flass. 
 Book' 
 
/ 
 
 CAPE COD. 
 
 ^^6 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS,* 
 
 "WALDEN," "excursions," " THE MAINE WOODS," 
 
 ETC, ETC 
 
 Princtpium erit mirari omnia, etiam tritissima. 
 
 Medium est calamo committere visa et utilia. 
 
 Finis erit naturam adcuratius adlineare, quam alius [si possumasj. 
 
 LitiTicEus de Peregrittatumt, 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND CUMjeANY, 
 
 Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Ca 
 1875. 
 

 By trap.?-"-'- 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 University Pr^'t' 
 Welch, Bigelow, and Com-'*** 
 Cambridgb. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQ£ 
 
 X. The Shipwreck 1 
 
 n. Stage-coach Views 16 ' 
 
 m. The Plains op Nauset 27 
 
 IV. The Beach 51 
 
 V. The Wellfleet Oysterman .... 72 
 
 VI. The Beach again 93 
 
 Vn. Across the Cape 118 
 
 Vni. The Highland Light 138 
 
 IX. The Sea and the Desert . • . .163 
 
 X. Provincetown 196 
 
CAP E C O JJ. 
 
 THE SHIPWRECK. 
 
 Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of 
 the ocean, which, we are told, covers more tlian two 
 thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a few 
 miles inland may never see any trace, more than of an- 
 other world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in October, 
 1849, another the succeeding June, and another to Truro 
 in July, 1855 ; the first and last time with a single com- 
 panion, the second time alone. I have spent, in all, 
 about three weeks on the Cape ; walked from Eastham 
 to Provincetown twice on the Atlantic side, and once 
 on the Bay side also, excepting four or five miles, and 
 crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way ; but 
 having come so fresh to the sea, I have got but little 
 salted. My readers must expect only so much saltness 
 as the land breeze acquires from blowing over an arm 
 of the sea, or is tasted on the windows and the bark of 
 trees twenty miles inland, after September gales. I have 
 been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds within 
 ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have extended my 
 excursions to the sea-shore. 
 
 I did not see why I might not make a book on Cape 
 L ▲ 
 
2 CAPE COD. 
 
 Cod, as well as my neighbor on " Human Culture." It 
 is but another name for the same thing, and liardly a 
 sandier phase of it. As for my title, I suppose that the 
 word Cape is horn the French cap ; which is from the 
 Latin caput, a Lead ; wliich is, perhaps, from the verb 
 capere, to take, — that being the part by which we take 
 hold of a thing: — Take Time by the forelock. It is also 
 the safest part to take a serpent by. And as for Cod, 
 that was derived directly from that " great store of cod- 
 fish" which Captain Bartholomew Gosnold caught there 
 in 1602 ; which fish appears to have been so called from 
 the Saxon word codde, "a case in which seeds are 
 lodged," either from the form of the fish, or (he quantity 
 of S[)awn it contains ; whence also, perhaps, codling 
 (^'pomum cocttle"?) and coddle, — to cook green like 
 peas. (V. Die.) 
 
 Cape Cod is the bared- and bended arm of Massachu- 
 setts : the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay ; the elbow, or 
 crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre ; the wrist at Truro ; 
 and the sandy fist at Provincetown, — behind which the 
 State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green 
 Mountains, and her feet planted on the fioor of the ocean, 
 like an athlete protecting her Bay, — boxing witli north- 
 east storms, and, ever and anon, heaving ui) her Atlantic 
 adversary from the lap of earth, — ready to thrust forward 
 her other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her 
 breast at Cape Ann. 
 
 On studying the map, I saw that there must be an un- 
 interrupted beach on the east or outside of the fore-arm 
 of the Cape, more than thirty miles from the general line 
 of the coiist, which would afford a good sea view, but 
 that, on account of an opening in the beach, forming the 
 entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must strike it 
 
THE SHIPWRECK. 3 
 
 ia Eastham, if I approached it by land, and probably I 
 could walk thence straight to Race Point, about twenty- 
 eight miles, and not meet with any obstruction. 
 
 We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, October 
 9th, 1849. On reaching Boston, we found that the Prov- 
 incetown steamer, which should have got in the day 
 before, had not yet arrived, on account of a violent 
 storm ; and, as we noticed in the streets a handbill 
 headed, " Death ! one hundred and forty-five lives 
 lost at Cohasset," we decided to go by way of Cohasset. 
 We found many Irish in the cars, going to identify bodies 
 and to sym[)athize with the survivors, and also to attend 
 the funeral which was to take f)lace in the afreinoon ; — 
 and when we arrived at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly 
 all the passengers were bound for the beach, which was 
 about a mile distant, and many other persons were flock- 
 ing in from the neighboring country. There were sev- 
 eral hundreds of them streaming off over Cohasset com- 
 mon in that direction, some on foot and some in wagons, 
 — and among them were some sportsmen in their hunt- 
 ing-jackets, with their guns, and game-bags, and dogs. 
 As we passed the graveyard we saw a large hole, like a 
 cellar, freshly dug there, and, just before reaching the 
 shore, by a pleasantly winding and rocky road, we met 
 several hay-riggings and farm-wagons coming away to- 
 ward the meeting-house, each loaded with three large;, 
 rough deal boxes. We did not need to ask what was in 
 them. The owners of the wagons were made the under- 
 takers. Many horses in carriages were fastened to the 
 fences near the shore, and, for a mile or more, up and 
 down, the beach was covered with people looking out for 
 bodies, and examining the fragments of the wreck. 
 There was a small island called Brook Island, with a 
 
4 CAPE COD. 
 
 hut on it, lying ']uM oft' the shore. This is said to be llie 
 rockiest shore in Massachusetts, troin Nantasket to Scit- 
 uate, — hard sienitlc rocks, which the waves have hiid 
 hare, but have not been able to crumble. It has been 
 the scene of many a sliipwreck. 
 
 The brig St. John, from Gahvay, Ireland, laden with 
 emigrants, was wrecked on Sunday morning ; it was 
 now Tuesday morning, and the sea was still breaking 
 violently on the rocks. There were eighteen or twenty 
 of the same large boxes that I have mentioned, lying on 
 a green hill-side, a few rods from the waiter, and sur- 
 rounded by a crowd. The bodies which had been recov- 
 ered, twenty-seven or eight in all, had been collected 
 there. Some were rapidly nailing down the lids, others 
 were carting the boxes away, and others were lifting the 
 lids, which were yet loose, and pec{)ing under the cloths, 
 for each body, with such rags as still adhered to it, was 
 covered loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no signs 
 of grief, but there was a sober despatch of business vv'hich 
 was affecting. One man was seeking to identify a par- 
 ticular body, and one undertaker or carpenter was call- 
 ing to another to know in what box a certain child was 
 put. I saw many marble feet and matted heads as the 
 cloths were raised, and one livid, swollen, and mangled 
 body of a drowned girl, — who probably had intended to 
 go out to service in some American family, — to which 
 some rags still adhered, with a string, half concealed by 
 the flesh, about its swollen neck ; the coiled-up wreck of 
 a human hulk, gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the 
 bone and muscle were exposed, but quite bloodless, — 
 merely red and white, — with wiilc-open and staring 
 eyes, yet lustreless, dead-lights ; or like the cabin win- 
 dows of a stranded vessel, filled with sand. Sometimes 
 
THE SHIPWRECK. O 
 
 there were two or more children, or a parent and child, 
 in the same box, and on the lid would perhaps be writ- 
 ten with red chalk, " Bridget such-a-one, and .sister's 
 child." The surrounding sward was covered with bits 
 of sails and clothing. I have since heard, from one who 
 lives by this beach, that a woman who had come over 
 before, but had left her infant behind for her sister to 
 bring, came and looked into these boxes, and saw in 
 one, — probably the same whose superscription I have 
 quoted, — her child in her sister's arms, as if the sister 
 had meant to be found thus ; and within three days 
 after, the mother died from the effect of that sight. 
 
 We turned from this and walked along the rocky 
 shore. In the first cove were strewn what seemed the 
 fragments of a vessel, in small pieces mixed with sand 
 and sea-weed, and great quantities of feathers; but it 
 looked so old and rusty, that I at first took it to be 
 some old wreck which had lain there many years. I 
 even thought of Captain Kidd, and that the feathers 
 were those which sea-fowl had cast there; and perhaps 
 there might be some tradition about it in the neighbor- 
 hood. I asked a sailor if that was the St. John. lie 
 said it was. I asked him where she struck. lie pointed 
 to a rock in front of us, a mile from the shore, called the 
 Grampus Rock, and added : — 
 
 " You can see a part of her now sticking up ; it looks 
 like a small boat." 
 
 I saw it. It was thought to be held by the chain- 
 cables and the anchors. I asked if the bodies which 
 I saw were all that were drowned. 
 
 " Not a quarter of them," said he. 
 
 " Where are the rest ? " 
 
 " Most of them right underneath that piece you see." 
 
6 CAPE COD. 
 
 It appeared to us that there was enough rubbish to 
 make the wreck of a L\rge vessel in this eove alone, and 
 that it would take many days to cart it otf. It was sev 
 eral feet deep, and here and there was a bonnet or a 
 jacket on it. In the very midst of the crowd about this 
 wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the 
 sea-weed Avhich the storm had cast up, and conveying it 
 beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often 
 obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and 
 they might at any moment have found a human body 
 under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that 
 this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck 
 had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of 
 society. 
 
 About a mile south we could see, rising above the 
 rocks, the masts of the British brig which the St. John 
 had endeavored to follow, which had slipped her cables, 
 and, by good luck, run into the mouth of Cohasset Har- 
 bor. A little further along the shore we saw a man's 
 clothes on a rock ; further, a woman's scarf, a gown, a 
 straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her masts 
 high and dry, broken into several pieces. In another 
 rocky cove, several rods from tlie water, and behind 
 rocks twenty feet high, lay a part of one side of the ves- 
 sel, still hanging together. It was, perhaps, forty feet 
 long, by fourteen wide. I was even more surprised at the 
 l)Owerof the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, 
 than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments be- 
 fore. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken 
 superfluously, and I saw that no material could with- 
 stand the power of the waves ; that iron must go to 
 pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cra.'ked 
 ^p like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some of these tim- 
 
THE SHIPWRECK. 7 
 
 bers, however, were so rotten that I could almost thrust 
 my umbrella through them. They told us that some 
 were saved on this piece, and also showed where the sea 
 had heaved it into this cove, which was now dry. When 
 I saw where it had come in, arid in what condition, I 
 wondered that any had been saved on it. A little fur- 
 ther on a crowd of men was collected around the mate 
 of the St. John, who was telling his story. He was a 
 shm-looking youth, who 8j)oke of the captain as the mas- 
 ter, and seemed . a little excited. He was saying that 
 when they jumped into the boat, she filled, and, the ves- 
 sel lurching, the weight of the water in the boat caused 
 the painter to break, and so they were separated. 
 Whereai yjnc man came away, saying: — 
 
 " Well, I do n't see but ho tells a straight story 
 enough. You see, the weight of the water in the boat 
 broke the painter. A boat full of water is very 
 heavy," — and so on, in a loud and impertinently 
 earnest tone, as if he had a bet depending on it, but 
 had no humane interest in the matter. 
 
 Another, a large man, stood near by upon a rock, 
 gazing into the sea, and chewing large quids of tobacco, 
 as if that habit were forever confirmed with him. 
 
 " Come," says another to his companion, " let *s be off. 
 We 've seen the whole of it. It 's no use to stay to the 
 funeral." 
 
 Further, we saw one standing upon a rock, who, we 
 were told, was one that was saved. He was a sober- 
 looking man, dressed in a jacket and gray pantaloons, 
 with his hands in the pockets. I asked him a few ques- 
 tions, which he answered ; but he seemed unwilling to 
 talk about it, and soon walked away. By his side stood 
 «ne of the life-boat men, in an oil-cloth jacket, who told 
 
8 CAPE COD. 
 
 us how thny wont to the relief of the British brig, think- 
 ing that the boat of the St. John, wliich they passed on t 
 the way, held all her erew, — for the waves prevented 
 their seeing those who were on the vessel, though they 
 might have saved some had they known there were any 
 there. A little fnrther was the Hag of the St. John 
 spread on a rock to dry, and held down by stones at the 
 corners. This frail, but essential and signiticant portion 
 of the vessel, which had so long been the sport of the 
 winds, was sure to reach the shore. There were one or 
 two houses visible from these rocks, in which were some 
 of the survivors recovering from the shock which their 
 bodies and minds had sustained. One was not expected 
 to live. 
 
 We kept on down the shore as far as a promontory 
 called Whitehead, that we might see more of tiie Cohas- 
 set Rocks. In a little cove, within half a mile, there 
 were an old man and his son collecting, with their team, 
 the sea-weed which that fatal storm had cast up, as 
 serenely employed as if there had never been a Avreck 
 in the world, though they were within sight of the Gram- 
 pus Rock, on which the St. John had struck. The old 
 man had heard that there was a wreck, and knew most 
 of the paiticulars, but he said that he had not been up 
 there since it happened. It was the wrecked weed that 
 concerned him most, rock-weed, kelp, and sea-weed, as 
 he named them, which he carted to his barn-yard ; 
 and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the 
 tide cast up, but which were of no use to him. We 
 afterwards came to the life-boat in its harbor, waiting for 
 another emei-gency, — and in the afternoon we saw the 
 funeral procession at a distance, at the head of which 
 walked the captain with the other survivors. 
 
THE SHIPWRECK. 9 
 
 On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene as I 
 might have expected. If I had found one body cjist 
 upon the beach in some lonely place, it would have 
 affected me more. I sympathized rather with tiie winds 
 and waves, as if to toss and mangle these poor human 
 bodies was the order of the day. If this was the law of 
 Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity? If the 
 last day were come, we should not think so much about 
 the separation of friends or the blighted prospects of 
 individuals. I saw that corpses might be multiplied, as 
 on the field of battle, till they no longer affected us in 
 any degree, as exceptions to tiie common lot of humanity. 
 Take all the graveyards together, they are always the 
 majority. It is the individual and private that demands 
 our sympathy. A man can attend but one funeral in 
 the course of his life, can behold but one corpse. Yet 
 I saw that the inhabitants of the shore would be not a 
 little affiected by this event. They would watch there 
 many days and nights for the sea to give up its dead, 
 and their imaginations and sympathies would supply the 
 place of mourners far away, who as yet knew not of the 
 wreck. Many days after this, something white was seen 
 floating on the water by one who was sauntering on the 
 beach. It was approached in a boat, and found to be the 
 body of a woman, which had risen in an u[)right position, 
 whose white cap was blown back witli th<; wind. I saw 
 that the beauty of the shore itself was wrecked for many 
 a lonely walker there, until he could perceive, at last, 
 how its beauty was enhanced by wrecks like this, and it 
 acquired thus a rarer and sublimer beauty still. 
 
 Why care for these dead bodies ? They really have 
 no friends but the worms or fishes. Their owners were 
 coming to the New World, as Columbus and the Pil- 
 1* 
 
10. CAPE COD. 
 
 grims did, — tlicy were within a mile of its shores ; but, 
 before they could reach it, they emigrated to a newer 
 world than ever Columbus dreamed of, yet one of whose 
 existence we believe that there is far more universal and 
 convincing evidence — thougli it has not yet been dis- 
 covered by science — than Columbus had of this ; not 
 merely mariners' tales and some paltry drift-wood and 
 sea-weed, but a continual drift and instinct to all our 
 shores. I saw their empty hulks that came to land ; but 
 they themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some shore 
 yet further west, toward which we are all tending, and 
 which we shall reach at last, it may be through storm 
 and darkness, as they did. No doubt, we have reason to 
 tliank God that they have not been " shipwrecked into 
 life again." The mariner who makes the safest port in 
 Heaven, perchance, seems to his friends on earth to be 
 shipwrecked, for they deem Boston Harbor the better 
 place ; though perhaps invisible to them, a skilful pilot 
 comes to meet him, and the fairest and balmiest gales 
 blow off that coast, his good ship makes the land in 
 halcyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture there, 
 while his old hulk tosses in the surf here. It is hard to 
 part with one's body, but, no doubt, it is easy enough to 
 do without it when once it is gone. All their plans and 
 hopes burst like a bubble ! Infants by the score dashed 
 on the rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No, no ! 
 If the St. John did not make lier port here, she has betn 
 telegraphed there. The strongest wind cannot stagger a 
 Spirit ; it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose 
 cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but 
 itself w411 split rocks till it succeeds. 
 
 The verses addressed to Columbus, dying, may, with 
 slight alterations, be applied to the passengers of the St. 
 John : — 
 
THK Sllir WRECK. 11 
 
 " Soon witli them will all be over, 
 Soon the voyugc will he he^n 
 That Hhall bear them to diHcovcr, 
 Far away, a land unknown. 
 
 " Land that each, alone, must viflit, 
 But no tidingH bring to men; 
 For no «ailor, once departed, 
 Ever hath returned again. 
 
 *No carved wood, no broken branches, 
 Ever drift from that far wild; 
 He who on that ocean launches 
 Meets no corse of angel child. 
 
 " Undismayed, my noble sailors, 
 Spread, then H|)read your canvas out; 
 Spirits! on a Hea of ether 
 Soon shall ye serenely float! 
 
 " Where the deep no plummet soundeth, 
 Fear no hidden breakers there, 
 And the fanning wing of angels 
 Shall your bark right onward bear. 
 
 " Quit, now, full of heart and comfort, 
 These nide shores, they are of earth; 
 Where the rosy clouds are parting, 
 There tlie blessed Lsles loom forth." 
 
 One sumiuor day, Hirico this, I came this way, on foot, 
 along tljc hliorc from ]ioHton. It was ko warm, tliat 
 some horses had climbed t^j the very top of the ramparts 
 of the old fort at Hull, where there was hardly room to 
 turn round, for the sake of the hrcaza. The Datura 
 stramonium, or thorn-apple, was in full bloom alorig the 
 beach; and, at sight of this cosmopolite, — this Captain 
 Cook among plants, — carried in ballast all over the 
 world, I felt as if I were on the highway of nations. 
 Say, rather, this Viking, king of the Jiays, for it is not 
 an innocent [>hint ; it suggests not merely commerce, but 
 
12 CAPE COD. 
 
 its attendant vices, as if its libres wcmv tlio stutV of \\h\ch 
 pirates spin their yarns. I heard the voiees of men 
 shouting aboard a vessel, haU' a mile from the sliore, 
 which sounded as if they were in a barn in the country, 
 they being between the sails. It was a purely rural 
 sound. As I looked over the water, 1 saw the isles 
 rapidly wasting away, the sea nibbling voraciously at the 
 continent, the springing arch of a hill suddenly inter- 
 rupted, as at Point Alderton, — what botanists might call 
 premorse, — showing, by its curve against the sky, how 
 nuich s[)ace it must have occupied, where now was water 
 only. On the other hand, these wrecks of isles were 
 being fancifully arranged into new shores, as at Hog 
 Island, inside of Hull, where everything seemed to be 
 gently lapsing into futurity. This isle had got the very 
 form of a ripple, — and I thought that the inhabitants 
 should bear a ripple tor device on their shields, a wave 
 passing over them, with the datura, which is said to pro- 
 duce mental alienation of long duration without at^ecting 
 the bodily health,* springing from its edge. The most 
 
 * The Jamestown weed (or thorn-apple). '• This, being an early plant, 
 was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by some of the soldiers 
 sent thither [i.e. to Virginia] to quell the rebellion of Bacon; and some 
 of them ate plentifully of it, the olVoct of which was a very j^leasant 
 comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one 
 would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with 
 much fury; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like a 
 monkey, griiniiiig and making mows at them ; a fourth would fondly 
 kiss and paw his companions, and sneor in their faces, with a counte- 
 nance more antic than any in a Dutch droll. In this frantic con- 
 dition they were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy 
 themselves, — though it was observed that all their actions were 
 full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very 
 cleanly. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after 
 eleven days returned to themselves agJiin, not remembering any- 
 thing that had psissed." — Beverly's History if Mrt/inia, p. 120. 
 
THE SHIPWRECK. 13 
 
 interesting thing which I heard of, in tliis townsliip of 
 Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed 
 out to me, on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting 
 along the shore, tliough I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I 
 should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the 
 Ca[)itoline Hill I should remember the longest. It is 
 true, I was somewhat interested in the well at the old 
 Fn^nch fort, which was said to be ninety feet deep, with 
 a cannon at the bottom of it. On Nanlasket beach I 
 counted a dozen chaises from the [)ublic-liouse. From 
 time to time the riders turn(;d their horses toward the 
 sea, standing in the water for the c(X)lne.sH, — and I saw 
 the value of beaches to cities for the sea breeze and the 
 bath. 
 
 At Jerusalem village the inhabitants were collecting 
 in haste, before a thunder-shower now approaching, the 
 Irish moss which they had spread to dry. The shower 
 passed on one side, and gave me a few drops only, 
 which did not cool the air. I merely felt a puff upon 
 my cheek, though, within sight, a vessel was capsized in 
 the bay, and several others dragged their anchors, and 
 were near going ashore. The sea-bathing at Cohasset 
 Rocks was perfect. The water was purer and more 
 transparent than any I had ever seen. There was not 
 a particle of mud or slime about it. The bottom being 
 sandy, I could see the sea-perch swimming about. The 
 smooth and fantastically worn rocks, and the perfectly 
 clean and tress-like rock-weeds falling over you, and 
 attached so firmly to the rocks that you could pull your- 
 self up by them, greatly enhanced the luxury of the 
 bath. The stripe of barnacles just above the weeds 
 reminded me of some vegetable growth, — the buds, and 
 petals, and seed-vessels of flowers. They lay along tlie 
 
14 CAPE COD. 
 
 seams of the rock like buttons on a waistcoat. It was 
 one of the hottest days in the year, yet I found the water 
 so icy cold that I could swim but a stroke or two, and 
 thought that, in case of shipwreck, there would be more 
 danger of being chilled to death than simply drowned. 
 One immersion was enough to make you forget the dog- 
 days utterly. Though you were sweltering before, it 
 will take you half an hour now to remember that it was 
 ever warm. There were the tawny rocks, like lions 
 couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly 
 dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities 
 of gravel. The water held in their little hollows, on the 
 receding of the tide, was so crystalline that I could not 
 believe it salt, but wished to drink it; and higher 
 up were basins of fresh water left by the rain, — all 
 which, being also of different depths and temperature, 
 were convenient for different kinds of baths. Also, 
 the larger hollows in the smoothed rocks formed the 
 most convenient of seats and dressing-rooms. In 
 these respects it was the most perfect sea-shore that 
 I had seen. 
 
 I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only by a 
 narrow beach, a handsome but shallow lake of some 
 four hundred acres, which, I was told, the sea had tossed 
 over the beach in a great storm in the spring, and, after 
 the alewives had passed into it, it had stopped up its out 
 let, and now the alewives were dying by thousands, and 
 the inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence as the 
 water evaporated. It had five rocky islets in it. 
 
 This rocky shore is called Pleasant Cove, on some 
 maps ; on the map of Cohasset, that name appears to be 
 confined to the particular cove where I saw the wreck 
 of the St. John. The ocean did not look, now, as if any 
 
THE SHIPWRECK. 15 
 
 were ever shipwrecked in it ; it was not grand and sub- 
 lime, but beautiful as a lake. Not a vestige of a wreck 
 was visible, nor could I believe that the bones of many 
 a shipwrecked man were buried in that pure sand. But 
 to go on with our first excursion. 
 
A 
 
 V^: 
 
 -iK 
 
 II- 
 STAGE-COACH VIEWS. 
 
