! Goin' over?"

"Been over, Look!"

The first speaker opened a bag which he had been carrying over his shoulder and drew forth -- first, a naval dress coat; second, a big package of stockings, and third, four cans of corned beef.

"Good luck!" exclaimed the first speaker again. "I'm goin'."

"Better take a shovel, so's you can Bury anything waluable."

"Why's that?"

"She's a govermint ship, and they don't allow we uns to take any of the silver and gold."

"What! Silver and gold?"

"Sure. Gold plate worth $30,000 if it's worth a cent, and" -- .

The speaker paused provokingly.

"Go on, Sam," said the other with impatience.

"Well, and $250,000 in specie 'at she was takin' to Washin'ton."

"Whoop!" The man who was getting information left the side of the man who was giving it and sped away. He had heard enough. He had business in another quarter, and it had become his busy day at once.

A RACE OF BORN WRECKERS.

The above is one of a great many conversations carried on between men coarse of garb and bronzed of visage in the high pitched tones peculiar to the inhabitants, which echoed through the pine forests of these Virginia islands a week ago. Whenever two islanders met the word was passed.

The Despatch was aground and breaking up. News of but one sort flics fast on Assateague, Chincoteague, Wachapreague and other "teagues" and "preagues" along the treacherous coast. That is the news of a wreck. It is the best of news. It means food and other than the inevitable "hog and hominy." It means shoes and clothing and often enough good old rye.

Good luck, indeed! to quote one of the gentlemen engaged in conversation at the opening of this letter. A ship was pounding to pieces on the shoals; men gasping for life, bruised and battered, had fought their way through the breakers and fallen on the beach with all the strength gone out of them. Soon their property must come ashore -- their shoes, their coats, their blankets and their stores.

It is favorable wind, this gale blowing out of the northeast. Providence is kind. The ship must go to fragments. Then the whole beach will be strewn with property to pick up in plenty. No difference if the men who have just dragged themselves out of the jaws of death will suffer for want of what is taken. "Finding is keeping" is the motto of the race.

Thus reasoned these strange people. Thus reasoning they went in great numbers to the scene of the wrecked United States steamer and from beneath the very noses of Lieutenant Cowles and his men snatched raiment which the crew needed to cover their nakedness, and food which they yearned for to fill their empty stomachs.

HOW "FINDING IS KEEPING."

"Savages!" you may say. No, my friend, not savages -- just Virginia islanders. Simple, primitive people, who wouldn't steal a bone from your small house if they were starving, yet who believe that when a vessel gets ashore everything in her but human life belongs to him who puts hands on it first. Uncouth and daring water men, who come from a line of watermen before them reaching back 280 years, at whose feet have been washed the treasures of old Dutch tubs of Peter De Vires time; silks and satin from Spanish galleons, naval finery from England's men of war, and everything under the sun from the American merchant marine. By usage, by inheritance, all that comes ashore is theirs.

"A wrack! a wrack!" goes echoing the cry through the pines and over the sandhills where rockets hiss through the air of stormy nights and cannon boom at sea, and there is as much rejoicing in this island of isolation as though the oysters had begun to give up pearls and the trout to yield scales of gold. I don't think they ever stop to think that human life is endangered. Certainly the only man who tried to save it is Captain John T. Tracy (honor to him, and may he get a gold medal!) of the life saving station and his crew.

The Maryland, Delaware and Virginia peninsula in shape looks on the map not unlike a huge human hand with the forefinger pointing southward. Along this finger on the Atlantic side is a chain of islands, fantastic in shape, but generally long and narrow. One is shaped like a crescent, another like brass knuckles, and still another like a dumbbell. The lower end of Assateague reminds one of a tuning fork which old Neptune, turned musician, used.

THE BEAUTIES OF THE ISLANDS.

Starting at Synepuent Beach they stretch, with little inlets between, to Cape Charles, for the most part low and marshy, but with sandhills in the middle, from which rise oak and pine trees of gigantic growth and dense foliage. Thus they form a huge redoubt or breastwork, protecting the people on the mainland and luring to death the people on the sea. Old Indian names like Metompkin, Assawoman and Wachapreague are varied by such names as Wreck, Bone and Sandy and by vulgar Hog, ordinary Hog and common place Smith's. But it is with but two of the islands that we have to do -- Assateague and Chincoteague -- the outer and the inner isle off upper Accomac.

