CHOWDER FORBREAKFAST, AND CHOWDER FOR DINNER, AND CHOWDERFOR SUPPER, TILL YOU BEGIN TO LOOK FOR FISH-BONESCOMING THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES. THE AREA BEFORETHE HOUSE WAS PAVED WITH CLAMSHELLS. MRS. HUS-SEY WORE A POLISHED NECKLACE OF CODFISH VERTEBRA;AND HOSEA HUSSEY HAD HIS ACCOUNT BOOKS BOUND INSUPERIOR OLD SHARK-SKIN. THERE WAS A FISHY FLAVORTO THE MILK, TOO, WHICH I COULD NOT ACCOUNT FOR,TILL ONE MORNING HAPPENING TO TAKE A STROLLALONG THE BEACH AMONG SOME FISHERMEN’S BOATS, ISAW HOSEA’S BRINDLED COW FEEDING ON FISH REM-NANTS, AND MARCHING ALONG THE SAND WITH EACHFOOT IN A COD’S DECAPITATED HEAD, LOOKING VERYSLIPSHOD, I ASSURE YE. —Herman Melville, on Nantucket, from Moby Dick or The Whale, 1851 For Europeans, the known world doubled in the course of the sixteenth century. The Dutch had two possibilities to offer the English Puritan refugees : the tiny, well-protected port on the tip of the island of Manhattan, or Guiana, on the shoulder of South America. Of the two, Guiana seemed to offer better opportunities.