 After spending the nii2:lit in Bridgewater, and picking 
 up a few arrow-heads there in the morning, we took the 
 ciU's for Sandwich, where we arrived before noon. This 
 was the terminus of the " Cape Cod Raih'oad," though 
 it is but the beginning of the Cape. As it rained hard, 
 with driviuij; mists, and there was no sign of its holding 
 up, we here took that ahnost obsolete conveyance, the 
 stage, for " as far as it went that dav," as we told the 
 driver. We had forgotten how tar a stage could go in 
 a day, but we were told that the Cape roads were very 
 " heavy," though they added that, being of sand, the rain 
 would improve them. This coach was an exceedingly 
 narrow one, but as there was a slight spherical excess 
 over two on a seat, the driver waited till nine passengers 
 had got in, without taking the measure of any of them, 
 and then shut the door after two or three inetfectual 
 slams, as if the Jault were all in the hinges or the latch, 
 — while we timed our inspirations and expirations so as 
 to assist him. 
 
 We were now fairly on the Cape, which extends from 
 Sandwich eastward thirty-dve miles, and thence north 
 and northwest thirty more, in all sixty -five, and has an 
 avcra«ie breadth of about five miles. In the interior it 
 
STAGE-COACH VIEWS. 17 
 
 rises to tli'j height of two liundred, and sometimes perhaps 
 three hundred feet above the level of the s(;a. Accord- 
 ing to Hitchcock, the geologist of the Stiitc, it is com- 
 posed almost entirely of sand, even to the depth of three 
 handled feet in some places, though there is probably 
 a concealed core of rock a little beneath the surface, 
 and it is of diluvian origin, excepting a small portion at 
 the extremity and elsewhere along tiie shores, whicii is 
 alluvial. For the first half of the Cape large blocks of 
 stone are found, here and there, mixed with the sand, 
 but for the last thirty miles boulders, or even gravel, are 
 rarely met with. Hitchcock conjectures that the ocean 
 has, in course of time, eaten out Boston Harbor and otlier 
 bays in the mainland, and that the minute fragments 
 have been deposited by the currents at a distance from 
 the shore, and formed this sand-bank. Above the sand, 
 if the surface is subjected to agricultural tests, there is 
 found to be a thin layer of soil gradually diminishing 
 from Barnstable to Truro, where it ceases ; but there 
 are many holes and rents in this weather-beaten gar- 
 ment not likely to be stitched in time, which reveal the 
 naked flesh of the Cape, and its extremity is completely 
 bare. 
 
 I at once got out my book, the eighth volume of the 
 Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 printed in 1802, which contains some short notices of the 
 Cai)e towns, and began to read up to where I was, for 
 in the cars I could not read as fast as 1 travelled. To 
 those who came from the side of Plymouth, it said : 
 " After riding through a body of woods, twelve miles in 
 extent, interspersed with but few houses, the settlement 
 of Sandwich appears, with a more agreeable effect, to 
 the eye of the traveller." Another writer speaks of" this 
 
 B 
 
18 CAPE COD. 
 
 as a beautiful village. But I think that our villages will 
 bear to be contrasted only with one another, not with 
 Nature. I have no great respect for the writer's taste, 
 who talks easily about heautiful villages, embellished, 
 perchance, with a " fulling-mill," " a handsome acad- 
 emy," or meeting-house, and "a number of shops for 
 the different mechanic arts " ; where the green and white 
 houses of the gentry, drawn up in rows, front on a street 
 of which it would be difficult to tell whether it is most 
 like a desert or a long stable-yard. Such spots can be 
 beautiful only to the weary traveller, or the returning na- 
 tive, — or, perchance, the repentant misanthrope ; not to 
 him who, with unprejudiced senses, has just come out of 
 the woods, and approaches one of them, by a bare road, 
 through a succession of straggling homesteads where he 
 cannot tell which is the alms-house. However, as for 
 Sandwich, I cannot speak particularly. Ours was but 
 half a Sandwich at most, and that must have fallen on 
 the buttered side some time. I only saw that it was a 
 closely-built town for a small one, with glass-works to 
 improve its sand, and narrow streets in which we turned 
 round and round till we could not tell which way we 
 were going, and the rain came in, first on this side, and 
 then on that, and I saw that they in the houses were 
 more comfortable than we in the coach. My book also 
 said of this town, " The inhabitants, in general, are 
 substantial livers," — that is, I suppose, they do not live 
 like philosophers ; but, as the stage did not stop long 
 enough for us to dine, we had no opportunity to test the 
 truth of this statement. It may have referred, however, 
 to the quantity " of oil they would yield." It further 
 said, " The inhabitants of Sandwich generally manifest a 
 fond and steady adherence to the manners, employments, 
 
STAGE-COACn VIEWS. 19 
 
 and modes of living which characterized their fathers " ; 
 which made me think that they were, after all, very 
 much like all the rest of the world ; — and it added that 
 this was " a resemblance, which, at this day, will con- 
 stitute no impeachment of either their virtue or taste " ; 
 which remark proves to me that the writer was one with 
 the rest of them. No people ever lived by cursing their 
 fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have 
 been to them. But it must be confessed that ours was old 
 authority, and probably they have changed all that now. 
 Our route was along the Bay side, through Barnstable, 
 Yarmouth, Dennis, and Brewster, to Orleans, with a 
 range of low hills on our right, running down the Cape. 
 The weather was not favorable for wayside views, but 
 we made the most of such glimpses of land and water as 
 we could get through the rain. The country was, for 
 the most part, bare, or with only a little scrubby wood 
 left on the hills. We noticed in Yarmouth — and, if I 
 do not mistake, in Dennis — large tracts where pitch- 
 pines were planted four or five years before. They were 
 in rows, as they appeared when we were abreast of them, 
 and, excepting that there were extensive vacant spaces, 
 seemed to be doing remarkably well. This, we were 
 told, was the only use to which such tracts could be prof- 
 itably put. Every higher eminence had a pole set up 
 on it, with an old storm-coat or sail tied to it, for a signal, 
 that those on the south side of the Cape, for instance, 
 might know when the Boston packets had arrived on the 
 north. It appeared as if this use must absorb the 
 greater part of the old clothes of the Cape, leaving but 
 few rags for the peddlers. The wind-mills on the hills, — 
 large weather-stained octagonal structures, — and the 
 salt-works scattered all along the shore, with theLc 
 
20 CAPK COD. 
 
 louiX rows of vats ivstinu; on pilos driven into llie inarsli, 
 their low. tuvtlo-liko roots, and their sHi^hter wind-mills, 
 wero novel and interesting objtH'ts to an iidander. 'riio 
 sand by tlie roadside was partially eovered with bnnehea 
 of a moss-like plant, Ifiidsonta tomrntosa, whieh a woman 
 in the stage told ns was ealled " poverty grass," because 
 it grew where nothing else would. 
 
 1 was struck by the pleasant equality whieh rtMgned 
 among the stage company, and their broad antl invulner- 
 able good humor. They were what is called tree and 
 easy, and met one another to adN antage, as men who had, 
 at length, learned how to live. They ai^peareil to know 
 each other when they were strangers, they were so sim- 
 ple and downright. They were well met, in an unusual 
 sense, that is, they met a^ well as they could meet, and 
 did not seem to be troubled with any impediment. They 
 were not afraid nor lu^hamed of one another, but were 
 contented to make just such a company as the ingredients 
 allowed. It was cviilent that the same foolish respect 
 was not here claimed, for mere wealth and station, that 
 is in many part*? of New England : yet some of them 
 were the " lirst people," as they are ealled, of the va- 
 rious towns through whieh we passed. Retired sea- 
 captains, in easy cireiunstances, who talked of farming 
 a^ sea-captiiins arc wont ; an erect, respectable, and 
 trustworthy-looking man, in his wrapper, gome of the 
 Sidt of the earth, who had formerly been the sjUt of the 
 sea ; or a more courtly gentleman, who, perchance, had 
 been a representative to the General Court in his day ; 
 or a broad, red-faced Cape Ct>vl man, who had seen too 
 many stonns to be easily irritated ; or a lisherman's wite, 
 who had been waiting a week for a coaster to leave 
 Boston, and had at length come by the cars. 
 
STA^iK-COACH ViKVVS. 21 
 
 A Ktrlct rc//'drd for trutli obligcn us U) Hay, that the few 
 "women whom we Haw tltat day looked exceedingly 
 pinched up. They had prominent chins and noscH, Jiav- 
 ing lost all their teeth, and a sharp W would reprenent 
 their profile. Thrjy were not ho well preserved as their 
 husbands ; or perchance they were well preserved as 
 dried specimens. (Their husbands, however, were pic- 
 kled.) I>ut we re-pf-ct them not the le-s for all tliat ; our 
 own dental system is far from perfcjet. 
 
 Still we kept on in the ruin, or, if we stopped, it was 
 commonly at a post-offiee, and we thought that writing 
 letters, and sorting them against our arrival, must be the 
 principal employment of the inhabitants of the Cape, 
 this rainy day. The Post-office appeared a singularly do- 
 mestic institution here. Ever and anon the .stage stopped 
 before some low shop or dwelling, and a wheelwright 
 or shoemaker appean^l in his shirt sleeves and leather 
 apron, with spectacles newly donned, holding up Uncle 
 Sam's bag, as if it were a slice of home-made cake, for 
 the travellers, while he retailed some piece of gossip to 
 the driver, really as indifferent to the presence of the 
 former as if they were so much baggage. In one in- 
 stance, we understood that a woman was the jjost-mis- 
 tress, and they said that she made the best one on tlie 
 road ; but we suspected that the letters must be sub- 
 jected to a very close scrutiny there. While we were 
 stopping, for this purpose, at Pennis, we ventured to put 
 our heads out of the windows, to see where we were 
 going, and saw rising before us, through the mist, singu- 
 lar barren hills, all stricken with poverty-grass, looming 
 up as if they were in the horizon, though they were close 
 to us, and we seemed to have got to the end of the land 
 on that bide, notwithstundinir that the hor-es were still 
 
22 CAPE COD. 
 
 lioadod that way. Indood, that part of Dennis which wo 
 saw was an oxcoodingly barren and desolate eountr_v,\)f 
 a chiu'ucter whieh 1 ean luul no name ior ; sut.'h a sur- 
 face, perhaps, as the bottom of the sea made dry hind 
 day before yesterday. It was covered with poverty- 
 grj\ss, and there was hardly a tree in sight, but here and 
 there a little weather-stained, one-storied house, with a 
 red TOoi\ — ibr often the roof was painted, though the 
 rest of the house was not, — standing bleak and cheer- 
 less, yet with a broad foundation to tlie land, where the 
 comfort must have been all inside. Yet we read in the 
 Gazetteer — for we carried that too with us — that, in 
 1837, one hundred and lifty masters of vessels, belong- 
 ing to this toNMi, sailed from the various ports of the 
 Union. There must be many more houses in the south 
 part of the town, else we Ciiunot imagine where they all 
 lodge when they are at home, if ever they are there ; but 
 the truth is, their houses are iloating ones, and their 
 home is on the ocean. There were almost no trees at 
 all in this part of Dennis, nor could I learn that they 
 talked of setting out any. It it> true, there was a meet- 
 ing-house, set round with Lombardy poplars, in a hollow 
 square, the rows fully as straight as the studs of a build 
 ing, and the corners as square ; but, if I do not mistake, 
 every one of them was dead. I could not help thinking 
 that they needed a revival here. Our book said that, in 
 1795, there was erected in Dennis "an elegant meeting- 
 house, with a steeple." Perhaps this was the one ; 
 though whether it had a steeple, or had died down so tar 
 from sympathy with the poplars, I do not renieniber. 
 Another meeting-house in this town was described as a 
 "neat building"; but of the meeting-house in Chatham, 
 a neighboring town, tor there was then but one, noth- 
 
STAOK-COACJI VIKWS. 28 
 
 ing ifl said, oxoopt tljut it " is in f^xxl re[jair," — IjotJi 
 which rcmarkH, 1 trust, may he understood as a[)(jlyifig 
 to the churchcB spiritual its well as rnatejial. JIow(;ver, 
 "elegant meeting-houseH," {'lom that Tjjjiity one on 
 Broadway, to this at NohscuHset, in my CHtirnation, belong 
 to the Hame category with "beautiful vilhiges." I was 
 never in season to see one. Handsome is that hand- 
 some does. What they did for shade liere, in warm 
 weather, we did not know, though we read that " fogs 
 are more frequent in Chatham than in any other part of 
 the country ; and tlK^y serve in summer, instead of trees, 
 to shelter the houses against the heat of the sun. To 
 those who delight in extensive vision," — is it to be J 
 inferred that the inhabitants of Chatham do not? — j 
 "they are unpleasant, but they are nf>t found to be I 
 unheallhful." Probably, also, the unobstructed sea- | 
 breeze answers the purpose of a fan. The historian of j 
 Chatham says further, that " in many families there is no | 
 difference between the breakfast and supper ; cheese, 
 cakes, and pies being as common at the one as at the 
 other." But that leaves us still uncertain whether they 
 were really common at either. 
 
 The road, which was quite hilly, here ran near tlie 
 Bay-shore, having the Bay on one side, and " the rough 
 hill of Scai-go," said to be the highest land on the Cape, ^ 
 on the other. Of the wide prospect of the Bay aflbrded 
 by the summit of this hill, our guide says: "The view 
 has not much of the beautiful in it, but it communicates 
 a strong emotion of the sublime." That is the kind of 
 communication which we love to have made to us. We 
 passed through the village of Suet, in Dennis, on Suet 
 and Qui vet Necks, of which it is said, " when compared 
 with Nobscusset," — we had a misty recollection of hav- 
 
24 CAPE COD. 
 
 ing passed through, or near to, the latter, — " it may be 
 denominated a pleasant village ; but, in comparison with 
 the village of Sandwich, there is little or no beauty in 
 it." However, we liked Dennis well, better than any 
 town we had seen on the Cape, it was so novel, and, in 
 that stormy day, so sublimely dreary. 
 
 Captain John Sears, of" Suet, was the first person in 
 this country who obtained pure marine salt by solar 
 evaporation alone ; though it had long been made in 
 a similar way on the coast of France, and elsewhere. 
 This was in the year 1776, at which time, on account of 
 the war, salt was scarce and dear. The Historical Col- 
 lections contain an interesting account of his experi- 
 ments, which we read when we first saw the roofs of the 
 salt-works. Barnstable county is the most favorable 
 locality for these works on our northern coast, — there 
 is so little fresh water here emptying into ocean. Quite 
 recently there were about two millions of dollars in- 
 vested in this business here. But now the Cape is un- 
 able to compete with the importers of salt and the 
 manufacturers of it at the West, and, accordingly, her 
 salt-works are fast going to decay. From making salt, 
 they turn to fishing more than ever. The Gazetteer 
 wiL' uniformly tell you, under the head of each town, 
 liow many go a-fishing, and the value of the fish and oil 
 taken, how much salt is made and used, how many are 
 engaged in the coasting trade, how many in manufactur- 
 ing palm-leaf hats, leather, boots, shoes, and tinware, 
 and then it has done, and leaves you to imagine the 
 more truly domestic manufactures which are nearly the 
 same all the world over. 
 
 Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brewster, so 
 named after Elder Brewster, for fear he would be for- 
 
STAGE-COACH VIEWS. 25 
 
 gotten else. Who has not heard of Elder Brewster ? 
 Who knows who he was ? This appeared to be the 
 modern-built town of the Cape, the favorite residence 
 of retired sea-captains. It is said that " there are more 
 masters and mates of vessels which sail on foreign voy- 
 ages belonging to this place than to any other town in 
 the country." There were many of the modern Ameri- 
 can houses here, such as they turn out at Cambridge- 
 port, standing on the sand ; you could almost swear that 
 they had been floated down Charles River, and drifted 
 across the bay. I call them American, because they 
 arc paid for by Americans, and " put up " by American 
 carpenters; but they are little removed from lumber; 
 only Eastern stuff disguised with white paint, the least 
 interesting kind of drift-wood to me. Perhaps we have 
 reason to be proud of our naval architecture, and need 
 not go to the Greeks, or the Goths, or the Italians, for 
 the models of our vessels. Sea-captains do not employ 
 a Cambridgeport carpenter to build their floating houses, 
 and for their houses on shore, if they must copy any, 
 it would be more agreeable to the imagination to see 
 one of their vessels turned bottom upward, in the Numid- 
 ian fashion. We read that, " at certain seasons, the 
 reflection of the sun upon the windows of the houses in 
 Wellfleet and Truro (across the inner side of the elbow 
 of the Cape) is discernible with the naked eye, at a 
 distance of eighteen miles and upward, on the county 
 road." This we were pleased to imagine, as we had not 
 seen the sun for twenty-four hours. 
 
 The same author (the Rev. John Simpkins) said of 
 the inhabitants, a good while ago : " No persons appear 
 to have a greater relish for the social circle and domes- 
 tic pleasures. They are not in the habit oi" Ireqiienting 
 2 
 
26 CAPE COD. 
 
 taverns, unless on public occasions. I know not of a 
 proper idler or tavern-haunter in the place." This is 
 more than can be said of my townsmen. 
 
 At length, we stopped for the night at Higgins's tav- 
 ern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we w^ere on a 
 sand-bar in the ocean, and not knowing whether we 
 should see land or water ahead when the mist cleared 
 aw^ay. We here overtook two Italian boys, who had 
 waded thus far down the Cape through the sand, with 
 their organs on tlieir backs, and were going on to Prov- 
 incetown. What a hard lot, we thought, if the Prov- 
 incetown people should shut their doors against them ! 
 Whose yard would they go to next ? Yet we concluded 
 that they had chosen wisely to come here, wher<j otlier 
 music than that of the surf must be rare. Tims the 
 great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, 
 to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World 
 which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage 
 there to surrender. 
 
III. 
 
 THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 
 
 The next morning, Thursday, October 11th, it rained, 
 as hard as ever ; but we were determined to proceed on 
 foot, nevertheless. We first made some inquiries with 
 regard to the practicability of walking up the shore on 
 the Atlantic side to Provincetown, whether we should 
 meet with any creeks or marshf-s to trouble us. Hig- 
 gins said that there was no obstruction, and that it was 
 not much farther than by the road, but he thought that 
 we should find it very " heavy " walking in the sand ; 
 it was bad enough in the road, a horse would sink in up 
 to the fetlocks there. But there was one man at the 
 tavern who had walked it, and he said that we could go 
 very well, though it was sometimes inconvenient and 
 even dangerous walking under the bank, when there was 
 a great tide, with an easterly wind, which caused the 
 sand to cave. For the first four or five miles we fol- 
 lowed the road, which here turns to the north on the el- 
 bow, — the narrowest part of the Cape, — that we might 
 clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of Nauset Harbor, 
 in Orleans, on our right. We found the travelling good 
 enough for walkers on the sides of the roads, though it 
 was " heavy " for horses in the middle. We walked 
 with our umbrellas behind u-, since it blowed hard em 
 
/ 
 
 28 CAPE COD. 
 
 well as rained, with driving mists, as the day before, 
 and tlie Avind helped us over the sand at a rapid rate. 
 Everything indicated that we had reached a strange 
 shore. The road was a mere lane, winding over bare 
 swells of bleak and barren-looking land. The houses 
 were few and far between, besides being small and rusty, 
 though they appeared to be kept in good repair, and 
 their door-yards, which were the unfenced Cape, were 
 tidy ; or, rather, they looked as if the ground around 
 them was blown clean by the wind. Perhaps the scar- 
 city of wood here, and the consequent absence of the 
 wood-pile and other wooden traps, had something to do 
 with this appearance. They seemed, like mariners 
 ashore, to have sat right down to enjoy the firmness of 
 the land, without studying their postures or habiliments. 
 To them it was merely terra jirma and cognita, not yet 
 fertilis and jucunda. Every landscape which is dreary 
 enough has a certain beauty to my eyes, and in this in- 
 stance its permanent qualities were enhanced by the 
 weather. Everything told of the sea, even when we 
 did not see its waste or hear its roar. For birds there 
 were gulls, and for carts in the fields, boats turned bot- 
 tom upward against the houses, and sometimes the rib 
 of a whale was woven into the fence by the road-side. 
 The trees were, if possible, rarer than the houses, ex- 
 cepting apple-trees, of which there were a few small 
 orcliards in the hollows. Tiiese were either narrow and 
 high, with flat tops, having lost their side branches, like 
 huge plum-bushes growing in exposed situations, or else 
 dwarfed and branching immediately at the ground, like 
 quince-bushes. They suggested that, under like circum- 
 stances, all trees would at last acquire like habits of 
 growth. I afterward saw on the Cape many full-grown 
 
V 
 
 THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 29 
 
 apple-trees not higher than a man's head ; one whole 
 orchard, indeed, where all the fruit could- have been 
 gathered by a man standing on the ground ; but j^ou 
 could hardly creep beneath the trees. Some, which the 
 owners told me were twenty years old, were only three 
 and a half feet high, spreading at six inches from the 
 ground five feet each way, and being withal surrounded 
 with boxes of tar to catch the cankerworms, they looked 
 like plants in flower-pots, and as if they might be taken 
 into the house in the winter. la another place, I saw 
 fiom'j not much larger than o6rrant-bushes ; yet the 
 owner told me that they had 'borne a barrel and a half 
 of apples that fall. If they had been placed close to- 
 gether, I could have cle^^ed them all at a jump. I 
 measured some near the highland Light in Truro, wliich 
 had been taken from/ the shrubby woods thereabouts 
 when young, and grt^ted. One, which had been set ten 
 years, was on an Average eighteen_Jnches high, and 
 spread nine feet with a flat top. It had borne one bushel 
 of apples two yelars before. Another, probably twenty 
 years old from the seed, was five feet high, and spread 
 eighteen feet, branching, as usual, at the ground, so that 
 you could not creep under it. This bore a barrel of 
 apples two years before. The owner of these trees in- 
 variably used the personal pronoun in speaking of them ; 
 as, " I got him out of the woods, but he does n't bear." 
 The largest that I saw in that neighborhood was nine 
 feet high to the topmost leaf, and spread thirty-three 
 feet, branching at the ground five ways. 
 
 In one yard I observed a single, very healthy-looking 
 tree, while all the rest were dead or dying. The occu- 
 pant said that his father had manured all but that one 
 with blackfish. 
 
30 CAPE COD. 
 
 This habit of growth should, no doubt, be encouraged ; 
 and they should not be trimmed up, as some travelling 
 practitioners have advised. In 1802 there was not a 
 single fruit-tree in Chatham, the next town to Orleans, 
 on the south ; and the old account of Orleans says : 
 " Fruit-trees (^not be made to grow within a mile of 
 the ocean, ^ven those which are placed at a greater 
 distance are injured by the east winds ; and, after vio- 
 lent storms in the spring, a saltish taste is perceptible on 
 their bark." We noticed that they were often covered 
 with a yellow lichen like rust, the Parmelia parietina. 
 
 The most foreign and picturesque structures on the 
 Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the salt-works, are 
 the wind-mills, — gray-looking octagonal towers, with 
 long timbers slanting to the ground in the rear, and there 
 resting on a cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned 
 round to face the wind. These appeared also to serve 
 in some measure for props against its force. A great 
 circular rut was worn around the building by the wheel. 
 Tiie neighbors who assemble to turn the mill to the wind 
 are likely to know which way it blows, without a weather- 
 cock. They looked loose and slightly locomotive, like 
 huge wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and re- 
 minded one of pictures of the Netherlands. Being on 
 elevated ground, and high in themselves, they serve as 
 landmarks, — for there are no tall trees, or other objects 
 commonly, which can be seen at a distance in the hori- 
 zon ; though the outhne of the land itself is so firm and 
 distinct, that an insignificant cone, or even precipice of 
 sand, is visible at a great distance from over the sea. 
 Sailors making the land commonly steer either by the 
 wind-mills or the meeting-houses. In the country, we 
 are obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. Yet 
 
TIIK PLAINS OF XAUSET. 31 
 
 th'; nv:(-A]r](^-}\()U-:iH is a kind of wind-rnill, which runn ori^j 
 flay in seven, turned eitlier by the winds of doetrinc or 
 public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of Heaven, 
 where another sort of grist is ground, of which, if it be 
 not all bran or rnu-ty, if it be not plaster, we tnjst to 
 make bread of life. 
 