Favored land of natural conditions, blessed with estuaries swarming with fish below and wild fowl above, with bays furnishing the finest oysters in the world, with horses growing wild on the marshes by thousands awaiting a captor's taming hand, and with a climate softened by the Gulf Stream to amazing balminess, it is a paradise for a sportsman, and an artist would go into raptures over the game he would bag for his sketch book.

This is Assateague and Chincoteague depicted in its most inviting light.

Yet these two islands, with a combined population of over three thousand people, less than a generation ago knew no law, and laughed at civilization. There was no post office, and all the mail brought across from the mainland in a month would not fill a cigar box. The principal articles sold by the store were whiskey, tobacco, powder and shot. There have been a dozen fights of a night when whiskey was plentiful, and deputy sheriffs, to escape being compelled to swim ashore, have promised never to attempt to make an arrest again. For the first two centuries and more of the existence of English speaking people on the islands, there was no school. Methodism planted its flag there early, and class meeting and preaching had some restraining influence. But the races on Chincoteague and Assateague grew up wild, and having finally been reached by civilization, furnish people of a type as distinct from those you will find on the mainland as the French-Canadian is from the Mexican greaser. There are schools and churches and a post office now, and they are in a period of social transition, but for years to come these people will be of almost a distinct nationality.

THEY LIVE BY WATER.

From the water comes the means of livelihood for all on the island, for the innkeepers, the grocer, the doctor all depend upon the fishermen, the oystermen, the life savers and the lighthouse keepers for their business. Between the mainland and the inside island lies Chincoteague Bay, a broad and noble expanse of water.

It is a vast oyster farm, seven miles wide and twelve miles long. Nowhere is the water more than eight feet deep. All the boats which ply its surface have flat bottoms and are fitted out with centreboards. Sapling poles stick out of the water every few hundred yards. These indicate that the particular spot each one marks has been claimed by some oysterman, and that he has planted oysters there. During the season tens of thousands of dollars worth of oysters each week are sent northward to New York and Philadelphia.

The oystermen are hardy, happy fellows. They have many songs. Here is a stanza from one: --

Oh, Chincoteague

Is many a league,

But fast our course we're bringing

To that old bay,

Where night and day

The oysters fast are clinging.

Not much merit in it, yet it is a catchy air, and it sounds very musical when it comes rolling over the water from where half a dozen strong voices are roaring the chorus.

One of the richest men on the island owns twenty or thirty oyster sloops, yet he can neither read nor write. He is the man who, in a heavy, seagoing tug, went out to where the Despatch was aground and tried to buy the steam cutter from Lieutenant Cowles. At that time it must be remembered that the men were making their escape from the steamship with the greatest difficulty, and it looked as if there would be much loss of life.

A chance for a bargain, a chance to get something without paying for it and yet not by theft, was the prevailing idea. As hard a fight as a man ever made was that of Captain Tracy to prevent his fellow islanders from getting away with Uncle Sam's property. The Captain is a democrat, and has held his place for many years. Every republican on the island would like to see his place filled by a Harrison man. A good many "ugly cracks," to use the Captain's words, have been made at him and have failed. Relations, consequently, are strained.

AUDACITY OF THE WRECKERS.

Scores of people visited the beach where the wreck came ashore. Each one had a bag, into which everything of any value was thrown. Captain Tracy got wild when he saw what was being done.

A box of carpenter's tools came ashore. The sailors saw them, and also noticed two men whom they could not describe carting them away.

"I'll git them," said Captain Tracy. "The people stealing Uncle Sam's property are those who have been trying to get my scalp. I'll jail 'em, by God! I'll jail 'em."

Two hours later two long, angular men with sad, lustreless eyes shambled up to Lieutenant Cowles' quarters at the Life Saving Station. The carried a box of carpenter's tools between them.

"Here's a box we found on the beach," said one sadly. "We didn't know it was yours. We'll just leave it, I reckon on."

That Captain Tracy had been doing a little "bulldozing" was clear.

Surgeon Gatewood got ashore, saving only the uniform he was wearing and an overcoat. He met a man coming down the beach with a bag.

"What have you in that bag?" asked the doctor.

