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While the building of the Minot's Ledge light had in it more of the picturesque element than attaches to the record of construction of the other beacons along the coast of the United States, there are but few erected on exposed points about which the builders could not tell some curious stories of difficult problems surmounted, or dire perils met and conquered.
In the same storm that overthrew Minot's Light, a year or two ago, a great wave passed entirely through this valley; and Laighton describes it, when it came in from the sea, as toppling over to the height of the cupola of his hotel. It roared and whitened through, from sea to sea, twenty feet abreast, rolling along huge rocks in its passage.
Out upon a rocky point of the ocean's shore at Minot's ledge is a great light-house, erected by the fostering care of the government to protect the mariners on the high seas. Its great light swings around, now flashing on the land and now sending its rays far out across the billowy ocean. It is a grateful act of a great government.
Then, for a time, a lightship tossed and tugged at its cables to warn shipping away from Minot's Ledge.
To do that took just three years of time, though actually less than twenty-five days of working time. From the time the first cut stone was laid until the completion of the tower, was three years and three months, though in all there were but 1102 working hours. One keeper and three assistants guard the light over Minot's Ledge.
The middle door gave ingress to the store proper; the door on the right was the entrance to Peter Minot's household quarters; while that on the left opened to a large room used variously for stores and bunks. Farther to the left stood the little shack that housed Ambrose Doane in bachelor solitude, and a few steps beyond, the long, low, log stable for the use of the freighters in winter.
Many lights have been built at such points on our coast, but the ponderous tower of Minot's Ledge, at the entrance to Boston Harbor, may well be taken as a type. Minot's Ledge is three miles off the mouth of Boston Bay, a jagged reef of granite, wholly submerged at high tide, and showing a scant hundred yards of rock above the water at the tide's lowest stage.
But I might as well be shut up in a convent, and I won't," and there was a resonant note of defiance in Miss Minot's voice as she concluded. "But what is your objection to the European trip, Sadie? I should think you would like it; I am sure you could have no better opportunity than to go with the Farnsworths," argued Katherine, who was more and more perplexed by her roommate's strange caprice.
"We may take one in her some day," replied Frank; "stranger things have happened. I believe she cost over eighty thousand dollars, but dad bought her for less than half that at an assignee's sale." When steam was up they took a run out around Minot's Light and across to Cape Ann, and as the day was a delightful one, Albert enjoyed it immensely.
Minot's report appears to have been derived from Adams' notes done into full form by an unknown writer, who probably put in here and there some rather florid paragraphs of his own. At a subsequent period, Adams took up the subject and corrected Minot's report, giving the revised address to William Tudor, who used the same in his biography of James Otis.
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