 There were, here and there, heaps of shells in the 
 field", where clams had been opened for bait ; for Orleans 
 i-j famous for its shell-fi-Ji, e-ipecially clams, or, as our 
 author says, "to speak more properly, worm-." 'J'he 
 chores are more fertile than the dry land. The in- 
 habitants measure tlieir crops, not only by bushels of 
 c^^m, but by barrels of clams. A thousand barrels of 
 clam-bait are counted as equal in value to six or eight 
 thousand bushels of Indian com, and once they were 
 procured without more labor or expense, and the supply 
 was thought to be inexhaustible. " For," runs the his- 
 tory, " after a portion of the shore has been dug over, 
 and almost all the clams taken up, at the end of two 
 years, it is said, they are as plenty there as ever. It is 
 even affirmed by many persons, that it is as necessary 
 to stir the clam ground frequently as it is to hoe a field 
 of potatoes ; because, if this labor is omitted, the clams 
 will be crowded too closely together, and will be pre- 
 vented from increasing in size." But we were told that 
 the small clam, Mi/a arenaria, was not so plenty here as 
 formerly. Probably the clam-ground has been stirred 
 Uxj frequently, after all. Nevertheless, one man, who 
 complained that they fed pigs with them and so made 
 them scarce, told me that he dug and opened one hun- 
 dred and twenty-.-ix dollars' worth in one winter, in 
 Truro. 
 
 We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen ro^Js long, 
 
32 CAPE COD. 
 
 between Orleans and Eastham, called Jeremiah's Gutter. 
 Tiie Atlanti(; is said sometimes to meet the Bay here, 
 and isolate the northern part of the Cape. The streams 
 of the Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale, 
 since there is no room for them to run, without tumbling 
 innnediately into the sea ; and beside, we found it dilfi- 
 cult to run ourselves in that sand, when there was no 
 want of room. Hence, the least clianuel whore water 
 runs, or may run, is important, and is dignilied with 
 a name. We read that there is no running water in 
 Chatham, which is the next town. The barren aspect 
 of the land would hardly be believed if described. It 
 was such soil, or rather land, as, to judge from apj)ear- 
 ances, no farmer in the interior would think of cultivat- 
 ing, or even fencing. Generally, the ploughed iields of 
 the Cape look white and yellow, like a mixture of salt and 
 Indian meal. Tiiis is called soil. All an inlander's no- 
 tions of soil and fertility will be confounded by a visit to 
 these parts, and he \\\\\ not be able, for some time after- 
 ward, to distinguish soil from sand. The historian of 
 Chatham says of a part of that town, which has been 
 gained from the sea : " There is a doubtful appearance 
 of a soil beginning to be Ibrmed. It is styled doubtful, 
 because it would not be observed by every eye, and per- 
 haps not acknowledged by many." We thought that 
 this would not be a bad description of the greater part of 
 the Cape. There is a "beach" on the west side of 
 Eastham, which we crossed the next sununer, half a mile 
 wide, and stretching across the township, containing 
 seventeen hundred acres, on which there is not now a 
 particle of vegetable mould, though it formerly produced 
 wheat. All sands are here called ''beaches," whether 
 they are waves of water or of air, that dash against 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 33 
 
 them, since tlicy commonly have their origin on the sliore. 
 " The sand in some places," says the historian of East- 
 ham, " lodging against the beach-grass, has been raised 
 into hills fifty feet high, where twenty-five years ago no 
 hills existed. In others it lias filled up small valleys, 
 and swamps. Where a strong rooted bush stood, the 
 appearance is singular : a mass of earth and sand ad- 
 heres to it, resembling a small tower. In several places, 
 rocks, which were formerly covered with soil, are dis- 
 closed, and being lashed by the sand, driven against them 
 by the wind, look as if they were recently dug from a 
 quarry." 
 
 We were surprised to hear of the great crops of corn 
 which are still raised in Eastham, notwithstanding the 
 real and apparent barrenness. Our landlord in Orleans 
 had told us that he raised three or four hundred bushels 
 of corn annually, and also of the great number of pigs 
 ■which he fattened. In Champlain's " Voyages," there 
 is a plate representing the Indian cornfields hereabouts, 
 with their wigwams in the midst, as they appeared in 
 1605, and it was here that the Pilgrims, to quote their 
 own words, " bouglit eiglit or ten hogsheads of corn and 
 beans" of the Nauset Indians, in 1G22, to keep tiiem- 
 selves from starving.* " In 1GG7 the town [of Eastham] 
 
 * They touched after this at a place called Mattachiest, where they 
 got more corn j but their shallop being cast away iti a storm, tho 
 Governor was obliged to return to Plymouth on foot, fifty miles 
 through the woods. According to Mourt's Relation, " lie came safely 
 home, though weary and surhattd,'' that is, foot-sore. (Ital. sobaltere, 
 Lat. 8vh or solta battere, to bruise the soles of the feet ; v. Die. 
 Not " from acerOatus, embittered or aggrieved;" as one commentator 
 on this passage supposes.) This word is of very rare occurrence, 
 being applied only to governors and persons of like description, who 
 are in that predicament ; though such generally have considerable 
 mileage allowed tliem, and might save their soles if they cared. 
 2* O 
 
34 CAPE COD. 
 
 voted that every housekeeper should kill twelve black- 
 birds or three crows, which did great damage to the corn ; 
 and this vote was repeated for many years." In 1695 
 an additional order was passed, namely, that " every un- 
 married man in the township shall kill six blackbirds, or 
 three crows, while he remains single ; as a penalty for 
 not doing it, shall not be married until he obey this 
 order." The blackbirds, however, still molest the corn. 
 I saw them at it the next summer, and there were many 
 scarecrows, if not scare-blackbirds, in the fields, which 1 
 often mistook for men. From which I concluded, that 
 either many men were not married, or many blackbirds 
 were. Yet they put but three or four kernels in a hill, 
 and let fewer plants remain than we do. In the account 
 of Eastham, in the " Historical Collections," printed in 
 1802, it is said, that " more corn is produced than the 
 inhabitants consume, and about a thousand bushels are 
 annually sent to market. The soil being free from 
 stones, a plough passes through it speedily ; and after the 
 corn has come up, a small Giipehorsc'j somewhat larger 
 than a goat, will, with the assistance of two boys, easily 
 hoe three or four acres in a day ; several farmers are 
 accustomed to produce five hundred bushels of grain an- 
 nually, and not long since one raised eight hundred 
 bushels on sixty acres." Similar accounts are given to- 
 day ; indeed, the recent accounts are in some instances 
 suspectable repetitions of the old, and I have no doubt 
 that their statements are as often founded on the excep- 
 tion as the rule, and that by far the greater number of 
 acres are as barren as they appear to be. It is suffi- 
 ciently remarkable that any crops can be raised here, 
 and it may be owing, as others have suggested, to the 
 amount of moisture in the atmosphere, the warmth of 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 35 
 
 the sand, and the rareness of frosts. A miller, who was 
 sharpening his stones, told me that, forty years ago, he 
 had been to a husking here, where five hundred bushels 
 were husked in one evening, and the corn was piled six 
 feet high or more, in the midst, but now, fifteen or 
 eighteen bushels to an acre were an average yield. I 
 never saw fields of such puny and unpromising looking 
 corn, as in this town. Probably the inhabitants are con- 
 tented with small crops from a great surface easily 
 cultivated. It is not always the most fertile land that is 
 the most profitable, and this sand may repay cultivation, 
 as well as the fertile bottoms of the West. It is said, 
 moreover, that the vegetables raised in thesand, without 
 manure, are remarkably sweet, the pumpkins especially, 
 though when their seed is planted in the interior they 
 soon degenerate. I can testify that the vegetables here, 
 when they succeed at all, look remarkably green and 
 healthy, though perhaps it is partly by contrast with the 
 sand. Yet the inhabitants of the Cape towns, generally, 
 do not raise their own meal or pork. Their gardens are 
 commonly little patches, that have been redeemed from 
 the edges of the marshes and swamps. 
 
 All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the 
 eastern shore, which was several miles distant ; for it 
 still felt the effects of the storm in whicli the St. John 
 was wrecked, — though a school-boy, whom we overtook, 
 hardly knew what we meant, his ears were so used to it. 
 He would have more plainly heard the same sound in 
 a shell. It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, fill- 
 ing the whole air, that of the sea dashing agaiiist tlie 
 land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a 
 dog to growl before y^Our door, to have an Atlantic Ocean 
 to growl lor a wlioM Cape ! On the whole, we were glad 
 
86 cArK coi\ 
 
 of the storm, whii-li NV(>ulil slu>\v us tlu' ()('(>;in in itn 
 jxniiriost uuhhI. Cliurlos Darwin was assinvd lliat tlio 
 roar o( tlio surf on the coast of Cluloo, after a licavy 
 gale, ooulil bo lioanl at nii;lit a tlistanoo oi' "-1 soa M\iIos 
 across a iully and wooilod count r_v." Wo convcrsnl 
 Avitli the boy wo liavc nicntioncil, who nui::ht liavc bci'u 
 ci^^ht years oKl, n\akinu- liini walk the whiU' uiuh-r the 
 lee ot' our umbrella ; tor we tluniLiht it as imjtoriaut to 
 kui>w what was life on the C\ipe to a boy as to a man. 
 Wo learueil troni him wliere tin' be>t urape- were to be 
 found in that neisihborhood. lie was carrying his dinner 
 in a [Kiil ; and, without any impertinent qnesiitnis beini; 
 put by UvS, it did at length appear of what it consisted. 
 Tlie homeliest facts are always the most acceptable to 
 an impuring mind. At length, before we got to Kast- 
 ham meeting-house, wo left the roail and struck across 
 the country tor the eastern shore at Nauset Lights, — 
 three lights close together, two or three miles distant 
 from us. They were so many that they might be dis- 
 tinguished from others ; but this seemcil a shil"tlt>ss and 
 costly way oi' accomplishing that oli^ect. We found 
 ourselves at once on an aj^parcntly boundless plain, 
 without a tree or a fence, or, with one or two exceptions, 
 u house in sight. Instead offences, the earth was some- 
 times thrown up into a slight ridge. INIy com{Kinion 
 com[«ared it to the rolling prairies oi' Illinois. In the 
 storm of wind and rain which raged when we traversed 
 it, it no doubt appeared more vast and desolate than it 
 really is. As there were no hills, but only here and 
 there a dry hollow in the midst of the waste, and the 
 distant horizon was concealed by mist, we did Jiot know 
 wiiether it was high or low. A >olitary travt'ller, whom 
 we saw perambulating in the distance, loomed like a 
 
TJU: I'LAINS OF NACSKT. 37 
 
 giant. U(: a[)[)C'ar(;(l lo walk slou(;liin;.^ly, as if Ii«;I(I up 
 from above by Hlra|>s under lii.s KhoulderH, as much as 
 suppoiUMl by tlie plain b(;lovv. • Men and boy.s would 
 have appeared alike at a little distance, there being no 
 object by which to measure Ihem. Indeed, to an in- 
 lander, the Ca[>e lan(lsca[)e is a constant mirage. This 
 kind of* country extended a mile or two each way. These 
 were the "* Plains of Nau.-et," once covered with wood, 
 where in winter the winds howl and the snow blows 
 right menily in tlifi face of the traveller. J wa- glad to 
 have got out of the towns, where 1 am wont to feel un- 
 speakably mean and di.-^graced, — to have left behind me 
 for a season the bar-rooms of Massachusetts, where the 
 full-grown are rurt weaned from savage and filthy hab- 
 its, — still sucking a cigar. My spirits rose in propor- 
 tion to the outward dreariness. The towns need to be 
 ventilated. The gods would be pleased to see some pure 
 flames from their altars. They are not to be a[)[)eased 
 with cigar-smoke. 
 
 As we thus skirted the ba(;k-side of the towns, for we 
 did not enter any village, till we got to Provincetown, 
 we read their histories undei* our umbrellas, rarely meet- 
 ing anybody. The old account.-i are th(j richest in to[)Og- 
 raphy, which was what we wantf;d most ; and, indeed, 
 in most things else, for 1 fhid that the readable parts of 
 the modern accounts of these towns (y^nsist, in a great 
 measure, of quotations, acknowledged and unacknowl- 
 edged, from the older ones, without any additional infor- 
 mation of equal interest; — town histories, which at 
 length run into a history of the Church of that place, 
 that being the only story they have to tell, and conclude 
 by quoting the Latin epita[>hs of the old pastors, having 
 been written in the good old days of Lalirj afid of Gre«.'k. 
 
38 CAPE COD. 
 
 Thoy will go back to the ordination of every minister, 
 and tell you laithiully who made the introductory prayer, 
 and who delivered the sermon ; who made the ordaining 
 prayer, and who gave the charge ; who extended the 
 right hand of fellowship, and who pronounced the bene- 
 diction ; also how many ecclesiastical councils convened 
 from time to time to inquire into the orthodoxy of some 
 minister, and the names of all who composed them. As 
 it will take us an hour to get over this plain, and there 
 is no variety in the prospect, peculiar as it is, I will read 
 a little in the history of Eastham the while. 
 
 When the committee from Plymouth had purchased 
 the territory of Eastham of the Indians, " it was de- 
 manded, who laid claim to Billingsgate ? " wdiich was un- 
 derstood to be all that part of the Cape north of what 
 they had purchased. "The answer was, there was not 
 any who owned it. * Then,' said the committee, ' that 
 land is ours.' The Indians answered, that it was." This 
 was a remarkable assertion and admission. The Pilgrims 
 ap}H'ar to have regarded themselves as Not Any's repre- 
 si'utatives. Perhaps this was the Hrst instance of that 
 quiet way of " speaking for " a place not yet occupied, 
 or at least not improved as much as it may be, which 
 their descendants have practised, and are still practising 
 so extensively. Not Any seems to have been the sole 
 proprietor of all America before the Yankees. But his- 
 tory says, that w^hen the Pilgrims had held the lands of 
 Billingsgate many years, at length, " appeared an Indian, 
 -who styled himself Lieutenant Anthony," who laid claim 
 to them, and of him they bought them. Who knows 
 but a Lieutenant Anthony may be kucvking at the door 
 of the White House some day ? At ai>y rate, I know 
 ihat it" you hold a thing unjustly, thei'e will surely be 
 the devil to \K\y at last. 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 39 
 
 Tliomas Prince, who was several times the governor 
 of the Plymouth colony, was the leader of the settlement 
 of Eastham. There was recently standing, on what was 
 once his farm, in this town, a pear-tree which is said to 
 have been brought from England, and planted there by 
 him, about two hundred years ago. It was blown down 
 a few months before we were there. A late account 
 says that it was recently in a vigorous state ; the fruit 
 small, but excellent ; and it yielded on an average fifteen 
 bushels. Some appropriate lines have been addressed 
 to it, by a Mr. Ileman Doane, from which I will quote, 
 partly because they are the only specimen of Cape Cod 
 verse which I remember to have seen, and partly because 
 they are not bad. 
 
 " Two hundred years have, on the wings of Time, 
 
 Passed with their joj's and woes, since thou, Old Tree! 
 Put forth thy first leaves in this foreign clime, 
 Transplanted from the soil beyond the sea. 
 ***** 
 
 [These stars represent the more clerical lines, and 
 also those which have deceased.] 
 
 *' That exiled hand long since have passed away, 
 And still, Old Tree! thou standest in the place 
 Where Prince's hand did plant thee in his day, — 
 
 An undesigned memorial of his race 
 And time; of those our honored fathers, when 
 
 The}'- came from Plymouth o'er and settled here; 
 Doane, Higgins, Snow, and other worthy men, 
 Whose names their sons remember to revere. 
 * « * * 
 
 " Old Time has thinned thy boughs. Old Pilgrim Tree! 
 And bowed thee with the weight of many years; 
 Yet, 'mid the frosts of age, thy bloom we see, 
 And yearly still thy mellow fruit appears." 
 
 There are some other lines which I might quote, if 
 
/ 
 
 40 CAPE COD. 
 
 tluy were not tied to unworthy com])anions, by the 
 rhyme. When one ox will lie down, the yoke bears 
 hard on him that stands up. 
 
 One of the lirst settlers of Eastham was Deacon John 
 Doane, who died in 1707, aged one hundred and ten. 
 Tradition says that he was rocked iu a cradle several of 
 his last years. That, certainly, was not an Achillean 
 life. His mother nuist have let him slip when she dip- 
 ped him into the liquor which was to make him invul- 
 nerable, and he went in, heels and all. Some of the 
 stone-bounds to his farm, which he set up, are standing 
 to-day, with his initials cut in them. 
 
 The ecclesia>tical history of this town interested us 
 somewhat. It appears that " they very early built a 
 small meeting-house, twenty feet square, with a thatched 
 roof through which tJiey might lire theii" muskets,'' — of 
 course, at the Devil. "In IGG2, the town agreed that 
 a part of every whale cast on shore be appropriated for 
 the support of the ministry." No doubt there seemed 
 to be some propriety in thus leaving the support of 
 the ministers to Providence, whose servants they are, 
 and who alone rules the storms ; for, when few whales 
 were cast up, they might suspect that their worship 
 was not acceptable. The ministers must have sat upon 
 the chlVs in every storm, and watched the shore with 
 anxiety. And, for my part, if 1 were a minister, I 
 would rather trust to the bowels of the billows, on the 
 back-side of Cape Q6d, to cast up a whale for me, than 
 to the generosity of many a country parish that I know. 
 You cannot say of a country minister's salary, conunonly, 
 that it is " very like a whale." Nevertheless, the minis- 
 ter who depended on whales cast up nuist have had a 
 trying time of it. I would rather ha^ e gone to the Falk- 
 
tup: plains of NAUSEr. 41 
 
 land Isles with a haqjoon, and done with it. Think of 
 a whale having tlie breath of life beaten out of him by 
 a storm, and dragging in over the bars and guzzles, for 
 the support of the ministry ! What a consolation it 
 must have been to him ! I have heard of a minister, 
 who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater 
 for as long a time as he could tell a cod from a haddo(;k. 
 G(;nerou8 as it seems, this condition would empty most 
 country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the Ushers 
 of men were fishermen. Also, a duty was put on mack- 
 erel here to support a free-school ; in other words, the 
 mackerel-school was taxed in order that the children's 
 school might be free. "In 1GG5 the Court passed a 
 law to inflict corporal punishment on all persons, who 
 resided in the towns of this government, who denied the 
 Scriptures." Think of a man being whi[)ped on a spring 
 morning, till he was constrained to confess that tlie 
 Scriptures were true ! "It was also voted by the town, 
 that all persons who should stand out of the meeting- 
 house during the time of divine service should be set in 
 the stocks." It behooved such a town to see that sitting 
 in the meeting-house was nothing akin to sitting in the 
 stocks, lest the penalty of obedience to the law might be 
 greater than that of disobedience. 1 This was the East- 
 ham famous of late years for its camp-meetings, held in 
 a grove near by, to which thousands fhjck from all parts 
 of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the 
 perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the 
 religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large por- 
 tion of the population are women whose husbanrls and 
 sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and 
 there is nobody but they and the mini>tT;rs lelt behind. 
 The old account says that " hysteric fits are very com- 
 
/ 
 
 42 CAPE COD. 
 
 mon in Orleans, Eastliam, and the towns below, partic 
 ularly on Sunday, in the times of divine service. Wlien 
 one woman is at^eoted, tive or six others generally sym- 
 pathize with her; and the congregation is thrown into 
 the ntmost contusion. Several old men snppose, nn- 
 philosophically a!id nncharitahly, perhaps, that the will 
 is partly concerned, and that ridicule and threats would 
 Imve a tendency to prevent the evil." How this is now 
 we did not learn. AVe saw one singularly masculine 
 woman, however, in a house on this very plain, who did 
 not look as it" she was ever troubled with hysterics, or 
 symiiathized with those that were ; or, perchance, lite 
 itself was to her a hysteric tit, — a Nauset woman, of a 
 hardness and coarseness such as no man ever possesses 
 or suggests. It was enough to see the vertebras and 
 sinews of her neck, and her set jaws of iron, which 
 would have bitten a board-nail in two in their ordinary 
 action, — braced against the world, talking like a man- 
 of-war's-man in petticoats, or as if shouting to you 
 through a breaker ; who looked as if it made her head 
 ache to live ; hard enough for any enormity. I looked 
 uj>on her as one who had connnitted infanticide ; who 
 never had a brother, unless it were some wee thing that 
 died in infancy, — for what need of him? — and whose 
 lather must have died before she was born. < This wo- 
 man told us that the camp-meetings were not held the 
 previous summer for fear of introducing the cholera, and 
 that they would have been held earlier tliis summer, but 
 the rye was so backward tliat straw would not have been 
 ready tor them ; for they lie in straw. Tiie re are soj iie- 
 times one hundred and lifty ministers, (!) and tive thou- 
 sand hearers, assembled. The ground, which is called 
 Illillennium Grove, is owned by a company in Boston, 
 
 II 
 
 If 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 43 
 
 and is tlie most suitable, or rather unsuitable, for this 
 purpose of any that I saw on the Cape. It is fenced, 
 and the frames of the tents an;, at all times, to be seen 
 intersp(;rsed among the oaks. They liave an oven and 
 a pump, and keep all their kitchen utensils and tent 
 coverings and furniture in a permanent building on the 
 spot. They select a time for their meetings when the 
 moon is full. A man is apjjointed to clear out the [)ump 
 a week beforehand, while the ministers are clearing their 
 throats ; but, i>robaljly, the latter do not always deliver 
 as f)ure a stream as the former. I saw the heajjs of 
 clam-shells left under the tables, where they liad feasted 
 in previous summers, and supposed, of course, that that 
 was the work of the unconverted, or the backsliders and 
 scoffers. It looked as if a camp-meeting must be a sin- 
 gular combination of a prayer-meeting and a picnic. -^ 
 
 The first minister settled here was the Kev. Samuel 
 Treat, in 1672, a gentleman who is said to be " entitled 
 to a distinguislied rank among the evangelists of New 
 Kngland." Iht converted many Indians, as well as 
 white men, in his day, and translated the Confession of 
 Faith into the Nauset language. These were the In- 
 dians concerning whom their first teacher, Richard 
 Bourne, wrote to Gookin, in 1674, that he had been to 
 see one who was sick, " and there came from him very 
 savory and heavenly expressions," but, with regard to 
 the mass of them, he says, "the truth is, that many 
 of them are very loose in their course, to my heart- 
 breaking sorrow." Mr. Treat is described as a Calvinist 
 of the strictest kind, not one of those who, by giving up 
 or explaining away, become like a porcui)ine disarmed 
 of its quills, but a consistent Calvinist, who can dart his 
 quills to a distance and courageously defend him.s'ilf. 
 
44 CAPE COD. 
 
 There exists a volume of liis sermons in manuscript,' 
 " which," says a commentator, " appear to have been 
 designed for publication." I quote the following sen- 
 tences at second hand, from a Discourse on Luke xvi. 
 23, addressed to sinners : — 
 
 " Thou must erelong go to the bottomless pit. Hell 
 hath enlarged herself, and is ready to receive thee. 
 There is room enough for thy entertainment 
 
 " Consider, thou art going to a place prepared by God 
 on purpose to exalt his justice in, — a place made for no 
 other employment but torments. Hell is God's house 
 of correction ; and, remember, God doth all things like 
 himself. When God would show his justice, and what 
 is the weight of his wrath, he makes a hell where it 
 
 shall, indeed, appear to purpose Woe to thy soul 
 
 when thou shalt be set up as a butt for the arrows of the 
 Almighty 
 
 " Consider, God himself shall be the principal agent 
 in thy misery, — his breath is the bellows wdiich blows 
 up the flame of hell forever ; — and if he punish thee, 
 if he meet thee in his fury, he will not meet thee as 
 a man ; he will give thee an omnipotent blow." 
 