"Not a thing, stranger," said the man.

"Let me see."

The bag was opened, and the first thing Surgeon Gatewood drew forth was one of his dress uniforms.

But the meanest trick was played on Paymaster Heap. He was in charge of the night watch detailed to guard the property which had come ashore. The location was two miles from the station, and the men had to take food with them. It was put in the tent. During the night two islanders came up. One engaged the Paymaster in conversation and the other disappeared. After his new found friend had gone Mr. Heap thought he would eat some lunch. He found that it had all been stolen.

ODD PEOPLE ON ASSATEAGUE.

This, the Chincoteague people declare, was done by Assateague islanders. There are queer characters on Assateague. Human life and human strife ebbs and flows there as elsewhere.

The first thing I saw when I got on the Atlantic Hotel porch in Chincoteague town was this notice on a half sheet of note paper nailed up beside the tavern door: --

NOTICE

All persons are hereby warned against harboring or employing my wife, Mary Ann Birch, under penalty of law. I will use the law to the full extent against all.

THOMAS L. BIRCH.

ASSATEAGUE ISLAND, Sept. 30, 1891.

Mr. Birch's domestic woes are peculiar. His wife was a mother and not a widow when he married her. He was insanely jealous, and when he would go away from home would thickly sprinkle white sand around the house. If anybody entered or left the house during his absence he could tell it by the footprints in the sands of Birch.

Another well known citizen of Assateague has married the wife of a man now in the Maryland Penitentiary. The formality of a divorce was not gone through with.

George Elliot, the clam and fish man from Tom's Cove, is another character. He makes a trip to Chincoteague daily with clams and fish, and daily gets drunk. The only book he reads is the Bible, and he has to spell it word for word. When in his cups he continually quotes Scriptures, and gets Moses and Jonah mixed up. He has Moses swallowed by the whale and Jonah leading the children of Israel.

John M. Spencer is called Santa Claus, and is beloved by all. He voted for Jackson, and while he has not been voting for Jackson ever since, he has never cut his ticket. He lives on nearby Piney Island, and on cold days takes his sheep, his cows and his chickens all into the single room of his little habitation.

"PENNING" THE WILD PONIES.

One of the most interesting features of Chincoteague and Assateague are the wild horses. Generations ago a ship with small horses on board, believed to be Mexican mustangs, was wrecked. The horses got ashore on the two islands. Water prevented them from getting away. Here they bred and multiplied. They gradually lost many of the characteristics of the mustang, and developed others distinctively their own.

In the winter and summer they run wild in the marshes. They are hardy as a Shetland pony, docile as an ox and fleet as the wind. In winter their coats are as shaggy as a bear's. In summer they are captured. "Pony penning" is a great day on the islands. It is like a cattle round up out West. The whole population turns out and hundreds of people from a distance come to witness the event and buy ponies. A cordon of men surround the island, and gradually advancing to a common centre, dislodge the little animals from their loved marshes and gradually get them into a corral or pen. Then they are lassoed at will.

One day is devoted to pony penning on Chincoteague. The next day the Assateague ponies are caught. Then there is a sale, and the ponies bring from $40 to $80. The ownership of ponies is established by the branding iron, just as is done on the cattle ranges of the West.

The life of these people is frugal and quiet. Methodism supported by the Baptists has had a hard wrestle with disorder, but there is not much fighting any more. There are few sports and amusements. Now and then there is a boat race, at long intervals an evening party. But it is early to bed and early to rise.

These fine autumn mornings, before the light in the towering brick shaft on Assateague has been extinguished, you will hear the woodman's axe, see the smoke curling about the trees, and maybe hear the sharp report of Ferryman Taylor's old army musket as he stands in the doorway of his home and brings down a fat wild goose for his dinner. When you breakfast you will find smoking on the table fish caught since dawn, and when you dine you are just as apt as not to find before you a wild duck shot as he flew over the Town Hall.

When the weather is clear no more charming place can be found. The air is pure and fragrant with the aroma of the pine, a gentle breeze brings kisses from the south, and you feel a spirit of supreme content as you find yourself taken back one hundred year in American progress and look out at the waters of Chincoteague Bay gleaming in the sunshine --

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean!

Odd, old fashioned Chincoteague!