Some of the stories would make you
laugh--about old Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and
bringing imps out of hell to live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of
devil-worship and awful sacrifices in some place near the wharves that
people stumbled on around 1845 or there-abouts--but I come from Panton,
Vermont, and that kind of story don't go down with me. "You ought to hear, though, what some of the old-timers tell about
the black reef off the coast--Devil Reef, they call it. It's well
above water a good part of the time, and never much below it, but at
that you could hardly call it an island. The story is that there's a
whole legion of devils seen sometimes on that reef--sprawled about,
or darting in and out of some kind of caves near the top. It's a
rugged, uneven thing, a good bit over a mile out, and toward the end of
shipping days sailors used to make big detours just to avoid it. "That is, sailors that didn't hail from Innsmouth. One of the things
they had against old Captain Marsh was that he was supposed to land on
it sometimes at night when the tide was right. Maybe he did, for I dare
say the rock formation was interesting, and it's just barely possible
he was looking for pirate loot and maybe finding it; but there was talk
of his dealing with demons there. Fact is, I guess on the whole it was
really the captain that gave the bad reputation to the reef. "That was before the big epidemic of 1846, when over half the folks
in Innsmouth was carried off. They never did quite figure out what
the trouble was, but it was probably some foreign kind of disease
brought from China or somewhere by the shipping. It surely was bad
enough--there was riots over it, and all sorts of ghastly doings that I
don't believe ever got outside of town--and it left the place in awful
shape. Never came back--there can't be more'n 300 or 400 people living
there now. "But the real thing behind the way folks feel is simply race
prejudice--and I don't say I'm blaming those that hold it. I hate
those Innsmouth folks myself, and I wouldn't care to go to their
town. I s'pose you know--though I can see you're a Westerner by your
talk--what a lot our New England ships used to have to do with queer
ports in Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what
queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with 'em. You've
probably heard about the Salem man that came home with a Chinese wife,
and maybe you know there's still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere
around Cape Cod. "Well, there must be something like that back of the Innsmouth people. The place always was badly cut off from the rest of the country by
marshes and creeks, and we can't be sure about the ins and outs of
the matter; but it's pretty clear that old Captain Marsh must have
brought home some odd specimens when he had all three of his ships in
commission back in the twenties and thirties. There certainly is a
strange kind of a streak in the Innsmouth folks today--I don't know how
to explain it, but it sort of makes you crawl. You'll notice a little
in Sargent if you take his bus. Some of 'em have queer narrow heads
with flat noses and bulgy, starey eyes that never seem to shut, and
their skin ain't quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of their
necks are all shriveled or creased up. Get bald, too, very young. The
older fellows look the worst--fact is, I don't believe I've ever seen
a very old chap of that kind. Guess they must die of looking in the
glass! Animals hate 'em--they used to have lots of horse trouble before
autos came in. "Nobody can ever keep track of those people, and state school officials
and census men have a devil of a time. You can bet that prying
strangers ain't welcome around Innsmouth. I've heard personally of
more'n one business or government man that's disappeared there, and
there's loose talk of one who went crazy and is out at Danvers now. They must have fixed up some awful scare for that fellow. "That's why I wouldn't go at night if I was you. I've never been there
and have no wish to go, but I guess a daytime trip couldn't hurt
you--even though the people hereabouts will advise you not to make it. If you're just sightseeing, and looking for old-time stuff, Innsmouth
ought to be quite a place for you." And so I spent part of that evening at the Newburyport Public Library
looking up data about Innsmouth. The Essex County histories on the
library shelves had very little to say, except that the town was
founded in 1643, noted for shipbuilding before the Revolution, a seat
of great marine prosperity in the early 19th century, and later a minor
factory center using the Manuxet as power. The epidemic and riots of
1846 were very sparsely treated, as if they formed a discredit to the
country. References to decline were few, though the significance of the later
record was unmistakable. After the Civil War all industrial life was
confined to the Marsh Refining Company, and the marketing of gold
ingots formed the only remaining bit of major commerce aside from the
eternal fishing. Most interesting of all was a glancing reference to the strange jewelry
vaguely associated with Innsmouth. It had evidently impressed the whole
countryside more than a little, for mention was made of specimens in
the museum of Miskatonic University at Arkham, and in the display room
of the Newburyport Historical Society. I resolved to see the local
sample--said to be a large, queerly-proportioned thing evidently meant
for a tiara--if it could possibly be arranged. The librarian gave me a note of introduction to the curator of the
Society, a Miss Anna Tilton, who lived nearby, and after a brief
explanation that ancient gentlewoman was kind enough to pilot me into
the closed building, since the hour was not outrageously late. The
collection was a notable one indeed, but in my present mood I had eyes
for nothing but the bizarre object which glistened in a corner cupboard
under the electric lights. It took no excessive sensitiveness to beauty to make me literally gasp
at the strange, unearthly splendor of the alien, opulent phantasy that
rested there on a purple velvet cushion. The longer I looked, the more
the thing fascinated me; and in this fascination there was a curiously
disturbing element hardly to be classified or accounted for. I decided
that it was the queer other-worldly quality of the art which made me
uneasy. It was as if the workmanship were that of another planet. The patterns all hinted of remote secrets and unimaginable abysses in
time and space, and the monotonously aquatic nature of the reliefs
became almost sinister. Among these reliefs were fabulous monsters of
abhorrent grotesqueness and malignity--wholly primal and awesomely
ancestral. At times I fancied that every contour of these blasphemous fish-frogs
was overflowing with the ultimate quintessence of unknown and inhuman
evil. In odd contrast to the tiara's aspect was its brief and prosy history
as related by Miss Tilton.