 " Some think sinning ends with this life ; but it is 
 a mistake. The creature is held under an everlasting 
 law ; the damned increase in sin in hell. Possibly, the 
 mention of this may please thee. But, remember, there 
 shall be no pleasant sins there ; no eating, drinking, 
 singing, dancing, wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen 
 waters : but damned sins, bitter, hellish sins ; sins ex- 
 asperated by torments, cursing God, spite, rage, and 
 blasphemy. — The guilt of all thy sins shall be laii 
 upon thy soul, and be made so many heaps of fuel 
 
 " Sinner, I beseech thee, realize the truth of thesQ 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 45 
 
 things. Do not go about to dream that this is de- 
 rogatory to God's mercy, and nothing but a vain fable 
 to scare children out of their wits withal. God can be 
 merciful, though he make thee miserable. He shall 
 have monuments enough of that precious attribute, shin- 
 ing like stars in the place of glory, and singing eternal 
 hallelujahs to the praise of Him that redeemed them, 
 though, to exalt the power of his justice, he damn sin- 
 ners heaps upon heaps." 
 
 " But," continues the same writer, " with the advan- 
 tage of proclaiming the doctrine of terror, which is nat- 
 urally productive of a sublime and impressive style of 
 eloquence (' Triumphat ventoso glorias curru orator, 
 qui pectus angit, irritat, et implet terroribus.' Vid. 
 Burnet, De Stat. Mort., p. 309), he could not attain 
 the character of a popular preacher. His voice was so 
 loud, that it could be heard at a great distance from the 
 meeting-house, even amidst the shrieks of hysterical 
 women, and the winds that howled over the plains of 
 Kauset ; but there was no more music in it than in the 
 discordant sounds with which it was mingled." 
 
 " The effect of such preaching," it is said, " was that 
 his hearers were several times, in the course of his min- 
 istry, awakened and alarmed ; and on one occasion a 
 comparatively innocent young man was frightened nearly 
 out of his wits, and Mr. Treat had to exert himself to 
 make hell seem somewhat cooler to him " ; yet we are 
 assured that " Treat's manners were cheerful, his con- 
 versation pleasant, and sometimes facetious, but always 
 decent. He was fond of a stroke of humor, and a prac- 
 tical joke, and manifested his relish for them by long 
 and loud fits of laughter." 
 
 This was the man of whom a well-known anecdote is 
 
46 CAPE COD. 
 
 told, which doubtless manv of mv readers have heard, 
 but which, nevertheless, I will venture to quote: — 
 
 '• At'ter his marriage with the daughter of Mr. Willai-d 
 (pastor of the South Church in Boston), he was some- 
 times invited bj that gentleman to preach in his pulpit. 
 Mr. Willard possessed a graceful delivery, a masculine 
 and harmonious voice ; and, though he did not gain 
 much reputation bv his * Body of Divinity,' which is 
 frequently sneered at, particularly by those who have 
 read it, yet in his sermons are strength of thought and 
 energy of language. The natural consequence was that 
 he was generally admired. ^Ir. Treat having preached 
 one of his best discourses to the congregation of his 
 father-in-law, in his usual unhappy manner, excited uni- 
 versal disgust ; and several nice judges waited on jNIr. 
 Willani, and begged that ^Ir. Treat, who was a worthy, 
 pioas man, it was true, but a wretched preacher, might 
 never be invited into his pulpit again. To this request 
 Mr. Willard made no reply ; but he desired his son-in- 
 law to lend him the discourse ; which, being left with 
 him, he delivered it without alteration to lus people a 
 few weeks atter. They ran to 3Ir. Willard and request- 
 ed a copy for the press. ' See the difference,' they 
 cried, ' between yourself and your son-in-law ; you have 
 preached a sermon on the same text as 3Ir. Treat's, but 
 whilst his was contemptible, yours is excellent.* As 
 is observed in a note, ' Mr. Willard, after producing the 
 sermon in the handwriting of 3Ir. Treat, might have 
 addressed these sage critics in the words of Phaedras, 
 
 ' En Mc declarat, quales sitis judices.' " * 
 
 Mr. Treat died of a stroke of the palsy, just alter th« 
 
 * Lib. V. Fab. 5. 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 47 
 
 memorable storm known as the Great Snow, which left 
 the ground around his house ,entu*ely bare, but heaped up 
 the snow in the road to an uncommon height. Through 
 this an arched way was dug, by which tiie Indians bore 
 his body to the grave/ 
 
 The reader will imagine us, all the while, steadily 
 traversing that extensive plain in a direction a little 
 north of east towai'd Nauset Beach, and reading under 
 our umbrellas as we sailed, while it blovved hard with 
 mingled mist and rain, as if we were approaching a fit 
 anniversary of Mr. Treat's funeral. We fancied tliat 
 it wa,s such a moor as that on wdiich somebody perished 
 in the snow, as is related in the '' Lights and Shadows 
 of Scottish Life." 
 
 The next minister settled here was the "Rev. Samuel 
 Osborn, who was born in Ireland, and educated at the 
 University of Dublin." He is said to have been " A 
 man of wisdom and virtue," and taught his people the 
 use of_peat, and the art of drying and preparing it, 
 which as they had scarcely any other fuel, was a great 
 blessing to them. He also introduced improvements in 
 agriculture. But, notwithstanding his many services, 
 as he embraced the religion of Arminius, some of his 
 flock became dissatisfied. At length, an ecclesiastical 
 council, consisting of ten ministers, with their churches, 
 sat upon him, and they, naturally enough, spoiled his 
 usefulness. The council convened at the desire of two 
 divine philosophers, — Joseph Doane and Nathaniel 
 Freeman. 
 
 In their report they say, " It appears to the council 
 that the Rev. Mr. Osborn hath, in his preaching to this 
 people, said, that what Christ did and suffered doth 
 nothing abate or diminish our obligation to obey the 
 
48 CAPE COD. 
 
 law of God, and that Christ's suffering and obedience 
 were for himself; both parts of which, we think, con- 
 tain dangerous error." 
 
 *' Also : ' It hath been said, and doth appear to this 
 council, that the Rev. Mr. Osborn, both in pubhc and 
 in private, asserted that there are no promises in the 
 Bible but what are conditional, which we think, also, 
 to be an error, and do say that there are promises which 
 are absolute and without any condition, — such as the 
 promise of a new^ heart, and that he will write his law 
 in our hearts.'" 
 
 " Also, they say, ' it hath been alleged, and doth appear 
 to us, that Mr. Osborn hath declared, that obedience is 
 a considerable cause of a person's justification, which, 
 we think, contains very dangerous error.' " 
 
 And many the like distinctions they made, such as 
 some of my readers, probably, are more familiar with 
 than I am. So, far in the East, among the Yezidis, or 
 Worshippers of the Devil, so-called, the Chaldaeans, and 
 others, according to the testimony of travellers, you 
 may still hear these remarkable disputations on doc- 
 trinal points going on. Osborn was, accordingly, dis- 
 missed, and he removed to Boston, where he kept school 
 for many years. But he was fully justified, methinks, 
 by his works in the peat-meadow ; one proof of which 
 is, that he lived to be between ninety and one hundred 
 years old. 
 
 The next minister was the Rev. Benjamin Webb, of 
 whom, though a neighboring clergyman pronounced him 
 " the best man and the best minister whom he ever 
 knew," yet the historian says, that, 
 
 " As he spent his days in the uniform discharge of 
 his duty (it reminds one of a country muster) and 
 
THE PLAINS OF NAUSET. 49 
 
 there were no shades to give relief to his character, not 
 much can be said of him. (Pity the Devil did not plant 
 a few shade-trees along his avenues.) His heart was 
 as pure as the new-fallen snow, which completely covers 
 every dark spot in a field ; his mind was as serene as 
 the sky in a mild evening in June, when the moon 
 shines without a cloud. Name any virtue, and that 
 virtue he practised; name any vice, and that vice he 
 shunned. But if peculiar qualities marked his char- 
 acter, they were his humility, his gentleness, and his 
 love of God. The people had long been taught by a 
 son of thunder (Mr. Treat) : in him they were in- 
 structed by a son of consolation, who sweetly allured 
 them to virtue by soft persuasion, and by exhibiting 
 the mercy of the Supreme Being ; for his thoughts 
 were so much in heaven, that they seldom descended 
 to the dismal regions below ; and though of the same 
 religious sentiments as Mr. Treat, yet his attention 
 was turned to those glad tidings of great joy which 
 a Saviour came to publish." 
 
 We were interested to hear that such a man had trod- 
 den the plains of Nauset. 
 
 Turning over further in our book, our eyes fell on the 
 name of the Rev. Jonathan Bascom, of Orleans : " Senex 
 emunctoe naris, doctus, et auctor elegantium verborum, 
 facetus, et dulcis festique sermonis." And, again, on 
 that of the Rev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis : " Vir humili.^, 
 mitis, blandus, advenarum hospes ; (there was need of 
 him there ;) suis commodis in terra non studens, recon- 
 ditis thesauris in coelo." An easy virtue that, there, for 
 methinks no inhabitant of Dennis could be very studious 
 about his earthly commodity, but must regard tlie bulk 
 of his treasures as in heaven. But probably the most 
 
 3 D 
 
50 CAPE COD. 
 
 just and pertinent character of all is that which appeal's 
 to be given to the Rev. Ephraim Briggs, of Chatham, 
 in the language of the later Romans, " Seip, sepoese, 
 sepoemese, wechekum,'" — which not being interpreted, 
 we know not what it means, though we have no doubt 
 it occurs somewhere in the Scriptures, probably in the 
 Apostle Eliot's Epistle to the Nipmucks. 
 
 Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. 
 They were, probably, the best men of their generation, 
 and they deserve that their biographies should till the 
 pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the 
 " glad tidings " of which they tell, and which, perchance, 
 they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than 
 this. 
 
 There was no better way to make the reader realize 
 how wide and peculiar that plain was, and how long 
 it took to traverse it, than by inserting these extracts 
 in the midst of my naiTative. 
 
IV. 
 THE BEACH. 
 
 At length we reached the seemingly retreating boun- 
 dary of the plain, and entered what had appeared at 
 a distance an upland marsh, but proved to be dry sand 
 covered with Beach-grass, the Bearberry, Bayberry, 
 Shrub-oaks, and Beach-plum, slightly ascending as we ap- 
 proached the shore ; then, crossing over a belt of sand on 
 which nothing grew, though the roar of the sea sounded 
 scarcely louder than before, and we were prepared to go 
 half a mile farther, we suddenly stood on the edge of a 
 bluff overlooking the Atlantic. Far below us was the 
 beach, from half a dozen to a dozen rods in width, with 
 a long line of breakers rushing to the strand. The sea 
 was exceedingly dark and stormy, the sky completely 
 overcast, the clouds still dropping rain, and the wind 
 seemed to blow not so much as the exciting cause, as 
 from sympathy with the already agitated ocean. The 
 waves broke on the bars at some distance from the shore, 
 and curving green or yellow as if over so many unseen 
 dams, ten or twelve feet high, like a thousand waterfalls, 
 rolled in foam to the sand. There was nothing but that 
 savage ocean between us and Europe. 
 
 Having got down the bank, and as close to the water 
 as we could, where the sand was tlie hardest, leaving the 
 
52 CAPE COD. 
 
 Nauset Lights behind us, we began to walk leisurely up 
 the beach, in a northwest direction, toward Province- 
 town, which was about twenty-five miles distant, still 
 sailing under our unabrellas with a strong aft wind, ad- 
 miring in silence, as we wn^Ved, the great force of the 
 ocean stream, — 
 
 TTOTafiolo fieya aOevos ^QKeavolo. 
 
 The white breakers were rushing to the shore ; the foam 
 ran up the sand, and then ran back as far as we could 
 see (and we imagined how much farther along the At- 
 lantic coast, before and behind us), as regularly, to com- 
 pare great things with small, as the master of a choir 
 beats time with his white wand ; and ever and anon a 
 higher wave caused us hastily to deviate from our path, 
 and we looked back on our tracks filled with water and 
 foam. The breakers looked like droves of a thousand 
 wild horses of Neptune, rushing to the shore, with their 
 white manes streaming far behind ; and when, at length, 
 the sun shone for a moment, their manes were rainbow- 
 tinted. Also, the long kelp-weed was tossed up from 
 time to time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in the 
 brine. 
 
 There was not a sail in sight, and we saw none that 
 day, — for they had all sought harbors in the late storm, 
 and had not been able to get out again ; and the only 
 human beings whom we saw on the beach for several 
 days, were one or two wreckers looking for drift-wood, 
 and fragments of wrecked vessels. After an easterly 
 storm in the spring, this beach is sometimes strewn with 
 eastern wood from one end to the other, which, as it 
 belongs to him who saves it, and the Cape Is nearly des- 
 titute of wood, is a Godsend to the inhabitants. Wo 
 
THE BEACH. 53 
 
 soon met one of these wreckers, — a regular Cape Cod 
 man, with whom we parleyed, with a bleached and 
 weather-beaten face, within whose wrinkles I distin- 
 guished no particular feature. It was like an old sail 
 endowed with life, — a hanging-cliff of weather-beaten 
 flesh, — like one of the clay bowlders which occurred in 
 that sand-bank. He had on a hat which had seen salt 
 water, and a coat of many pieces and colors, though it 
 was mainly the color of the beach, as if it had been 
 sanded. His variegated back — for his coat had many 
 patches, even between the shoulders — was a rich study 
 to us, when we had passed him and looked round. It 
 might have been dishonorable for him to have so many 
 scars behind, it is true, if he had not had many more 
 and more serious ones in front. He looked as if he 
 sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to com- 
 fort ; too grave to laugh, too tough to cry ; as indifferent 
 as a clam, — like a sea-clam with hat on and legs, that was 
 out walking the strand. He may have been one of the 
 Pilgrims, — Peregrine White, at least, — who has kept 
 on the back side of the Cape, and let the centuries go 
 by. He was looking for wrecks, old logs, water-logged 
 and covered with barnacles, or bits of boards and joists, 
 even chips which he drew out of the reach of the tide, 
 and stacked up to dry. When the log was too large to 
 carry far, he cut it up where the last wave had left it, or 
 rolling it a few feet, appropriated it by sticking two sticks 
 into the ground crosswise above it. Some rotten trunk, 
 which in Maine cumbers the ground, and is, perchance, 
 thrown into the water on purpose, is here thus carefully 
 picked up, split and dried, and husbanded. Before win- 
 ter the wrecker painfully carries these things up the bank 
 on his shoulders by a long diagonal slanting path made 
 
54 CAPE COD. 
 
 with a hoe in the sand, if there is no hollow at hand. Ton 
 mav see his hooked pike-staff always lying on the bank 
 ready for use. He is the true monarch of the beach, 
 whose " right there is none to dispute," and he is as 
 much identified with it as a beach-bird. 
 
 Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes Dalagen's 
 relation of tlie ways and usages of the Greenhinders, 
 and says, " Whoever tinds dritt-wooil. or the spoils of a 
 shipwreck on the strand, enjoys it as his own, though he 
 does not live there. But he must haul it ashore and lay 
 a stone upon it, as a token that some one has taken pos- 
 session of it, and this stone is the deed of security, for 
 DO other Greenlander will otfer to meddle with it altcr- 
 wards.'' Such is the instinctive law of nations. "We 
 have also this account of drift-wocK.1 in Crantz : *• As 
 he (the Founder of Nature) has denied this frigid rocky 
 region the growth of trees, he has bid the streams of the 
 Ocean to convey to its shores a great deal of wood, which 
 accordingly comes floi\ting thither, part without ice, but 
 the DEiost part along with it, and lodges itself between the 
 islands. Were it not for this, we Europeans should have 
 no woo^l to burn there, and the poor Greenlanders (who, 
 it is true, do not use wood, but train, for burning) would, 
 however, have no wood to i*oof their houses, to erect 
 their tents, as also to build their l>oats, and to shatt their 
 arrows, (yet there grew some small but crooked alders, 
 &c..) by which they must procm*e their maintenance, 
 clothing and train for warmth, light, mid cooking. Among 
 this wood are great trees torn up by the roots, which by 
 driving up and down for many years and rubbing on the 
 ice, are quite b;\re of branches and l>ai*k, imd corroded 
 with great wootl-worms. A small part of this drift- 
 wood are willows, alder i\nd birch trees, which come out 
 
THE BEACH. 55 
 
 of the bavs in the south (i. e. of Greenland) ; also large 
 trunks of aspen-trees, which must come from a greater 
 distance ; but the greatest part is pine and tir. We tind 
 also a good deal of a sort of wood tinely veined, with 
 few branches ; this I fancy is larch-wood, which likes to 
 decorate the sides of lofty, stony mountains. There is 
 also a solid, reddish wood, of a more agreeable fragrance 
 than the common fir, with visible cross-veins ; which I 
 take to be the same species as the beautiful silver-tii-s, or 
 zirbeL that have the smell of cedar, and grow on the 
 high Grison hills, and the Switzers wainscot their rooms 
 with them." The wrecker directed us to a slight depres- 
 sion, called Snow's Hollow, by which we ascended the 
 bank, — for elsewhere, if not difficult, it was inconvenient 
 to climb it on account of the sliding sand, which tilled 
 our shoes. 
 
 This sand-bank ^ the backbone of the Cape — rose 
 directly from the bfach to the height of a hundred feet or 
 more above the/^cean. It was with singular emotions 
 that we first stood upon it and discovered what a place 
 we had chosen to walk on. On our right, beneath us, 
 was the beach of smooth and gently-sloping sand, a 
 dozen rods in width ; next, the endless series of white 
 breakers ; further still, the light green water over tlie 
 bar, which runs the whole length of the forearm of the 
 Cape, and beyond this stretched the unwearied and 
 illimitable ocean. On our left, extending back from the 
 very edge of the bank^ was a perfect desert of shining 
 sand, from thirty to eighty rods in width, skirted in the 
 distance by small fand-hills fifteen or twenty feet high ; 
 between which, however, in some places, the sand pene- 
 trated as much farther. Next commenced the region of 
 vegetation, — a succession of small hills and valleys cov- 
 
56 CAFE Cv'^?. 
 
 ered with shrublvry, now glowing with the brightest 
 imaginable auuimn:U tints ; and bevond this were seen, 
 here and there, the wateins of the bay. Here, iu TTeli- 
 fleet, this pure saikI plateau, kno\>-n to sailors as the 
 Table Ljuuis ot* Eastlmm, on account of iis apjvanuuv, 
 as seen trvun the ocean, iuni because it caice made a pan 
 ot* that towi^ — tuU lilty rods iu width, and in many 
 places much mor^^ and soiuetinie:^ full one hundnni 
 and fittT feet above the ocean, — stretched away nonh- 
 waid from the southern boundary iitf' the town, without 
 a paiticle of Tegetation, — as kvel a]iiK>st as a table, — 
 for two and a luilf or three miles, or as far as the eye 
 couVl reach ; slightly rising towarvls the ocean, then 
 sto*.>ping to the beach, by as steep a slope as sand oooM 
 lie on. ainl a^ regular as a military engineer ooukl desire. 
 It w^ like the cscarjxxl r^ujviri of a stuixnidous tor- 
 tress, whvise glacis wajs the Wach, and whos^ chamj\iign 
 the txvan, — Fn>m its surt^'^ we overlooked the greater 
 j>an of the Cape, In short, we were travemng a desert, 
 with the view of an autumnal lasidsciipe of extra<>rviinary 
 l«ilUancy, a sort of Pn>mised Land, on the one liand, 
 and the ocean on the other. Yet, though the i>i\>>peci 
 was so extensive, and the cixmtry tor lih? mi\?t j>art des- 
 lituie ot* trees, a house was rarely visible, — \\ e never 
 saw c«ie fivun the beach, — and the solitude ^~as that ot* the 
 ocean and the desert combiiK>d. A thousand men couM 
 iK« have seriously interrupted it, but mtmild baxe been 
 k>st in the va?UK>si> of the sceneir as their footsteps iu 
 the sand. 
 
 The whole c\>ast is so free from rooks, that we saw 
 but one or two !l>r more than twenty miles. The saiui 
 ^-^ soft like the beach, and trying to the eyets, whew the 
 sun shone. A tew jules of thrift-wood, which s^^me wreck- 
 
THE r>KACU. 57 
 
 ers had ^viinfuUy bixnight up the b:u\k and stacked up 
 tliort^ to dry, being the only objeet.-* in the desert, Kx^ked 
 indetinitely hirge and distant, even like wigwams, though, 
 when we stixxi near them, they proved to be insigniiieant 
 little *' jags " of wood. 
 
 For sixteen miles, ciMumenoing at the Nauset Lights, 
 the bank held its height, tiiough farther north it was r.ot. 
 so level as here, but interrupted by slight hollows, and 
 the patches of Beach-grass and Bay berry frequently crept 
 into tlie sand to its edgt\ There are some pages entitled 
 ** A Dec?criptiou of the Eastern C\\ist of the County of 
 Barnstable," printed in 180*2, pointing out the sjuns on 
 Avhich the Trustees of the Humane Society have erected 
 hut5 called Charity or Humane Houses, **and other 
 places where shipwrecked seamen may look for shelter.** 
 Two thousiuul copies of this were dis[>erstHl. that every 
 vessel which fn\|ueiued this coast might be provided 
 with one. I have read this Shipwrecked Seaman's Man- 
 ual with a luelancholy kind of intoivst, — tor the sound 
 of the surf, or, you might say, the moaning of the sea, is 
 heaixl all thixnigh it, as if its author were the sole sur^- 
 vivor of a shipw reck himself. Of this part o\' the cv^ast 
 he Si\ys: **This highland appreviches the ocean with 
 steep and lofty banks, which it is extremely ditliculi to 
 climb, especially in a storm. In violent tempests, during 
 very high tides, the sea breaks against the foot of them, 
 rendering it then unsiife to walk on the strand which lies 
 l>etween them and the iKvan. Should tlie seaman suc- 
 ceed in his attempt to ascend them, he must forbear to 
 penetrate into tlie country, as houses are genen\lly so 
 remote that tiiey would escape his re\<earch during the 
 night ; he must jviss on to the valleys by w hich the 
 banks are inter-ecied. These valleys, which the inhab* 
 
08 CAFE COP. 
 
 itants call Hollow;?, run at right angles with the shore, 
 and in the middle or lowest part of them a road leads 
 from the dwelling-houses to the sea." By the word 
 road must not always be understood a visible cart- 
 track. 
 
 There were these two roads for us, — an upper and 
 y'* a lower one, — the bank and the beach ; both stretching 
 j twenty-eight miles northwest, from Xauset Harbor to 
 Race Point, without a single opening into the beach, 
 and with hanlly a serious interruption of the desert. If 
 you were to ford the narrow and shallow inlet at Xauset 
 Harbor, where there is not more than eight feet of water 
 on the bar at full sea, you might walk ten or twelve 
 miles farther, which would make a beach forty miles 
 long, — and the bank nrvd beach, on the east side of 
 ^Nantucket, are but a coiuinuation of these. I was com- 
 paratively satisfied. There I had got the Cape under 
 me, as much as if I were riding it bare-backed. It was 
 not as on the map, or seen from the stage-coach ; but 
 there I found it all out of doors, huge and reiil, Cape 
 Ct>d ! as it cannot be represented on a map, color it as 
 you will ; the thing itselt^ than which there is nothing 
 more like it, no truer picture or account ; which you can- 
 not go farther and see. I cannot remember what I 
 thought before that it was. They compionly celebrate 
 those beaches only which have a holel on them, not 
 those which have a humane house alone. But I wisiitd 
 to see that seashore where man's \v3Mrks are wrecks ; to 
 put up at the true xVtlantic House; where the ocean is 
 land-loi\l as well as sea-lonl, and comes ashore without a 
 wharf for the landing ; where the crumbling land is the 
 only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all 
 j'ou can say of it. 
 
THE BEACH. 59 
 
 TS^e walked on quite at our leisure, now on the beach, 
 now on the bank, — sitting from time to time on some 
 damp log, maple or yellow biivh, which had long fol- 
 lowed the sea^, but had now at last settled on land ; or 
 under the lee of a sand-hill, on the bank, that we might 
 gaze steadily on the ocean. The bank was so steep, 
 that, where there was no danger of its caving, we sat on 
 its edge as on a bench. It was dithcult tor ns landsmen 
 to look out over the ocean without imagining land in the 
 horizon ; yet the clouds appeared to hang low over it, 
 and rest on the water as tliey never do on the land, per- 
 ha[)s on account of the great distance to which we saw. 
 The sand was not witiiout advantage, for, though it 
 was " heavy " walking in it, it was sotl to the feet ; and, 
 notwithstanding that it had been raining nearly two dav-v 
 when it held up for half an hour, the sides of the sand- 
 hills, which were porous and sliding, afforded a dry seat. 
 All the aspects of this desert are beautiful, whether you ^^ 
 behold it in. fair weather or foul, or when the sun is just 
 breaking out after a storm, and shining on its moist sur- 
 face in the distance, it is so whitts and pure, and level, 
 and eaeli slight inequality and track is so distinctly 
 revealed ; and when your eyes slide otf this, they tall 
 on the ocean. In sunnner the mackerel gulls — which j 
 here have their nests among the neighboring sand-hills / 
 — pursue the traveller anxiously, now and then diving 
 close to his head with a squeak, and he may see them, , 
 like swallows, chase some crow which has been feeding 
 on the beach, almost across the Cape. 
 
 Though tor some time I have not spoken of the roar- 
 ing of the breakers, and the ceaseless tlux and ri'thix of 
 the waves, yet they did not tor a moment cease to dash 
 and roar, with such a tumult that, if you had been there, 
 
CO CAFE COR 
 
 Tou cowW jv*Ttt>lT have beanl mv voice tin while ; and 
 they arv dashing and nxirinir this \-ory moiueul. tln^^tigh 
 it may be with lesis din ainl vioJeiuv, tv»r there the sea 
 never rests« We wei^ wholly ak^carhed by this spec- 
 tacle and tamult. ami like Chr\~ses, though in a different 
 mood from him, we >«~alked silent along the shcoe of ths 
 resounding sea. 
 
 I put in a iinie Gieek ik»w and iheii, partly because 
 it sounds so much like the ocean, — ihoiigh I doubt it 
 Homers Jf^iiierniMeaM Sea ever sournied so loud ;V5 
 this. 
 
 The attentioa of thc^e who fn?quent the camp-meet- 
 rings at Eastham is said to be divided between the 
 pieflM!hing ot* the Meiho^iists and the preaching of the 
 billows on the hackskie ot* the Caj^, for t hey all j neam 
 over here in the counge of their sta y. I trust that in 
 this case the louviest \-wce carries it. TTiih what effect 
 may we suppose the ocean to say. ~ My hearei^ ! ~ to the 
 multitude on the bank! On that side some Jc^n N. 
 MaJ£t ; on this, the Reverend Polu phloisboi os Thci- 
 
 There was but little weed cast up here, and that kelp 
 chieffy, there being scareely a reck tor reckweed to ad- 
 here to. Who has iK»t had a vision frem some vessel's 
 deck, when he had siiU his land-tes on, ot' this great 
 brewn apnoo* drifting hah" upright, and quite submejged 
 thre>ugh the green water, claspng a stosie or a de^t^p-sea 
 mussel in its unearthly fingers ? I have seen it cairy- 
 
 «nd, itt tli« oe<«tt's S«i^ltt ■KMd«^ aa «raHVMr y«jwmim to di» ev*. 
 
THE BK,\Cn. Gl 
 
 ing a stone lijvlf :v< largo ;v< niv hon^l. We ^^ome times 
 watche^i a n\aiis: ot' this o:ible-like wet\i. as ii \>-as tosstnl 
 up on the erest of a bn\^er, \\-;uting with interest to set.* 
 it eome in. as if there >v:v< some treasure buovevi np by 
 it ; but we wejw alwaj^ surprised and disap{x>inted at the 
 insignificance of the niiiss which had :\ttn\oteii us. As 
 we locked out over the water, the smallest objev'tii tlivit- 
 ing an it appeiirevi indefinitely largt\ wo N\ere sc im- 
 pressed by the T:v<tju\ss of the ocean, aiui each ore lK>re 
 so large a projxu-tion to the whole ixvan. which we saw 
 TTe were so otUMi disiip^xMnuni in the size of such thing* 
 as caine ashore, the ridiculous bit^ of w\»i or weeil, with 
 which the ocean laK>nHi, that we Ix'gsui to doubt whether 
 the Atlantic itself would Ix^ir a g^till closer inspe^nion, 
 suKi would ix>t tuni out to be but a small jx»nd, if it. 
 should coaie ashore to us. y This keJp. oar-weed, tangle, 
 deTirs-apn>n, sole-leather, or ribbon-weed. — as various 
 species are called. — apjxvired to us a singularly marine 
 and fabulous pivxiuct, a lit invention for Neptune to 
 adorn his car with, or a fre;;\k of Proteus. All tliat 
 is told of the sea has a fobulous sound to an inhabitant 
 of the land. :vnd ;ill its pivxiucts have a cen^iin fabulous 
 quality, as if they belongtxi to another planet, fivm 
 sea-weeii to a sailor's yarn, or a tish-story. In this ele- 
 ment the animal and vegetable kingxioms miH?t and are 
 strsmgx'ly mingled. One species of kelp, according to 
 Bory St, Vincent, has a stem fifteen hundred feet long, 
 and hence is the longest vegetable known, and a brig's 
 cjvw spent two days to no puqx^se collecting the trunks 
 of another kind cast ashore on the Falkland Islands, 
 mistjiking it for drift-wooil. (See Hj»rvey on Alffte.) 
 This s|>eoies kx^ked almost txlible : at IciVj^t, I thought tlial 
 ^ I were starving I would try it. One sailor told me 
 
62 CAPE COD. 
 
 that the cows ate it. It cut like cheese ; for I took the 
 earliest opportunity to sit down and deliberately whittle 
 up a fathom or two of it, that I might become more 
 intimately acquainted with it, see how it cut, and if it 
 were hollow all the way through. The blade looked 
 like a broad belt, whose edges had been quilled, or as if 
 stretched by hammering, and it was also twisted spirally. 
 The extremity was generally worn and ragged from the 
 lashing of the waves. A piece of the stem which I 
 carried home shrunk to one quarter of its size a week 
 afterward, and was completely covered with crystals of 
 salt like frost. The reader will excuse my greenness, — 
 though it is not sea-greenness, like his, perchance, — for 
 I live by a river shore, where this weed does not wash 
 up. When we consider in what meadows it grew, and 
 how it was raked, and in what kind of hay weather 
 got in or out, we may well be curious about it. One 
 who is weather-wise has given the following account 
 of the matter. 
 
 " When descends on the Atlantic 
 The gigantic 
 Storm-wind of the equinox, 
 Landward in his wrath he scourges 
 
 The toiling surges, 
 Laden with sea-weed from the rocks. 
 
 •' From Bermuda's reefs, from edges 
 Of sunken ledges, 
 On some far-off bright Azore; 
 From Bahama and the dashing, 
 Silver-flashing 
 Surges of San Salvador; 
 
 "From the trembling surf that buries 
 The Orkneyan Skerries, 
 Answering tlie hoarse Hebrides; 
 And from wrecks and ships and drifting 
 Spars, uplifting 
 On the desolate rainy seas; 
 
THE BEACH. 63 
 
 "Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
 On the shifting 
 Currents of the restless main." 
 
 But he was not thinking of this shore, when he add- 
 ed:— 
 
 " Till, in sheltered coves and reaches 
 Of sandy beaches. 
 All have found repose again." 
 
 TJiese weeds were the symbols of those grotesque and 
 fabulous thoughts which have not yet got into the shel- 
 tered coves of literature. 
 
 " Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
 On the shifting 
 Currents of tlie restless heart," 
 And not yet " in books recorded 
 They, like hoarded 
 Household words, no more depart." 
 
 The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea-jellies, 
 which the wreckers called Sun-squall, one of the lowest 
 forms of animal life, some white, some wine-colored, and 
 a foot in diameter. I at first thought that they were 
 a tender part of some marine monster, which the storm 
 or some other foe had mangled. What right has the 
 sea to bear in its bosom such tender things as sea-jellies 
 and mosses, when it has such a boisterous shore, that 
 the stoutest fabrics are wrecked against it? Strange 
 that it should undertake to dandle such delicate children 
 in its arm. I did not at first recognize these for the 
 same which I had formerly seen in myriads in Boston 
 Harbor, rising, with a waving motion, to the surface, 
 as if to meet the sun, and discoloring the waters far and 
 wide, so that I seemed to be sailing through a mere sun- 
 fish soup. They say that when you endeavor to take 
 one up, it will spill out the other side of your hand hke 
 
64 CAPE COD. 
 
 quicksilver. Before the land rose out of the ocean, and 
 became dry land, chaos reigned ; and between high and 
 low water mark, where she is partially disrobed and ris- 
 ing, a sort of chaos reigns still, which only anomalous 
 creatures can inhabit. Mackerel-gulls were all the while 
 flying over our heads and amid the breakers, sometimes 
 two white ones pursuing a black one ; quite at home in 
 the storm, though they are as delicate organizations as 
 sea-jellies and mosses ; and we saw that they were adapt- 
 ed to their circumstances rather by their spirits than their 
 bodies. Theirs must be an essentially wilder, that is, 
 less human, nature than that of larks and robins. Their 
 note was like the sound of some vibrating metal, and 
 harmonized well with the scenery and the roar of the 
 surf, as if one had rudely touched the strings of the 
 lyre, which ever lies on the shore ; a ragged shred of 
 ocean music tossed aloft on the spray. But if I were 
 required to name a sound, the remembrance of which 
 most perfectly revives the impression wliich the beach 
 has made, it would be the dreary peep of the piping 
 plover ( Charadrius melodus) which haunts there. Their 
 voices, too, are heard as a fugacious part in the dirge 
 which is ever played along the shore for those mariners 
 who have been lost in the deep since first it was created. 
 But through all this dreariness we seemed to have a 
 pure and unqualified strain of eternal melody, for always 
 the same strain which is a dirge to one household is a 
 morning song of rejoicing to another. 
 
 A remarkable method of catching gulls, derived from 
 the Indians, was practised in Wellfleet in 1794. " The 
 Gull House," it is said, " is built with crotchets, fixed in 
 the ground on the beach," poles being stretched across 
 for the top, and the sides made close with stakes and 
 
THE BEACH. 65 
 
 sea-weed. " The poles on the top are covered with lean 
 whale. The man being placed within, is not discovered 
 by the fowls, and while they are contending for and 
 eating the flesh, he draws them in, one by one, between 
 the poles, until he has collected forty or fifty." Hence, 
 perchance, a man is said to be gulled, when he is taken 
 in. We read that one "sort of gulls is called by tlie 
 Dutch mallemucke, i. e. the foolish fly, because they fall 
 upon a whale as eagerly as a fly, and, indeed, all gulls ^ 
 are foolishly bold and easy to be shot. The Norwegians 
 call this bird havhest, sea-horse (and the English trans- 
 lator says, it is probably what we call boobies). If they 
 have eaten too much, they throw it up, and eat it again 
 till they are tired. It is this habit in the gulls of part- 
 ing with their property [disgorging the contents of their 
 stomachs to the skuas], which has given rise to the 
 terms gull, guUer, and gulling, among men." "We also 
 read that they used to kill small birds which roosted on 
 the beach at night, by making a fire with hog's lard in 
 a frying-pan. The Indians probably used pine torches ; 
 the birds flocked to the light, and were knocked down 
 with a stick. We noticed holes dug near the edge of 
 the bank, where gunners conceal themselves to shoot 
 the large gulls which coast up and down a-fishing, for/ 
 these are considered good to eat. 
 
 We found some large clams, of the species Mactra 
 soUdissima, which the storm had torn up from the bot- 
 tom, and cast ashore. I selected one of the largest, 
 about six inches in length, and carried it along, thinking 
 to try an experiment on it. We soon after met a 
 wrecker, with a grapple and a rope, who said that he 
 was looking for tow cloth, which had made part of tho 
 cargo of the ship Franklin, which was wrecked here in ^ 
 
66 CAPE COD. 
 
 the spring, at which time nine or ten lives were lost. 
 The reader may remember this wreck, from the circum- 
 stance that a letter was found in the capta^n's^valise, 
 which washed ashore, directing him to wreck the vessel 
 before he got to America, and from the trial which took 
 place in consequence. The wrecker said that tow cloth 
 was still cast up in such storms as this. He also told 
 us that the clam which I had was the sea-clam, orjien, 
 and was good to eat. We took our nooning under a 
 sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary little 
 hollow, on the top of the bank, while it alternately 
 rained and shined. There, having reduced some damp 
 drift-wood, which I had picked up on the shore, to shav- 
 ings with my knife, I kindled a fire with a match and 
 some paper, and cooked my clam on the embers for 
 my dinner; for breakfast was commonly the only meal 
 which I took in a house on this excursion. When 
 the clam was done, one valve held the meat and the 
 other the liquor. Though it was very tough, I found 
 it sweet and savory, and ate the whole with a relish. 
 Indeed, with the addition of a cracker or two, it would 
 have been a bountiful dinner. I noticed that the shells 
 were such as I had seen in the sugar-kit at home. 
 Tied to a stick, they formerly made the Indian's hoe 
 hereabouts. 
 
 At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had had two 
 or three rainbows over the sea, the showers ceased, and 
 the heavens gradually cleared up, though the wind still 
 blowed as hard and the breakers ran as high as be- 
 fore. Keeping on, we soon after came to a Charity- 
 house, which we looked into to see how the shipwrecked 
 mariner might fare. Far away in some desolate hollow 
 by the sea-side, just within the bank, stands a lon^l^ 
 
THE BEACH. 67 
 
 building on piles driven Into the sand, with a slight' 
 nail put through the staple, which a freezing man can 
 bend, with some straw, perchance, on the floor on which 
 he may lie, or which he may bum in the fireplace 
 to keep him alive. Perhaps this hut has never been 
 required to shelter a shipwrecked man, and the benevo- 
 lent person who promised to inspect it annually, to see 
 that the straw and matches are here, and that the boards 
 will keep off the wind, has grown remiss and thinks 
 that storms and shipwrecks are over; and this very 
 night a perishing crew may pry open its door with their 
 numbed fingers and leave half their number dead here 
 by morning. When I thought what must be the con- 
 dition of the families which alone would ever occupy 
 or had occupied them, what must have been the tragedy 
 of the winter evenings spent by human beings around 
 their hearths, these houses, though they were meant for 
 human dwellings, did not look cheerful to me. They 
 appeared but a stage to the grave. The gulls flew 
 around and screamed over them ; the roar of the ocean 
 in storms, and the lapse of its waves in calms, alone 
 resounds through them, all dark and empty within, year 
 in year out, except, perchance, on one memorable night. 
 Houses of entertainment for shipwrecked men ! What 
 kind of sailor's homes were they ? 
 
 " Each hut," says the author of the " Description of 
 the Eastern Coast of the County of Barnstable," " stands 
 on piles, is eight feet long, eight feet wide, and seven 
 feet high ; a sliding door is on the south, a sliding 
 shutter on the west, and a pole, rising fifteen feet above 
 the top of the building, on the east. Within it is sup- 
 plied either with straw or hay, and is further accommo- 
 dated with a bench." They have varied Httle from this 
 
68 CAPE COD. 
 
 model now. There are similar huts at the Isle of 
 Sable and Anticosti, on the north, and how far south 
 along the coast I know not. It is pathetic to read the 
 minute and faithful directions which he gives to sea- 
 men who may be wrecked on this coast, to guide them 
 to the nearest Charity-house, or other shelter, for, as 
 is said of Eastham, though there are a few houses with- 
 in a mile of the shore, yet " in a snow-storm, which 
 rages here with excessive fury, it would be almost 
 impossible to discover them either by night or by day." 
 You hear their imaginary guide thus marshalling, cheer- 
 ing, directing the dripping, shivering, freezing troop 
 along; "at the entrance of this valley the sand has 
 gathered, so that at present a little climbing is neces- 
 sary. Passing over several fences and taking heed 
 not to enter the wood on the right hand, at the distance 
 of three quarters of a mile a house is to be found. 
 This house stands on the south side of the road, and 
 not far from it on the south is Pamet river, which runs 
 from east to west through a body of salt marsh." To 
 him cast ashore in Eastham, he says, " The meeting- 
 house is without a steeple, but it may be distinguished 
 from the dwelling-houses near it by its situation, which 
 is between two small groves of locusts, one on the 
 south and one on the north, — that on the south being 
 three times as long as the other. About a mile and 
 a quarter from the hut, west by north, appear the 
 top and arms of a windmill." And so on for many 
 pages. 
 
 We did not learn whether these houses had been the 
 
 \ means of saving any lives, though this writer says, of 
 
 \ one erected at the head of Stout's Creek, in Truro, that 
 
 " it was built in an improper manner, having a chimney 
 
THE BEACH. 69 
 
 in it ; and was placed on a spot where no beach-grass 
 grew. The strong winds blew the sand from its foun- 
 dation, and the weight of the chimney brought it to the 
 ground ; so that in January of the present year [1802] 
 it was entirely demolished. This event took place about 
 six weeks before the Brutus was cast away. If it had 
 remained, it is probable that the whole of the unfortunate 
 crew of that ship would have been saved, as they gained 
 the shore a few rods only from the spot where the hut 
 had stood." 
 
 This " Charity-house," as the wrecker called it, this 
 " Humane house," as some call it, that is, the one to 
 which we first came, had neither window nor sliding 
 shutter, nor clapboards, nor paint. As we have said, 
 there was a rusty nail put through the staple. However, 
 as we wished to get an idea of a Humane house, and we 
 hoped that we should never have a better opportunity, 
 we put our eyes, by turns, to a knot-hole in the door, 
 and, after long looking, without seeing, into the dark, — 
 not knowing how many shipwrecked men's bones we 
 might see at last, looking with the eye of faith, knowing 
 that, though to him that knocketh it may not always be 
 opened, yet to him that looketh long enough through a 
 knot-hole the inside shall be visible, — for we had had 
 some practice at looking inward, — by steadily keeping 
 our other ball covered from the light meanwhile, putting 
 the outward world behind us, ocean and land, and the 
 beach, — till the pupil became enlarged and collected the 
 rays of light that were wandering in that dark (for the 
 pupil shall be enlarged by looking ; there never was so 
 dark a night but a faithful and patient eye, however 
 small, might at last prevail over it), — after all this, I 
 say, things began to take shape to our vision, — if we 
 
70 CAPE COD. 
 
 may use this expression where there was nothing but 
 emptiness, — and we obtained the long-wished-tbr in- 
 sight. Though we thought at first that it was a hope- 
 less case, after several minutes' steady exercise of the 
 divine faculty, our prospects began decidedly to brighten, 
 and we were ready to exclaim with the bUnd bard of 
 " Paradise Lost and Regained," — 
 
 " Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first born, 
 Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam, 
 May I express thee unblamed? " 
 
 A little longer, and a chimney rushed red on our sight 
 In short, when our vision had grown familiar with the 
 darkness, we discovered that there were some stones and 
 some loose wads of wool on the floor, and an empty fire- 
 place at the further end ; but it was not supphed with 
 matches, or straw, or hay, that we could see, nor " ac- 
 commodated with a bench." Indeed, it was the wreck 
 of all cosmical beauty there within. 
 
 Turning our backs on the outward world, we thus 
 looked through the knot-hole into the Humane house, 
 into the very bowels of mercy ; and for bread we found 
 a stone. It was literally a great cry (of sea-mews out- 
 side), and a little wool. However, we were glad to sit 
 outside, under the lee of the Humane house, to escape 
 the piercing wind ; and there we thought how cold is 
 charity ! how inhumane humanity ! This, then, is what 
 charity hides ! Virtues antique and far away with ever 
 a rusty nail over the latch ; and very difficult to keep in 
 repair, withal, it is so uncertain whether any will ever 
 gain the beach near you. So we shivered round about, 
 not being able to get into it, ever and anon looking 
 through the knot-hole into that night without a star, until 
 we concluded that it was not a humane house at all, but 
 
TEE BEACH. 71 
 
 a sea-side box, now shut up, belonging to some of the 
 family of Night or Chaos, where they spent their sum- 
 mers by the sea, for the sake of the sea-breeze, and that 
 it was not proper for us to be piying into their concerns. 
 My companion had declared before this that I had not 
 a particle of sentiment, in rather absolute terms, to my 
 astonishment ; but I suspect he meant that my legs did 
 not ache just then, though I am not wholly a stranger to 
 that sentiment. ,But I did no t mtead this^or a senti- 
 mental journey/ 
 
V. 
 
 THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 
 
 Having walked about eight miles since we struck the 
 beach, and passed the boundary between Wellfleet and 
 Truro, a stone post in the sand, — for even this sand 
 comes under the jurisdiction of one town or another, — 
 we turned inland ov^er barren hills and valleys, whither 
 the sea, for some reason, did not follow us, and, tracing 
 up a Hollow, discovered two or three sober-looking 
 houses within half a mile, uncommonly near the eastern 
 coast. Their garrets were apparently so full of cham- 
 bers, that their roofs could hardly lie down straight, and 
 we did not doubt that there was room for us there. 
 Houses near the sea are generally low and broad. 
 These were a story and a half high ; but if you merely- 
 counted the windows in their gable-ends, you would 
 think that there were many stories more, or, at any rate, 
 that the half-story was the only one thought worthy of 
 being illustrated. The great number of windows in the 
 ends of the houses, and their irregularity in size and 
 position, here and elsewhere on the Cape, struck us 
 agreeably, — as if each of the various occupants who 
 had their cunahida behind had punched a hole where 
 his necessities requii;;ed it, and, according to his size and 
 stature, without yegard to outside effect. There were 
 / 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 73 
 
 windows for the grown folks, and windows for the chil- 
 dren, — three or four apiece; as a certain man had a 
 large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat, and another 
 smaller one fjn* the kitten. Sometimes they were so low 
 under the eaves that I thought they must have perfo- 
 rated the plate beam for another apartment, and I noticed 
 some which were triangular, to fit that part more exactly. 
 The ends of the houses had thus as many muzzles as a 
 revolver, and, if the inhabitants have the same habit of 
 staring out the windows that some of our neighbors have, 
 a traveller must stand a small chance with them. 
 
 Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on 
 the Cape looked more comfortable, as well as pictu- 
 resque, than the modern and more pretending ones, which 
 were less in harmony with the scenery, and less firmly 
 planted. 
 
 These houses were on the shores of a chain of ponds, 
 seven in number, the source of a small stream called 
 Herring River, which empties into the Bay. There are 
 many Herring Rivers on the Cape ; they will, perhaps, 
 be more numerous than herrings soon. We knocked at 
 the door of the first house, but its inhabitants were all 
 gone away. In the mean while, we saw the occupants 
 of the next one looking out the window at us, and 
 before we reached it an old woman came out and fas- 
 tened the door of her bulkhead, and went in again. 
 Nevertheless, we did not hesitate to knock at her dooi-, 
 when a grizzly-looking man appeared, whom we took to 
 be sixty or seventy years old. He, asked us, at first, 
 suspiciously, where we were from, ^d what our business 
 was ; to which we returned plain answers. 
 ^ " How far is Concord from Boston ? " he inquired. ^1 w 
 
 " Twenty miles by railroad." ^' 
 
 4 
 
74 CAPE COD. 
 
 " Twenty miles by nulroad," he repeated. 
 
 " Did n't you ever hear of Concord of Revolutionary 
 fame ? " 
 
 '' Did n't I ever hear of Concord ? AVliy, I heard the 
 
 ,' guns fire at the battle of Bunker Hill. [They hear the 
 
 ' sound of heavy cannon across the Bay.] I am almost 
 
 ninety; I am eighty-eight year old. I was fourteen 
 
 year old at the time of Concord Fight, — and where were 
 
 you then ? " 
 
 We were obliged to confess that we were not in the 
 fight. 
 
 " Well, walk in, we '11 leave it to the women," said he. 
 
 So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an old 
 X woman taking our hats and bundles, and the old man 
 continued, drawing up to the large, old-fashioned fire- 
 place, — 
 
 '' I am a poor good-for-nothing crittur, as Isaiah says ; 
 I am all broken down this year. I am under petticoat 
 government here." 
 
 The family consisted of the old man, his wife, and his 
 daughter, who appeared nearly as old as her mother, 
 a fool, her son (a brutish-looking, middle-aged man, with 
 a prominent lower face, who was standing by the hearth 
 when we entered, but immediately went out), and a Httle 
 boy of ten. 
 
 While my companion talked with the women, I talked 
 with the old man. They said that he was old and fool- 
 ish, but he was evidently too knowing tor them. 
 
 " These women," said he to me, " are both of them 
 poor good-for-nothing critturs. This one is my wife. I 
 married her sixty-four years ago. She is eighty-four 
 years old, and as deiif as an adder, and the other is not 
 much better." 
 
THF WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 75 
 
 He thought well of the Bible, or at least he spole 
 well, and did not think ill, of it, for that would not have 
 been prudent for a man of his age. He said that ho 
 had read it attentively for many years, and he had mueh 
 of it at his tongue's end. He seemed deeply impressed 
 with a sense of his own nothingness, and would repeat- 
 edly exclaim, — 
 
 " I am a nothing. What I gather from my Bible ia 
 just this: that man is a poor good-for-nothing crittur, 
 and everything is just as God sees fit and disposes." 
 
 " May I ask your name ? " I said. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " I am not ashamed to tell m^ 
 
 name. My name is . My great-grandfather came 
 
 over from England and settled here." 
 
 He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had acquired 
 a competency in that business, and had sons still engaged 
 in it. 
 
 Nearly all the oyster shops and stands in Massachu- 
 setts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of 
 Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billings- 
 gate from the oysters having been formerly planted there ; 
 but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. 
 Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground 
 frost, the carcasses of black-fish, kept to rot in the har- 
 bor, and the like, but the most common account of the 
 matter is, — and I find that a similar superstition with 
 regard to the disappearance of fishes exists almost every- 
 where, — that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the 
 neighboring towns about the right tos gather them, yel- 
 low specks appeared in them, and Providence caused 
 them to disappear. A few years ago sixty thousand 
 bushels were annually brought frum the South and 
 planted in the harbor of WdUtleet till they attained "the 
 
76 CAPE COD. 
 
 proper relish of Billingsgate '' ; but now tber are im- 
 ported coramonh' tiiU-grown, and biid down near their 
 markets, at Boston and elsewhere, where the water, 
 being a mixture of salt and fresh, suits them better. 
 The business was said to be still good and improving. 
 
 The old man said that the ovsters were Hable to freeze 
 in the winter, if planted too high ; but if it were not *• so 
 cold as to strain their eyes" they were not injured. 
 The inhabitants of New Brunswick have noticed that 
 *• ice will not form over an oyster-bed. unless the cold is 
 very intense indeed, and when the bays are frozen over 
 the oyster-beds ai'e easily discovered by the water above 
 them remaining unfrozen, or as the French residents 
 say. degek.'' Our host s;ud that they kept them in cel- 
 lars all winter. 
 
 *• Without anytliing to eat or drink ? '' I asked. 
 
 *• Without anything to eat or drink," he answered. 
 
 *• Can the oysters move ? " 
 
 " Just as much as my shoe." 
 
 But when I caught him saying that they ** bedded 
 themselves down in the sand, flat side up, round side 
 down," I told him that my shoe could not do that, with- 
 out the aid of my foot in it ; at which he said that they 
 merely settled down as they grew ; if put down in a 
 squjire they would be found so : but the clam could 
 move quite fast. I have since been told by oystermen 
 of Long Island, where the oyster is still indigenous and 
 abundant, that they are found in large masses attached 
 to the parent in their midst, and are so taken up with 
 their tongs ; in which case, they say. the age of the 
 young proves that there could have been no motion for 
 live or six years at least. And Buckland in his Curiosi- 
 ties ot' Naiural History (page bO) s;iys : " An oyster 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 77 
 
 who has once taken up his position and fixed liimself 
 v,\\en quite young, can never make a change. Ovsters, 
 nevenheless, that have not fixed themselves, but remain 
 loose at the bottom of the sea, have the power of loco- 
 motion ; thej open their shells to their fullest extent, 
 and then suddenly contracting them, the expulsion of 
 the water forwards gives a motion backwards. A fish- 
 erman at Guernsey told me that he had frequently seen 
 oysters moving in this way.'' 
 
 Some still entertain the question " whether the oys- 
 ter was indigenous in Massachusetts Bay," and whether 
 TVelltleet harbor was a '* natural habitat " of this fish ; 
 but. to say nothing of the testimony of old oystermen, 
 which, I think, is quite conclusive, though the na- 
 tive oyster may now be extinct there, I saw that tlieii 
 shells, opened by the Indians, were strewn all over the 
 Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at first thickly settled by 
 Indians on account of the abundance of these and other 
 fish. We saw many traces of their occupancy after this, 
 in Truro, near Great Hollow, and at High-Head, near 
 East Harbor River, — oysters, clams, cockles, and other 
 shells, mingled with ashes and the bones of deer and 
 other quadrupeds. I picked up half a dozen aiTow-heads, 
 and in an hour or two could have filled my pockets 
 with them. The Indians Hved about the edges of the 
 swamps, then probably in some instances ponds, for 
 shelter and water. Moreover, Champlain in the edition 
 of his "Voyages" printed in 1613, says that in the 
 year 1606 he and Poitrincourt explored a harbor (Barn- 
 stable Harbor ?) in the southerly part of what is now called 
 Massachusetts Bay, in latitude 42°, about five leagues 
 south, one point west of Cap Blatic (Cape Cod), and 
 there they found many good oysters, and they named it 
 
78 CAPE COD. 
 
 ^^le Port aux Haistres'' (Oyster Harbor). In one edi- 
 tion of his map (1632), the '"i?. aux Escailles^^ is drawn 
 emptying into the same part of: the bay, and on the 
 map ^^ Novi Belgii" in Ogilby's America (1670), the 
 words " Port aux Huistres " are placed against the 
 same place. Also William Wood, who lefl New Eng- 
 land in 1633, speaks, in his "New England's Pros- 
 pect," published in 1634, of "a great oyster-bank" 
 in Charles River, and of another in the Mistick, each 
 of which obstructed the navigation of its river. " The 
 oysters," says he, "be great ones in form of a shoe- 
 horn ; some be a foot long ; these breed on certain 
 banks that iire bare every spring tide. This fish without 
 the shell is so big, that it must admit of a division before 
 you can well get it into your mouth." Oysters are still 
 found there. (Also, see Thomas Morton's New English 
 Canaan, page 90.) 
 
 Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, was not 
 easily obtained ; it was raked up, but never on the At- 
 lantic side, only cast ashore there in small quantities in 
 storms. The fi^herman sometimes wades in water sev- 
 eral feet deep, and thrusts a pointed stick into the sand 
 before him. When this enters between the valves of 
 a clam, he closes them on it, and is drawn out. It has 
 been known to catch and hold coot and teal which were 
 preying on it. I chanced to be on the bank of the 
 Acushnet at New Bedford one day since this, watching 
 some ducks, when a man informed me that, having let out 
 his young ducks to seek their food amid the samphire {Sa- 
 licomia) and other weeds along the river-side at low tide 
 that morning, at length he noticed that one remained sta- 
 tionary, amid the weeds, something preventing it from 
 following the others, and going to it he found its foot 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 79 
 
 tightly sliut in a qiKiliog's shell. He took up both 
 together, carried them to his home, and his wife opening 
 the shell with a knite released the duck and cooked the 
 quahog. The old man said that the great clams were 
 good to eat, but that they always took out a certain part 
 •which was poisonous, before they cooked them. " Peo- 
 ple said it would kill a cat." I did not tell him that I 
 had eaten a large one entire that afternoon, but began 
 to think that I was tougher than a cat. He stated that 
 pedlers came round there, and sometimes tried to sell the 
 women folks a skimmer, but he told them that their wo- 
 men had got a better^skimmer than they could make, in the j 
 shelL of their clams; it was shaped just right for this j 
 purpose. — They call them " skim-alls " in some places. 
 He also said that the sun-squawl was poisonous to handle, 
 and when the sailors came across it, they did not meddle 
 with it, but heaved it out of their way. I told him that 
 I had han^aied it that afternoon, and had felt no ill effects 
 as yet. But he said it made the hands itch, especially 
 if they had previously been scratched, or if I put it into 
 my bosom, I should find out what it was. 
 
 He informed us that no ice ever formed on the back 
 side of the Cape, or not more than once in a century, 
 and but little snow lay there, it being either absorbed or 
 blown or washed away. Sometimes in winter, when the 
 tide was down, the beach was frozen, and afforded a 
 hard road up the back side for some thirty miles, as 
 smooth as a floor. One winter when he was a boy, he 
 and his father " took right out into the back side before 
 daylight, and walked to Provincetown and back to 
 dinner." 
 
 When I asked what they did with all that barren-look- 
 ing land, where I saw so few cultivated fields, — " Noth- 
 ing," he said. 
 
80 CAPE COD. 
 
 " Then why fence your fields ? " 
 
 " To keep the sand from blowing and covering up the 
 whole." 
 
 " The yellow jand," said he, " has some life in it, but 
 the white little or none." 
 
 When, in answer to his questions, I told him that I was 
 a surveyor, he said that they who surveyed his farm 
 were accustomed, where the ground was uneven, to loop 
 up each chain as high as their elbows ; that was the 
 allowance they made, and he wished to know if I 
 could tell him why they did not come out according to 
 his deed, or twice alike. He seemed to have more 
 respect for surveyors of the old school, which I did not 
 wonder at. " King George the Third," said he, " laid 
 out a road four rods wide and strai";ht the whole lennjth 
 of the Cape," but where it was now he could not tell. 
 
 This story of the surveyors reminded me of a Long- 
 Islander, who once, when I had made ready to jump 
 from the bow of his boat to the shore, and he thought 
 that I underrated the distance and would fall short, — 
 though I found afterward that he judged of the elasticity 
 of my joints by his own, — told me that when he came 
 to a brook which he wanted to get over, he held up one 
 leg, and then, if his foot appeared to cover any part 
 of the opposite bank, he knew that he could jump it. 
 " Why," I told him, " to say nothing of the Mississippi, 
 and other small watery streams, I could blot out a star 
 with my foot, but I would not engage to jump that dis- 
 tance," and asked how he knew when he had got his leg 
 at the right elevation. But he regarded his legs as no 
 less accurate than a pair of screw dividers or an ordi- 
 nary quadrant, and appeared to have a painful recollec- 
 tion of every degree and minute in the arc which they 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN. 81 
 
 described ; and he would have had me believe that there 
 was a kind of hitch in his hip-joint which answered the 
 purpose. I suggested that he should connect his two 
 ankles by a string of the proper length, which should be 
 the chord of an arc, measuring his jumping ability on 
 horizontal surfaces, — assuming one leg to be a perpen- 
 dicular to the plane of the horizon, which, however, may 
 have been too bold an assumption in this case. Never- 
 theless, this was a kind of geometry in the legs which it 
 interested me to hear of. 
 
 Our host took pleasure in telling us the names of the 
 ponds, most of which we could see from his windows, 
 and making us repeat them after him, to see if we 
 had got them right. They were Gull Pond, the largest 
 and a very handsome one, clear and deep, and more 
 than a mile in circumference, Newcomb's, Swett's, 
 Slough, Horse-Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds, all 
 connected at high water, if I do not mistake. The 
 coast-surveyors had come to him for their names, and he 
 told them of one which they had not detected. He said 
 that they were not so high as formerly. There was an 
 earthquake about four years before he was born, which 
 cracked the pans of the ponds, which were of iron, and 
 caused them to settle. I did not remember to have read 
 of this. Innumerable gulls used to resort to them ; but 
 the large gulls were now very scarce, for, as he said, the 
 English robbed their nests far in the north, where they 
 breed. He remembered well when gulls were taken in 
 the gull-house, and when small birds were killed by 
 means of a frying-pan and fire at night. His father 
 once lost a valuable horse from this cause. A party 
 from Wellfleet having lighted tlieir fire for this purpose, 
 one dark night, on Billingsgate Island, twenty horses 
 
82 CAPE COD. 
 
 which were pastured there, and this colt among them, 
 being frightened by it, and endeavoring in the dark to 
 cross the passage which separated them from the neigh- 
 boring beach, and which was then fordable at low tide, 
 were all swept out to sea and drowned. I observed that 
 many horses were still turned out to pasture all summer 
 on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, Eastham, and 
 Orleans, as a kind of common. He also described the 
 killing of what he called " wild hens " here, after they 
 had gone to roost in the woods, when he was a boy. 
 Perhaps they were "Prairie hens" (pinnated grouse). 
 
 He liked the Beach-pea {Lathyrus maritimus), cooked 
 green, as well as the cultivated. He had seen it grow- 
 ing very abundantly in Newfoundland, where also the 
 inhabitants ate them, but he had never been able to ob- 
 tain any ripe for seed. We read, under the head of 
 Chatham, that "in 1555, during a time of great scarcity, 
 the people about Orford, in Sussex (England) were pre- 
 served from perishing by eating the seeds of this plant, 
 which grew there in great abundance on the sea-coast. 
 Cows, horses, sheep, and goats eat it." But the writer 
 who quoted this could not learn that they had ever been 
 used in Barnstable County. 
 
 He had been a voyager, then? 0, he had been 
 about the world in his day. He once considered him- 
 self a pilot for all our coast ; but now they had changed 
 the names so he might be bothered. 
 
 He gave us to taste what he called the Summer Sweet- 
 ing, a pleasant apple which he raised, and frequently 
 grafted from, but had never seen growing elsewhere, ex- 
 cept once, — three trees on Newfoundland, or at the Bay 
 of Chaleur, I forget which, as he was sailing by. He 
 was sure that he could tell the tree at a distance. 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 83 
 
 - At length the fool, whom my companion called the 
 wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth, " Damn 
 book-pedlers, — all the time talking about books. Bet- 
 ter do something. Damn 'em. I '11 shoot 'em. Got a 
 doctor down here. Damn him, I '11 get a gun and shoot 
 him " ; never once holding up his head. Whereat the 
 old man stood up and said in a loud voice, as if he 
 was accustomed to command, and this was not the first 
 time he had been obliged to exert his authority there : 
 " John, go sit down, mind your business, — we 've heard 
 you talk before, — precious little you'll do, — your bark 
 is worse than your bite." But, without minding, John 
 muttered the same gibberish over again, and then sat 
 down at the table which the old folks had left. He ate 
 all there was on it, and then turned to the apples, which 
 his aged motlier was paring, that she might give her 
 guests some apple-sauce for breakfast, but she drew 
 them away and sent him off. 
 
 When I approached this house the next summer, over 
 the desolate hills between it and the shore, which are 
 worthy to have been the birthplace of Ossian, I saw 
 the wizard in the midst of a cornfield on the hillside, 
 but, as usual, he loomed so strangely, that I mistook him 
 for a scarecrow. 
 
 This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen, 
 and one of the best preserved. His style of conversa- 
 tion was coarse and plain enough to have suited Rabe- 
 lais. He would have made a good Panurge. Or 
 rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the boys 
 Chromis and Mnasilus, who listened to his story. 
 
 " Not by Hsemonian hills the Thracian bard, 
 Nor awful Phoebus was on Pindus heard 
 Witli deeper silence or with more regard." 
 
84 CAPE COD. 
 
 There was a strange mingling of past and present in 
 his conversation, for he had Hved under King George, and 
 might have remembered when Napoleon and the mod- 
 erns generally were born. He said that one day, when 
 the troubles between the Colonies and the mother country 
 first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen, was pitching hay 
 out of a cart, one Doane, an old Tory, who was talking 
 with his father, a good Whig, said to him, " Why, Uncle 
 Bill, you might as well undertake to pitch that pond into 
 the ocean with a pitchfork, as for the Colonies to under- 
 take to gain their independence." He remembered well 
 General Washington, and how he rode his horse along 
 the streets of Boston, and he stood up to show us how ho 
 looked. 
 
 " He was a r — a — ther large and portly-looking man, 
 a manly and resolute-looking officer, with a pretty good 
 leg as he sat on his horse." — " There, I '11 tell you, this 
 was the way with Washington." Then he jumped up 
 again, and bowed gracefully to right and left, making 
 show as if he were waving his hat. Said he, " That 
 was Washington." 
 
 He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution, and 
 was much pleased when we told him that we had read 
 the same in history, and that his account agreed with the 
 written. 
 
 " O," he said, " I know, I know ! I was a young 
 fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide open ; and a fel- 
 low of that age, you know, is pretty wide awake, and 
 likes to know everything that 's going on. O, I 
 know ! " 
 
 He told us the story of the wreck of the Franklin, 
 which took place there the previous spring : how a boy 
 came to his house early in the morning to know whose 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 85 
 
 boat that was by the shore, for there was a vessel in dis- 
 tress, and he, beuig an old man, first ate his breakfast, 
 and then walked over to the top of the hill by the shore, 
 and sat down there, havmg found a comfortable seat, to 
 see the ship wrecked. She was on the bar, only a quar- 
 ter of a mile from liim, and still neiu-er to the men on 
 the beach, who had got a boat ready, but could render 
 no assistance on account of the breakers, for there was 
 a pretty high sea iimning. There were the passengers 
 all crowded togetlier in tlie forward part of tlie ship, and 
 some were getting out of the cabm windows and were 
 drawn on deck by the others. 
 
 " I saw the cjiptain get out his boat," said he ; " he 
 had one little one ; and then they jumped into it one after 
 another, down as straight as an arrow. I coimted them. 
 There were nine. One was a woman, and she jumped 
 as straight as any of them. Then they shoved off. The 
 sea took tliera back, one wave went over them, and when 
 they came up there were six still chnging to the boat ; I 
 counted them. The next wave turned tlie boat bottom 
 upward, and emptied them all out. None of them ever 
 came ashore alive. There were tlie rest of them all 
 crowded together on the forecastle, the other parts of the 
 ship being under water. They had seen all that hap- 
 pened to the boat. At length a heavy sea separated the 
 forecastle from the rest of the wreck, and set it inside of 
 the worst breaker, and the boat was able to reach tliem, 
 and it saved all that were left, but one woman." 
 
 He also told us of the steamer Ciunbria's gettin 
 aground on his shore a few months before we were there, 
 and of her Enghsh passengers who roamed over his 
 grounds, and who, he said, thought the prospect from tho 
 hi^h hill by the shore " the most delightsome they had 
 
i 
 
 \\ 
 
 B6 CAPE COD. 
 
 ever seen," and also of the pranks which the hidies 
 played with his scoop-net in the ponds. He spoke of 
 these travellers with their purses full of guineas, just as 
 our provincial fathers used to speak of British bloods in 
 the time of King George the Third. 
 
 Quid loquar ? Why repeat what he told us ? 
 
 " Aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est, 
 Candida succinctam latrantibus iiiguina monstris, 
 Diilichias vexasse rates, et giirgite in alto 
 Ah timidos nautas canibus lacerasse marinis ? " 
 
 In the course of the evening I began to feel the po- 
 tency of the clam wliich I had eaten, and I was obliged 
 to confess to our host that I was no tougher than the cat 
 he told of; but he answered, that he was a plain-spoken 
 man, and he could tell me that it was all imagination. At 
 any rate, it proved an emetic in my case, and I was made 
 quite sick by it for a short time, while he laughed at my 
 expense. I was pleased to read afterward, in Mourt's 
 Relation of the Ixmding of the Pilgrims in Provincetown 
 Harbor, these w^ords : " We found great muscles (the 
 pld editor says that they were undoubtedly sea-clams) 
 4nd very fat and full of sea-pearl ; but we could not eat 
 iliem, for they made us all sick that did eat, as well 
 
 sailors as passengers, but they w^ere soon well 
 
 again." It brought me nearer to the Pilgiims to be 
 thus reminded by a similar experience that I w^as so 
 like them. Moreover, it was a valuable confirmation 
 of their story, and I am prepared now to believe every 
 word of Mourt's Relation. ^ I was also pleiised to find 
 that man iuid the clam lay_£till at the same angIe^to_fine 
 another. But I did not notice sea-pearl. Like Cleo- 
 patra, I must have swallowed it. I have since dug 
 these clams on a fiat in the Bay and observed them. 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTEEMAN. 87 
 
 They could squirt full ten feet before the wind, as 
 appeared by the marks of the drops on the sand. 
 
 " Now I am going to ask you a question," said the eld 
 man, " and I don't know as you can tell me ; but you are 
 a learned man, and I never had any learning, only what 
 I got by natur." — It was in vain that we reminded him 
 that he could quote Josephus to our confusion. — "I Ve 
 thought, if I ever met a learned man I should like to 
 ask him this question. Can you tell me how Axy is 
 spelt, and what it means ? Axy" says he ; " there 's 
 a girl over here is named Axy. Now what is it ? What 
 does it mean ? Is it Scripture ? I 've read my Bible 
 twenty-five years over and over, and I never came 
 across it." 
 
 " Did you read it twenty-five years for this object ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Well, how is it spelt ? Wife, how is it spelt ? " 
 
 She said : " It is in the Bible ; I *ve seen it." 
 
 " Well, how do you spell it ? " 
 
 " I don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh, — Achseh." 
 
 " Does that spell Axy ? Well, do you know what it 
 means ? " asked he, turning to me. 
 
 " No," I replied, " I never heard the sound before.'* 
 
 " There was a schoolmaster down here once, and they 
 asked him what it meant, and he said it had no more 
 meaning than a bean-pole." 
 
 I told him that I held the same opinion with the 
 schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster myself, and 
 had had strange names to deal with. I also heard 
 of such names as Zoheth, Beriah, Amaziah, Bethuel, 
 and Shearjashub, hereabouts. 
 
 At length the little boy, who had a seat quite in the 
 chimney-corner, took off" his stockings and shoes, warmed 
 
 \ 
 
88 CAPE COD. 
 
 his feet, and having had his sore leg freshly salved, went 
 off to bed ; then the fool made bare his knotty-lookuig 
 feet and legs, and followed him ; and finally the old man 
 exposed his calves also to our gaze. We had never had 
 the good fortune to see an old man's legs before, and 
 were surprised to find them fair and plump as an in- 
 flmt's, and we thought that he took a pride in exhib- 
 iting them. He then proceeded to make preparations 
 for retiring, discoursing meanwhile with Panurgic plain- 
 ness of speech on the ills to which old humanity is 
 subject. "We were a rare haul for him. He could com- 
 monly get none but ministers to talk to, though some- 
 times ten_of them at once, and he was glad to meet some 
 of the laity at leisure. The evening was not long enough 
 for him. As I had been sick, the old lady asked if 
 I would not go to bed, — it was getting late for old peo- 
 ple ; but the old man, who had not yet done his stories, 
 said, '* You ain't particular, are you ? " 
 
 " no," said I, " I am in no hurry. I believe I have 
 weathered the Clam cape." 
 
 " They are good," said he ; ''I wish I had some of 
 them now." 
 
 "They never hurt me," said the old lady. 
 
 "But then you took out the part that killed a cat," 
 said I. 
 
 At last we cut him short in the midst of his stories, 
 which he promised to resume in the morning. Yet, 
 after all, one of the old ladies who came into our room 
 in the night to fasten the fire-board, which rattled, as she 
 went out took the precaution to fasten us in. Old 
 women are by nature more suspicious than old men. 
 However, the winds howled around the house, and 
 made the fire-boards as well as the cas'?meuts rattle 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 89 
 
 well that night. It was probably a windy night foi' any y 
 locahty, but we could not distinguish the roar which was / 
 proper to the ocean from that which was due to the 
 wind alone. 
 
 The sounds which the ocean makes must be very sig- 
 nificant and interesting to those who live near it. When 
 I was leaving the shore at this place the next summer, 
 and had got a quarter of a mile distant, ascending a hill, 
 I was startled by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as 
 if a large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, 
 so that I caught my breath and felt my blood run cold 
 for an instant, and I turned about, expecting to see one 
 of the Atlantic steamers thus far out of her course, but 
 there was nothing unusual to be seen. There was a low 
 bank at the entrance of the Hollow^ between me and the 
 ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen into 
 another stratum of air in ascending the hill, — which had 
 wafted to me only the ordinary roar of the sea, — I im- 
 mediately descended again, to see if I lost hearing of it ; 
 but, without regard to my ascending or descending, it 
 died away in a minute or two, and yet there was scarcely 
 any wind all the while. The old man said that this was \ 
 what they called the "rut," a peculiar roar of the sea \ 
 before the wind changes, which, however, he could not I 
 account for. He thought that he/could tell all about the • 
 weather from the sounds which the sea made. 
 
 Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638, has 
 it among his weather-signs, that " the resounding of the 
 sea from the shore, and murmuring of the winds in the 
 woods, without apparent wind, sheweth wind to follow." 
 
 Being on another part of the coast one night since 
 this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile distant, and the ) 
 inhabitants said it was a sion that the wind would work 
 
i'O CAFE COD. 
 
 round east, and we should have rainy weather. Ilie 
 ocean was heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and 
 this roar was occasioned bj its effort to preserve its 
 equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before the 
 wind. Also the captain of a packet between this country 
 and England told me that he sometimes met with a wave 
 on the Atlantic coming against the wind, perhaps in a 
 calm sea, whicli indicated that at a distance the wind 
 was blowing from an opposite quarter, but the undula- 
 tion had travelled flister than it. Sailors tell of " tide- 
 rips " and '• ground-swells," which they suppose to have 
 been occasioned by hurricanes and earthquakes, and to 
 have .ti-avelled many hundred, and sometimes even two 
 or three thousand miles. 
 
 Before sunrise the next morning they let us out 
 again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun come 
 out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty-four win- 
 ters was already out in the cold morning wind, bare- 
 headed, tripping about hke a young girl, and driving up 
 the cow to milk. She got the breakfast with despatch, 
 and without noise or bustle ; and meanwhile the old man 
 resumed his stories, standing before us, who were sitting, 
 with his back to the chimney, and ejecting his tobacco- 
 juice right and left into the fire behind him, without 
 regard to the various dishes which were there preparing. 
 At breakfast we had eels, buttermilk cake, cold bread, 
 green beans, doughnuts, and tea. The old man talked a 
 steady stream ; and when his wife told him he had bet- 
 ter eat his breakfast, he said : " Don't hurry me ; I have 
 lived too long to be hurried." I ate of the apple-sauce 
 and the doughnuts, which I thought had sustained the 
 least detriment from the old man's shots, but my com- 
 panion refused the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot cake 
 
THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN. 91 
 
 and green bonns, which had appeared to hiiu to occupy 
 the safest part of tlie hearth. But on compariug notes 
 afterwiu'd, I toUl him that the buttermilk cake was par- 
 ticuhu-ly exposed, and I saw how it suffered repeatedly, 
 and tlieretbre I avoided it ; but he declared that, how- 
 ever that might be, he witnessed that the apple-sauce 
 was seriously injured, and had therefore declined that. 
 After breakfast we looked at his clock, which was out 
 of order, and oiled it with some '' hen's grease," for want 
 of sweet oil, for he scai'cely could believe that we were 
 not tinkers or pedlers ; meanwhile he told a story about 
 visions, which had reference to a crack in the clock-case 
 made by frost one night. He was curious to know to 
 what religious sect we belonged. He said that he had 
 been to hear thirteen kinds of preaching in one month, 
 when he was young, but he did not join any of them, — 
 he stuck to his Bible. There was nothing like any of 
 them in his Bible. While I was shaving in the next 
 room, I heard him ask my companion to what sect he 
 belonged, to wliich he answered : 
 
 " O, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood." 
 " What 's that ? " he asked, " Sons o' Temperance ? " 
 Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, which he 
 was pleased to find that we called by the same name 
 that he did, and paying for our entertainment, we took 
 our departure ; but he followed us out of doors, and 
 made us tell him the names of the vegetables which he 
 had raised from seeds that came out of the Franklin. 
 They were cabbage, broccoli, and pai^sley. As I had 
 asked him the names of so many things, he tried me in 
 turn with all the plants which grew in his garden, both 
 wnld and cultivated. It was about half an acre, which 
 be cultivated wholly himself. Besides the common gar- 
 
92 CAPE COD. 
 
 den vegetables, there were Yellow-Dock, Lemon Balm, 
 Hyssop, Gill-go-oyer-the-ground, Mouse-ear, Chick-weed, 
 Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other plants. As 
 we stood there, I saw a fish-hawk stoop to pick a fish out 
 of his pond. 
 
 '* There," said I. " he has got a fish." 
 
 " Well," said the old man, who was looking all the 
 whUe, but could see nothing, •• he did n't dive, he just 
 wet his claws." 
 
 And, sure enough, he did not this time, though it is 
 said that they often do, but he merely stooped low enough 
 to pick him out with his tiUons ; but as he bore his shin- 
 ing prey over the bushes, it fell to the ground, and we 
 did not see that he recovered it. That is not their prac- 
 tice. 
 
 Thus, having had another crack with the old man, he 
 standing bareheaded under the eaves, he directed us 
 ** athwart the fields," and we took to the beach again for 
 another day, it being now late in the morning. 
 
 It was but a day or two after this that the sale of the 
 , 7 Provincetown Bank wa4 broken open and robbed by two 
 f men from the interior, and we learned that our hospi- 
 table entertainers did at least transiently harbor the sus- 
 K picion that we were the men. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE BEACH AGAIN 
 
 Our war to the high sand-bank, which I have de- 
 scribed as extending all along the eo:\st, led. as usual, 
 thivugh patches of Baybeny bushes, which straggled 
 into the sand. This, next to the Shrub-oak. w:i^ perhaps 
 the most common shrub thereabouts. I was much 
 attracted by its CKloritemus leaves and small gray berries 
 which are clusteivd about the short twigs, just below the 
 last veiir's growth. I know of but two bushes in Concord, 
 and they, being st^uninate plants, do not bear fi-uit. The 
 berries gave it a venenible appe^irance, and they smelled 
 quite spicy, like small confectionery. Robert Beverley, 
 iu his " History of Virginia." pubhshed in 1705, states that 
 " at the mouth of their rivers, and all along upon the 
 sea and bay, and near many of their creeks and swamps, 
 grows the myrtle, bearing a berry, of which they make 
 a hard brittle wi\x. of a curious green color, which bv 
 refining becomes almost transparent. Of this they make 
 candles, which are never greasy to the touch nor melt 
 with lying in the hottest weather ; neither does the snuff 
 of these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow can- 
 dle ; but, instead of being disagreeable, if an accident 
 puts a candle out, it yields a pleas;\nt fragnincy to all 
 that are in tlie room ; insomuch that nice people otten 
 
94 CAPE COD. 
 
 put them out on purpose to have the incense of the ex- 
 piring snuff. The mehing of these berries is said to 
 have been lirst found out by a surgeon in New England, 
 who performed wonderful things with a salve made of 
 them." From the abundance of berries still hanging on 
 the bushes, we judged that the inhabitants did not gener- 
 ally collect them for tallow, though we had seen a piece 
 in the house we had just left. I have since made some 
 tallow myself. Holding a basket beneath the bare twigs 
 in April, I rubbed them together between my hands and 
 thus gathered about a quart in twenty minutes, to which 
 were added enough to make three pints, and I might 
 have o;athered them much faster with a suitable rake and 
 a large shallow basket. They have little prominences 
 like those of an orange all creased in tallow, which also 
 fills the interstices down to the stone. The oily part 
 rose to the top, making it look Uke a savory black broth, 
 which smelled much like balm or other herb tea. You 
 let it cool, then skim off the tallow from the surface, 
 melt this again and strain it. I got about a quarter of 
 a pound weight from my three pints, and more yet re- 
 mained within the berries. A small portion cooled in 
 the form of small flattish hemispheres, like crystalliza- 
 tions, the size of a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them 
 as I picked them out from amid the berries). Loudon 
 says, that " cultivated trees are said to yield more wax 
 than those that are found wild." (See Duplessy, Vege- 
 taux Besineux, Vol. II. p. 60.) If you get any pitch 
 on your hands in the pine-woods you have only to rub 
 some of these berries between your hands to start it off. 
 But the ocean was the gi-and fact there, which made 
 us forget both bayberries and men. 
 
 To-day the air was beautifully clear, and the sea no 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 95 
 
 longer dark and stormy, though the waves still broke 
 with foam along the beach, but sparkling and lull of life. 
 Already that morning I had seen the day break over 
 the sea as if it came out of its bosom : — 
 
 " The saffron-robed Dawn rose in haste from the streams 
 Of Ocean, that she might bring light to immortals ami to mortals." 
 
 The sun rose visibly at such a distance over the sea, 
 that the cloud-bank in the horizon, which at first con- 
 cealed him, was not perceptible until he had risen high 
 behind it, and plainly broke and dispersed it, like an 
 arrow. But as yet I looked at him as rising over land, 
 and could not, without an etlbrt, realize that he was ris- 
 ing over the sea. Already I saw some vessels on the 
 horizon, which had rounded the Cape in the night, and 
 were now well on their watery way to other lauds. 
 
 We struck the beach again in the south part of Truro. 
 In the early part of the day, while it was flood tide, and 
 the beach was narrow and soft, we walked on the bank, 
 which was very high here, but not so level as the day 
 before, being more interrupted by slight hollows. The 
 author of the Description of the Eastern Coast says of 
 this part, that " the bank is very high and steep. From 
 the edge of it west, there is a strip of sand a hundred 
 yards in breadth. Then succeeds low brushwood, a 
 quarter of a mile wide, and almost impassable. After 
 which comes a thick perplexing forest, in which not a 
 house is to be discovered. Seamen, therefore, though 
 the distance between these two hollows (Newconib's and 
 Brush Hollows) is great, must not attempt to enter the 
 wood, as in a snow-storm they must undoubtedly perish." 
 This is still a true description of the country, except that 
 there is not much hiiih wood left. 
 
96 CAPE COD. 
 
 There were many vessels, like gulls, skimming over 
 the surface of the sea, now half concealed in its troughs, 
 their dolphin-strikers ploughing the water, now tossed on 
 the top of the billows. One, a barque standing down par- 
 allel with the coast, suddenly furled her sails, came to 
 anchor, and swung round in the wind, near us, only half 
 a mile from the shore. At first we thought that her 
 captain wished to communicate with us, and perhaps we 
 did not regard the signal of distress, which a mariner 
 would have understood, and he cursed us for cold-hearted 
 wreckers who turned our backs on him. For hours we 
 could still see her anchored there behind us, and we 
 wondered how she could afford to loiter so long in her 
 course. Or was she a smuggler who had chosen that 
 wild beach to land her cargo on ? Or did they wish to 
 catch fish, or paint their vessel ? Erelong other barks, 
 and brigs, and schooners, which had in the mean while 
 doubled the Cape, sailed by her in the smacking breeze, 
 and our consciences were relieved. Some of these ves- 
 sels lagged behind, while others steadily went ahead. 
 "We narrowly watched their rig and the cut of their jibs, 
 and how they walked the water, for there was all the 
 difference between them that there is between living 
 creatures. But we wondered that they should be re- 
 membering Boston and New York and Liverpool, steer- 
 ing for them, out there ; as if the sailor might forget his 
 peddling business on such a grand highway. They had 
 perchance brought oranges from the "Western Isles ; and 
 were they carrying back the peel ? We might as well 
 transport our old traps across the ocean of eternity. Is 
 that but another " trading fiood," with its blessed isles ? 
 Is Heaven such a luirbor as the Liverpool docks ? 
 
 Still held on without a break, the inkuid barrens and 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 97 
 
 shrubbery, the desert and the high sand-bank with its 
 even slope, the broad white beach, the breakers, the 
 green water on the bar, and the Atlantic Ocean ; and we 
 traversed with delight new reaches of the shore ; we 
 took another lesson in sea-horses' manes and sea-cows* 
 tails, in sea-jellies and sea-clams, with our new-gained 
 experience. The sea ran hardly less than the day be- 
 fore. It seemed with every wave to be subsiding, 
 because such was our expectation, and yet when hours 
 had elapsed we could see no difference. But there it 
 was, balancing itself, the restless ocean by our side, lurch- 
 ing in its gait. Each wave left the sand all braided or 
 woven, as it were, with a coarse woof and warp, and a dis- 
 tinct raised edge to its rapid work. We made no haste, 
 since we wished to see the ocean at our leisure, and indeed 
 that soft sand was no place in which to be in a hurry, for 
 one mile there was as good as two elsewhere. Besides, 
 "we were obliged frequently to empty our shoes of the sand 
 which one took in in climbing or descending the bank. 
 
 As we were walking close to the water's edge this 
 morning, we turned round, by chance, and saw a large 
 black object which the waves had just cast up on the 
 beach behind us, yet too far off for us to distinguish 
 what it was ; and when we were about to return to it, 
 two men came running from the bank, where no human 
 beings had appeared before, as if they had come out of 
 the sand, in order to save it before another wave took 
 it. As we approached, it took successively the form 
 of a huge fish, a drowned man, a sail or a net, and 
 finally of a mass of tow-cloth, part of the cargo of the 
 Franklin, which the men loaded into a cart. 
 
 Objects on the beach, whether men or inanimate 
 things, look not only exceedingly grotesque, but much 
 
 5 Q 
 
98 CAPE COD. 
 
 larger and more wonderful than they actually are. 
 Lately, when approaching the sea-shore several degrees 
 south of this, I saw before rae, seemingly half a mile 
 distant, what appeared like bold and rugged cliffs on the 
 beach, fifteen feet high, and whitened by the sun and 
 waves ; but after a few steps it proved to be low heaps of 
 rags, — part of the cargo of a wrecked vessel, — scarcely 
 more than a foot in height. Once also it was my busi- 
 ness to go in search of the relics of a human body, man- 
 gled by sharks, which had just been cast up, a week 
 after a wreck, having got the direction from a light- 
 house : I should find it a mile or two distant over the 
 sand, a dozen rods from the water, covered with a cloth, 
 by a stick stuck up. I expected that I must look very 
 narrowly to find so small an object, but the sandy beach, 
 half a mile wide, and stretching farther than the eye 
 could reach, was so perfectly smooth and bare, and the 
 mirage toward the sea so magnifying, that when I was 
 half a mile distant the insignificant sHver which marked 
 the spot looked like a bleached spar, and the relics were 
 as conspicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy plain, 
 or a generation had labored to pile up their cairn there. 
 Close at hand they were simply some bones with a little 
 flesh adhering to them, in fact, only a slight inequality 
 in the sweep of the shore. There was nothing at all 
 remarkable about them, and they were singularly inof- 
 fensive both to the senses and the imagination. But as 
 I stood there they grew more and more imposing. They 
 were alone with the beach and the sea, whose hollow 
 roar seemed addressed to them, and I was impressed as 
 if there was an understanding between them and the 
 ocean which necessarily left me out, with my snivelling 
 sympathies. That dead body had taken possession of 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 99 
 
 the shore, and reigned over it as no living one could, in 
 the name of a certain majesty which belonged to it. 
 
 We afterward saw many small pieces of tow-cloth 
 washed up, and I learn that it continued to be found in 
 good condition, even as late as November in that year, 
 half a dozen bolts at a time. 
 
 We eagerly filled our pockets with the smooth round 
 pebbles which in some places, even here, were thinly 
 sprinkled over the sand, together with flat circular 
 shells (Scutellce?) ; but, as we had read, when they were 
 dry they had lost their beauty, and at each sitting we 
 emptied our pockets again of the least remarkable, until 
 our collection was well culled. Every material was 
 rolled into the pebble form by the waves ; not only stones 
 of various kinds, but the hard coal which some vessel 
 had dropped, bits of glass, and in one instance a mass of 
 peat three feet long, where there was nothing like it to 
 be seen for many miles. All the great rivers of the 
 globe are annually, if not constantly, discharging great 
 quantities of lumber, which drifts to distant shores. I 
 have also seen very perfect pebbles of brick, and bars 
 of Castile soap from a wreck rolled into perfect cylin- 
 ders, and still spirally streaked with red, like a barber's 
 pole. When a cargo of rags is washed ashore, every 
 old pocket and bag-like recess will be filled to bursting 
 with sand by being rolled on the beach ; and on one 
 occasion, the pockets in the clothing of the wrecked 
 being thus puffed up, even after they had been ripped 
 open by wreckers, deluded me into the hope of identi- 
 fying them by the contents. A pair of gloves looked 
 exactly as if filled by a hand. The water in such cloth- 
 ing is soon wrung out and evaporated, but the sand, 
 wliich works itself into every seam, is not so easily got 
 
100 CAFE COP. 
 
 rill «>r. SjHingc\% whicli are picked up on tho slion\ :v> is 
 woll known, retain some of the >;ind of the beach to the 
 latest day, in sjnte of every effort to extniet it. 
 
 I found one stone on the top of the bank, of a d;irk 
 gray tx^lor, shaped exactly like a giant clam {Afacfra 
 soli'di'sstma), and of the Siime size : and. what was more 
 remarkable, one half of the outside had shelled otl' and 
 lay ne;u" it, of the Si\me lorm and depth with one of the 
 valves of this clam, while the other half was kxx-e. leav- 
 ing a solid core of a darker color within it. I afterwaixi 
 Si\w a stone ivsembling a razof' clam, but it was a solid 
 one. It appeaivd as if the stone, in the pRvcss of for- 
 mation, had tilled the mould which a clam-shell tuniished : 
 or the si\me law that shaped the clam had made a clam 
 of stone. Dead clams, with shells full of Si\nd, are 
 called Siuid dams, Thert^ were many of the larg^ clam- 
 shells tilled with s;ind : and sometimes one valve was 
 separately tilled exactly even, as if it had been heapeii 
 and then scrapevl. Even among the many smiUl stones 
 on the top of the lunk. 1 tound one arrow-head. 
 
 Beside the giant clam and kvrnacles, we tound on the 
 shore a small clam {ALsiHitsma arctata), which I dug 
 with my hands in numbers on the Ivirs, and which is 
 sometimes eaten by the inhabitants, in the absence of the 
 Mf^ii arenan'ii, on this side. Most of their empty shells 
 had been pertbn\tt\l by some toe. — Also, the 
 
 AstiV'te castaucii. 
 
 The Edible Mussel {^Aft/^ilus edulis) on the few rocks, 
 and washed up in curious bunches of torty or til'ty. held 
 together by its ivpe-like ^j/.N\<fMx<. 
 
 The Scollop Sliell {Ptcten conceHtricus), used for 
 cai^i -racks and pin-<.'ushions. 
 
 Cockles, or Cack».vs {^Xatica heros), and their rt»- 
 
Tin: REACH AllAlN. 101 
 
 mark:\ble nidus, called " sand-cirole," lookiniz; like the top 
 of a stone jug without the sto[)ple, and broken on one 
 side, or like a llaring dickey made ot* sand-paper. Also, 
 
 Cancvlhin'a Cout/iout/i (?), and 
 
 Periwinkles (?) (Fusus decetncosfatus). 
 
 AVe afterward saw some other kinds on the Bay side. 
 Goidd states that this Capo "has hitherto proved a bar- 
 rier to tiie migrations ot" many species of INIolhisca." — 
 **0f the one hundred and ninety-seven species [^whieli 
 he desa-ibed in 1840 as belonging to IMassachusetts], 
 eighty-three do not p{t>s to the South shore, and lifty iiro 
 not found on the North shore of the Cape." 
 
 Among Crustacea, there were the sliells of Crabs and 
 Lobsters, often bleached quite white higli up the beach; 
 Sea or Beach Flea^ {Amp/iipoda) ; and the cases of the 
 Horee-shoe Cnib, or Saucepan Fish {Lifimlus PoJffpJue- 
 tuus), of which we saw many alive on the Bay side, 
 where they feed pigs on them. Their tails were used 1 
 as arrow-heads by the Indians. 
 
 Of Kudiata, there were the Sea Chestnut or Egg {Ecki- 
 nus (p-iundatas), commonly divested o( its spines; Hat 
 circular shells {Scutella panna?) covered with choco- 
 late-colored spines, but becoming smooth and white, with 
 live petal-like figures ; a few Star-fishes or Five-fingers 
 {Asterias 7'ubc/is) ; and Sun-fishes or Sea-jellies (Aure- 
 Ucey 
 
 There was also at least one species of Sponge^ 
 
 The plants which I noticed here and there on the 
 pure sandy shelf, between the ordinary high-water mark 
 and the foot of the bank, were Seu Rocket ( Cnkile Ameri- 
 cana), Saltwort (Sidsola l-ali). Sea Sandwort (Ilonlrni/a 
 f)epIoides), Sea Burdock [Xant/u'uni ec/tinaiuni). Sea-side 
 Spurge {Euphorbia polygouifolia) ; also, Beach Grass 
 
102 CAPE COD. 
 
 {Arundo, Psamma^ or Calamagrostis arenarid). Sea-side 
 Goldeii-rod {Solidago sempervirens), and the Beach Pea 
 (^Lathyriis maritimus). 
 
 Sometimes we helped a wrecker turn over a larger 
 log than usual, or we amused ourselves with rolling 
 stones down the bank, but we rarely could make one 
 reach the water, the beach was so soft and wide ; or we 
 bathed in some shallow within a bar, where the sea 
 covered us with sand at every flux, though it was quite 
 cold and windy. The ocean there is commonly but a 
 tantalizing pi'ospect 'lot hot weather, for with all that 
 water betbre you, there is, as we were afterward told, 
 no bathing on the Atlantic side, on account of the under- 
 tow and the rujrtor of sharks. At tlics light-house both 
 in Eastham and Truro, tiie only houses quite on the 
 shore, they declared, the next year, that they would not 
 bathe there " for any sum," for they sometimes saw trie 
 sharks tossed up and quiver for a moment on the sand. 
 Others laughed at these stories, but perhaps they could 
 afford to because they never bathed anywhere. One old 
 wrecker told us that he killed a regular man-eating shark 
 fourteen feet long, and hauled him out with his oxen, 
 where we had bathed ; and another, that his father 
 caught a smaller one of the same kind that was stranded 
 there, by standing him up on his snout so that the waves 
 could not take him. They will tell you tough stories 
 of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to 
 doubt utterly, — how they will sometimes upset a boat, 
 or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it.\ I can easily 
 believe in the undeitow, but I have no doubt that one 
 shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputa- 
 tion of a beach a hundred miles long, I should add, 
 however, that in July we walked on the bank here a 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 103 
 
 quarter of a mile parallel with a fish about six feet in 
 length, possibly a shark, which was prowling slowly 
 along within two rods of the shore. It was of a pale 
 brown color, singularly film-like and indistinct in the 
 water, as if all nature abetted this child of ocean, and 
 showed many darker transverse bars or rings whenever 
 it came to the surface. It is well known that different 
 fishes even of the same species are colored by the water 
 they inhabit. We saw it go into a little cove or bathing- 
 tub, where we had just been bathing, where the water 
 was only four or five feet deep at that time, and after 
 exploring it go slowly out again ; but we conthmed to 
 bathe there, only observing first from the bank if the 
 cove was precccupied. We thought that the water was 
 fuller of life, more aerated perhaps than that of the 
 Bay, like sod*i-water, for we were as particular as 
 young salmon, and the expectation of encountering j 
 a shark did not subtract anything from its life-giving J 
 qualities. 
 
 Sometimes we sat on the wet beach and watched the 
 beach birds, sand-pipers, and others, trotting along close 
 to each wave, and waiting for the sea to cast up their 
 breakfast. The former ( Charadrius melodus) ran with 
 great rapidity and then stood stock still remarkably erect 
 and hardly to be distinguished from the beach. The 
 wet sand was covered with small skipping Sea Fleas, 
 which apparently make a part of their food. These 
 last are the little scavengers of the beach, and are so 
 numerous that they will devour large fishes, which have 
 been cast up, in a very short time. One little bird not 
 larger than a sparrow, — it may have been a Phala- 
 rope, — would alight on the turbulent surface where the 
 breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly 
 
104 CAPE COD. 
 
 there like a duck, ounninglj taking to its wings and 
 lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming 
 crest of each breaker, but sometimes outridius: safelv a 
 considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its 
 instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little 
 creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as per- 
 fect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs. There 
 was also an almost uninterrupted line of coots rising and 
 falling with the waves, a few rods from the shore, the 
 whole length of the Cape. They made as constant a part 
 of the ocean's border as the pads or pickerel-weed do of 
 that of a pond. We read the following as to the Storm 
 Petrel {Thalassidroma Wilsonii), which is seen in the Bay 
 as well as on the outside. •• The feathers on the breast 
 of the Storm Petrel are, like those of all swimming birds, 
 water-proof ; but substances not susceptible of being wet- 
 ted with water are, for that very reason, the best fitted 
 for collecting oil from its surface. That function is per- 
 formed by the feathers on the breast of the Storm Petrels 
 as they touch on the surface ; and though that may not 
 be the only way in which they procure their food, it is 
 certainly that in which they obtiiin great part of it. They 
 dash along till they have loaded their feathers and then 
 they pause upon the wave and remove the oil with their 
 bills." 
 
 Thus we kept on along the gently curving shore, see- 
 ing two or three miles ahead at once, — along this ocean 
 side-walk, where there was none to turn out for. with the 
 middle of the road the highway of nations on our right, 
 and the sand cliffs of the Cape on our left. We saw this 
 forenoon a part of the wreck of a vessel, probably the 
 Franklin, a Im-ge piece fifteen feet square, and still freshly 
 painted. With a grapple and a line we could ha^ e saved 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 105 
 
 it, for the waves repeatedly washed it within cast, but 
 they as often took it back. It would have been a lucky 
 haul for some poor ^vrecker, for I have been told that 
 one man who paid three or four dollars for a part of the 
 wreck of that vessel, sold fifty or sixty dollars' worth of 
 iron out of it. Another, the same who picked up the 
 Captain's valise with the memorable letter in it, showed 
 me, growing in his garden, many pear and plum trees 
 which washed ashore from her, all nicely tied up and 
 labelled, and he said that he might have got five hun- 
 dred dollars worth ; for a Mr. Bell was importing the 
 nucleus of a nursery to be established near Boston. His 
 turnip-seed came from the same source. Also valuable 
 spars from the same vessel and from the Cactus lay in 
 his yard. In short the inhabitants visit the beach to see 
 what they have caught as regularly as a fisherman his 
 weir or a lumberer his boom ; the Cape is their boom. 
 I heard of one who had recently picked up twenty bar- 
 rels of apples in good condition, probably a part of a 
 deck load thrown over in a storm. 
 
 Though there are wreck-masters appointed to look 
 after valuable property which must be advertised, yet 
 undoubtedly a great deal of value is secretly carried off. 
 But are we not all wreckers contriving that some treasure 
 may be washed up on our beach, that we may secure 
 it, and do we not infer the habits of these Nauset and 
 Barnegat wreckers, from the common modes of getting a 
 living ? 
 
 The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste 
 and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There 
 is no telling what it may not vomit up. It lets nothing 
 lie ; not even the giant clams which cling to its bottom. 
 It is still heaving up the tow-cloth of the Franklin, and 
 
106 CAPE COD. 
 
 perhaps a piece of some old pirate's ship, wrecked 
 more than a hundred years ago, comes ashore to-day. 
 Some years since, when a vessel was wrecked here 
 which had nutmegs in her cargo, they were strewn all 
 •along the beach, and for a considerable time were not 
 spoiled by the salt water. Soon afterward, a fisherman 
 caught a cod which was full of them. Why, then, might 
 not the Spice-Islanders shake their nutmeg-trees into 
 the ocean, and let all nations who stand in need of them 
 pick them up ? However, after a year, I found that the 
 nutmegs from the Franklin had become soft. 
 
 You might make a curious list of articles which fishes 
 have swallowed, — sailors' open clasp-knives, and bright 
 tin snuff-boxes, not knowing what was in them, — and 
 jugs, and jewels, and Jonah. The other day I came 
 across the following scrap in a newspaper. 
 
 "A Religious Fish. — A short time ago, mine host 
 Stewart, of the Denton Hotel, purchased a rock- fish, weigh- 
 ing about sixty pounds. On opening it he found in it a cer- 
 tificate of membership of the M. E. Church, which we read 
 as follows : — 
 
 Member 
 Methodist E. Church, 
 Founded A. D. 1784. 
 Quarterly Ticket. 18 
 
 Minister. 
 
 ' For our light afHiction, which is biit for a moment, Avorketh for 
 tis a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' — 2 Cor. iv. 17. 
 
 ' what are all my sufferings here, 
 ]f, Lord, thou count me meet 
 Witli that enraptured host t' appear, 
 And worship at thy feet.' 
 
 •' The paper was of course in a crumpled and wet condition, 
 but on exposing it to the sun, and ironing the kinks out of 
 it, it became quite legible. — Denton (Md.) Journal." 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 107 
 
 From time to time we saved a wreck ourselves, a box 
 or barrel, and set it on ,il^s end, and appropriated it with 
 crossed sticks ; and >t will lie there perhaps, respected 
 by brother wreckei^, until some more violent storm shall 
 take it, really lost to man until wrecked again. We also 
 saved, at the cost of wet feet only, a valuable cord and 
 buoy, part of a seine, with which the sea was playing, 
 for it seemed ungracious to refuse the least gift which so 
 great a personage offered you. We brought this home 
 and still use it for a garden line. I picked up a bottle 
 half buried in the wet sand, covered with barnacles, but 
 stoppled tight, and half full of red ale, which still smacked 
 of juniper, — all that remained I fancied from the wreck 
 of a rowdy world, — that great salt sea on the one hand, 
 and this little sea of ale on the other, preserving their 
 separate characters. What if it could tell us its adven- 
 tures over countless ocean waves ! Man would not be 
 man through such ordeals as it had passed. But as I 
 poured it slowly out on to the sand, it seemed to me that 
 man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, 
 which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled tight for a 
 while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances ; 
 but destined erelong to mingle with the surrounding 
 waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore. 
 
 In the summer I saw two men fishing for Bass here- 
 abouts. Their bait was a bullfrog, or several small 
 frogs in a bunch, for want of squid. They followed a 
 retiring wave and whirling tlieir lines round and round 
 their heads with increasing rapidity, threw them as far 
 as they could into the sea ; then retreating, sat down, flat 
 on the sand, and waited for a bite. It was literally (or 
 littorally) walking down to the shore, and throwing your 
 line into the Atlantic. I should not have known what 
 
108 CAFE COD. 
 
 mii:;ht take liold of the other end, ^Yhetlun• Proteus or 
 another. At any rate, if you eouki not pull him in, uhy, 
 you might let huu go without being pulled in yourself. 
 And they knew by experienee that it would be a Striped 
 Bass, or perhaps a Cixl, for these fishes play along near 
 tlie shore. 
 
 From time to time we sat under the lee of a sand-hill 
 on the bank, thinly eovered with eoarse beach-grass, and 
 steadily gazed on the sea, or watched the vessels going 
 south, all Blessings of the Bay of course. We could 
 see a little more than half a circle of ocean, besides the 
 glimpses of the Bay which we got behind us ; the sea 
 there was not wild and dreary in all respects, for there 
 ■v\'ere frequently a hundred sail in sight at once on the 
 Atlantic. You can commonly count about eiglity in a 
 favorable summer day, and pilots sometimes land and 
 iiscend the bank to look out for those which require their 
 services. These had been waiting for tair weather, and 
 had come out of Boston Harbor together. The same is 
 the case when they have been assembled in the Vineyard 
 Sound, so that you may see but tew one day, and a large 
 fleet the next. Schooners with many jibs and stay-sails 
 crowded all the sea road : square-rigged vessels with 
 their great height and breadth of canvas were ever and 
 anon appearing out of the far horizon, or disappearing 
 imd sinking into it ; here and there a pilot-boat was tow- 
 ing its; little boat astern toward some distant foreigner 
 who had just tired a gun, the echo of which along the 
 shore sounded like the caving of the bank. AVe could 
 see the pilot looking through his glass toward the distant 
 ship which was putting back to speak with him. lie 
 sails many a mile to meet her ; and now she puts her 
 sails aback, and conununicates with him alongside, — 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 109 
 
 Bends some important message to the owners, and then 
 bids farewell to these shores for good and all ; or, per- 
 chance a propeller passed and made fast to some di. aided 
 craft, or one that had been becalmed, whose cargo of 
 fruit might spoil. Though silently, and for the most part 
 incommunicatively, going about their business, they were, 
 no doubt, a source of cheerfulness and a kind of society 
 to one another. 
 
 To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which I 
 should not before have accepted. Tliere were distinct 
 patches of the color of a purple grape with the bloom 
 rubbed off. But first and last the sea is of all colors. 
 "Well writes Gilpin concerning " the brilliant hues which 
 are continually playing on the surface of a quiet ocean," 
 and this was not too turbulent at a distance from the 
 shore. " Beautiful," says he, "no doubt in a high degree 
 are those glimmering tints which often invest the tops of A 
 mountains ; but they are mere coruscations com[)ared \ 
 ■with these marine colors, which are continually varying i i 
 and shifting into each other in all the vivid splendor of / 
 the rainbow, through the space often of several leagues."—-^ 
 Commonly, in calm weather, for half a mile from the 
 shore, where the bottom tinges it, the sea is green, or 
 greenish, as are some ponds ; then blue for many miles, 
 often with purple tinges, bounded in the distance by a 
 light almost silvery stripe ; beyond which there is gener- 
 ally a dark-blue rim, like a mountain ridge in the hori- 
 zon, as if, like that, it owed its color to the intervening 
 atmosphere. On another day it will be marked with 
 long streaks, alternately smootli and rippled, light -colored 
 and dark, even like our inland meadows in a freshet, 
 and showing which way tlie wind sets. 
 
 Tims wc sat on tlie foaming shore, looking on. the 
 wine-colored ocean, — 
 
110 CAFE COD. 
 
 0iV (ip S\os noXiiji, opoun- irr) on'orra ttoitov, 
 Hero and thoro was a darker spot on its suriaee, tho 
 shadow of a cloud, though the sky was so clear that 
 no cloud would liave been noticed otherwise, and no 
 shadow would have been seen on the land, where a 
 much smaller surface is \ isible at once. So». distant 
 clouds and showers may be seen on all sides by a sailor 
 in the course of a day, which do not necessarily portend 
 rain where he is. In July we saw similar dark-blue 
 patches where schools of JNIenhaden rippled the surface, 
 scarcely to be distinguished from the shadows of clouds. 
 Sometimes the sea was spotted with them far and wide, 
 such is its inexhaustible fertility. Close at hand you see 
 their back tin, which is very long and sharp, projecting 
 two or three inches above water. From time to time 
 also we saw the white bellies of the Bass playing along 
 the shore. 
 
 It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails 
 steering for half fabulous ports, whose very names are a 
 mysterious music to our ears : Fayal, and Babel-mandel, 
 ay, and Chagres, and Panama, — bound to the famous 
 Bay of San Francisco, and the golden strt-ams of Sacra- 
 mento and San Joaquin, to Feather Kiver and the 
 American Fork, whei*e Sutter's Fort presides, and inland 
 stands the City de los Angeles. It is remarka bje th at 
 men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing 
 remarkable was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood, 
 riie heroes and discoverers have found true more than 
 was previously believed, only when they were expecting 
 and dreaming of something more than their contemjx)- 
 raries dreamed of, or even themselves discovered, that 
 is, when they were in a frame of mind fitted to behold 
 the truth. \ Referred to the world's staudard^^the^ are 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. Ill 
 
 always insane. ' Even savages have indirectly surmised 
 as much. Humboldt, sfxiaking of Columbus approach- 
 ing the New World, says : " The grateful coolness of 
 the evening air, the ethereal purity of the starry firma- 
 ment, the balmy fragrance of flowers, wafted to him by 
 the land breeze, all led him to suppose (as we are told 
 by Ilerrera, in the Decades) that he was approaching 
 the garden of Eden, tlie sacred abode of our first i)arents. 
 Tlie Orinoco seemed to him one of the four rivers which, 
 according to the venerable tradition of the ancient world, 
 flowed from Paradise, to water and divide the surface of 
 the earth, newly adorned with [)lants." So even the / ; 
 expeditions for the discovery of El Dorado, and of the . / 
 
 / 
 
 :/ 
 
 Fountain of Youth, led to real, if not compensatory dis-^ 
 coveries. 
 
 We discerned vessels so far off, when once we began 
 to look, that only the tops of their masts in the horizon 
 were visible, and it took a strong intention of the eye, 
 and its most favorable side, to see them at all, and some- 
 times we doubted if we were not counting our eyelashes.^^ 
 Charles Darwin states that he sa\y, from the base of the 
 Andes, " the masts of the vessels'at anchor in tlie bay of 
 Valparaiso, although not less tJian twenty-six geograph- 
 ical miles distant," and that Anson had been surprised 
 at the distance at which his vessels were discovered from 
 the coast, without knowing the reason, namely, the great 
 height of the land and the trans[)arency of the air. 
 Steamers may be detected much farther than sailing 
 vessels, for, as one says, when their hulls and masts of 
 wood and iron are down, their smoky masts and stream- 
 ers still betray them ; and the same writer, speaking of 
 the comparative advantages of bituminous and anthracite 
 coal for war-steamers, states that, " from the ascent of 
 
112 CAFE COD. 
 
 the columns of smoke alxne the liori/on, the motions 
 of the steamers iii Calais Harbor [on the ci^a>t ot* 
 Frauoe] are at i\ll tin\es observable at Ramspite [on 
 the English coast], ti\nu the tirst lighting ot' the tires to 
 the putting out at sea ; and that in America the steamei*s 
 burning the t;U bituminous coal can be tracked at sea at 
 leik?t seventy miles betbi-e the hulls become visible, by 
 the dense columns of black smoke pouring out of their 
 chimneys, and trailing along the horizon." 
 
 Though there were numerous vessels at this great dis- 
 timce in the horizon on every side, yet the vast ^paces 
 between tliem, like the spaces between the stars, tar as 
 they were distant from us, so were they fivm one an- 
 other — nay, some were twice as far fivm each other :\s 
 from us, — impressed us with a sense of the immensity of 
 the ocean, the " unfruittul ocean," as it has been called, 
 aiid we could see what pR-»j^>ortion man and his works 
 bear to the globe. As we looked ot^". and saw the water 
 gRnving darker and darker and deeper and deeper the 
 farther we looked, till it w:i>; awful to consider, and it 
 appeared to have no relation to the friendly land, either 
 as shoi-e or Ix^ttom, — of what use is a bottom if it is out 
 of sight, if it is two or three miles from the surface, and 
 Tou are to be drowned so long before you get to it, 
 though it were made of the same stutV with your native 
 soil? — over that ocean, where, as the Veda says, " there 
 is nothing to give support, nothing to rest upon, nothing 
 to cling to." I felt that I was a laud animal. The man 
 in a balloon even may commonly alight on the earth in 
 a few moments, but the s;ulor's only ho[>e is that he may 
 reach the distant shore. I could then appreciate the 
 heroism of the old navigator. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, oi^ 
 whom it is related, that being overtaken by a storm 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 113 
 
 when on his return from America, in tlie year 1583, far 
 nortlicastward from where we were, sitting abaft with a 
 book in liis hand, just before he was swallowed up in (lie 
 dee[>, he ericid out to iiis comrades in the Hind, as they 
 came within hearing, "We are as near to Heaven by 
 sea as by land." I saw that it would not be easy lo 
 realize. 
 
 On Cape Cod, the next most eastern land you hear ol" 
 is St. George's Bank (the fishermen 1(^11 of " Gt^orges," 
 " Caslius," and other sunken lands which they fre(pu^nf). 
 Every Ca[)e man has a theory about George's IJaiiic 
 having been an island once, and in their accounts tlicy 
 gradually reduce the shallowness from six, five, four, 
 two fathoms, to somebody's confident assertion that he 
 has seen a mackerel-gull sitting on a piece of dry land 
 there. It reminded me, when I thought of the ship- 
 M'recks which had taken place there, of the Isle of 
 Demons, laid down off this coast in old charts of the 
 New World. There must be soinethhig nionslrous, nu?- 
 thinks, in a vision of the sea bottom from over some 
 bank a thousand miles from the shore, more awful than 
 its imagined bottomlessness ; a drowned contineni, all 
 livid and frothing at the nostrils, like the body of a 
 drowned man, which is better sunk deep than near the 
 surface. 
 
 1 have been surprised to discover from a steamer the 
 shallowness of Massachusetts Bay itself. Off Billings- 
 gate Point I could have touched the bottom with a pole, 
 and I plainly saw it variously shaded with sea-weed, at 
 five or six miles from the shore. This is "The Shoal- 
 ground of the Cape," it is true, but elsewhere the Bay is 
 not much deei)er than a (country pond. We are told 
 that the deepest water in the English Channel between 
 
 H 
 
/ 
 
 Y 
 
 114 CAPE COD. 
 
 Shakespeare's Cliff and Cape Grinez, in France, is one 
 hundred and eighty feet ; and Guyot says that " the Bal- 
 tic Sea has a depth of only one hundred and twenty feet 
 between the coasts of Germany and those of Sweden," 
 and " the Adriatic between Venice and Trieste has a 
 depth of only one/hundred and thirty feet." A pond in 
 my native town/only half a mile long, is more than one 
 hundred feet deep. 
 
 The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you 
 may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a 
 few rods in width and many miles long, as if the surface 
 there were covered with a thin pellicle of oil, just as on 
 a country pond ; a sort of stand-still, you would say, at 
 the meeting or parting of two currents of air (if it does 
 not rather mark the unrippled steadiness of a current 
 of water beneath), for sailors tell of the ocean and land 
 breeze meeting between the fore and aft sails of a vessel, 
 while the latter are full, the former being suddenly taken 
 aback. Daniel Webster, in one of his letters describing 
 blue-fishing off Martha's Vineyard, referring to those 
 smooth places, which fishermen and sailors call " slicks ," 
 says : " We met with them yesterday, and our boatman 
 made for them, whenever discovered. He said they 
 were caused by the blue-fish chopping up their prey. 
 That is to say, those voracious 'fellows get into a school 
 of menhaden, which are too large to swallow whole, and 
 they bite them into pieces to suit their tastes. And 
 the oil from this butchery, rising to the surface, makes 
 the'sHck.'" 
 
 Yet this same placid Ocean, as civil now as a city's 
 harbor, a place for ships and commerce, will erelong 
 be lashed into sudden fury, and all its caves and cliffs 
 will resound with tumult. It will ruthlessly heave 
 
 v>. 
 
 't 
 
THE BEACH AGAIN. 115 
 
 these vessels to and fro, break them in pieces in its 
 sandy or stony jaws, and deliver their crews to sea- 
 monsters. It will play with them like sea-weed, distend 
 them like dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, 
 now low, to show to the fishes, giving them a nibble. 
 This gentle Ocean will toss and tear the rag of a man's 
 body like the father of mad bulls, and his relatives may 
 be seen seeking the remnants for weeks along the strand. 
 From some quiet inland hamlet they have rushed weep- 
 ing to the unheard-of shore, and now stand uncertain 
 where a sailor has recently been buried amid the sand- 
 hills. 
 
 It is generally supposed that they who have long been 
 conversant with the Ocean can foretell, by certain indi- 
 cations, such as its roar and the notes of sea-fowl, 
 when it will change from calm to storm ; but probably 
 no such ancient mariner as we dream of exists; they 
 knov/ no more, at least, than the older sailors do about 
 this voyage of life on which we are all embarked. Nev- 
 ertheless, we love to hear the sayings of old sailors, and 
 their accounts of natural phenomena, which totally ignore, 
 and are ignored by, science ; and possibly they have not 
 always looked over the gunwale so long in vain. Kalm 
 repeats a story which was told him in Philadelphia by a 
 Mr. Cock, who was one day sailing to the West Indies 
 in a small yacht, with an old man on board who was well 
 acquainted with those seas. " The old man sounding the 
 depth, called to the mate to tell Mr. Cock to launch the 
 boats immediately, and to put a sufficient number of men 
 into them, in order to tow the yacht during the calm, 
 that they might reach the island before them as soon as 
 possible, as within twenty-four hours there would be a 
 strong hurricane. Mr. Cock asked him what reasons he 
 
116 CAFE COD. 
 
 had to tliiiik so: the old man replied, that on soinuHiiv:, 
 be Siiw the lead in the water at a distance of many 
 fathoms more than he had seen it before : tliat theivfore 
 the water was become clear all of a sudden, whieh he 
 lix^ked upon as a certain sign of an impending hurricane 
 in the sea," The sequel of the story is, that by g^xxl 
 fortune, juid by dint of rowing, they managi»d to gjiin a 
 Si\fe harlK>r l>efoi-e the hurricane had reached its height ; 
 but it dually raged with so much violence, that not only 
 many ships were lost and houses unrvx^fed, but even their 
 own vesi^el in harbor wns wiu-hed so tar on shore that 
 several weeks elapsed beitbre it could be got otl*. 
 
 The Giveks would not have called the ocean dr^ryrros-, 
 or unfruitful, though it dix^s not prv.xluce wheat, if they 
 had viewed it by the light of mcnlern science, for natu- 
 ralists now assert that " the sea, and not the land, is the 
 principal seat of life," — though not of vegi^able life. 
 Darwin affirms that " our most thickly inhabited forests 
 appear almost as deserts when we come to compare them 
 with the corresponding regions of the tvean." Ag-assiz 
 and Gould tell us that " the sea teems with animals oi' 
 all classes, far beyond the extreme point of flowering 
 plants": but they add, that "experiments of dredging 
 in very deep water have also taught us that the abyss of 
 the ocean is nearly a desert"; — "so that nuxlern in- 
 vestigations," to quote the words of Desor, " merely go 
 to contirm the great idea which w:v? vaguely anticipated 
 by the ancient jxx^s and philosophers, that the Ocean is 
 the origin of all things," Yet marine anim:\ls and plants 
 bold a lower rank in the scale of being than land animals 
 and plants. "There is no instance kTiown." says Desor, 
 **of an animal becoming aquatic in its perfect state, at\er 
 having lived in its lower stage on dry land," but as iu 
 
THE nKACII ACAIN. 117 
 
 the case of ilu', tadpole, " Uk; |)i();i^ress invariably j)()Inl,s 
 towards the dry land." lu short, the dry land itst;lt' 
 came through and out of the water in its way to the 
 Ijeavens, for, " in going hack through the geological ages, 
 we come to an epoch when, according to all appearances, 
 the dry land did not exist, and when the surface of our 
 globe was entirely cov(u*ed with watitr." We lookinl on 
 the sea, then, once more, not as aTpvyfTos, or unfruitful, 
 but as it has been more truly called, the " laboratory of 
 continents." 
 
 Though we have indulged in some placid reflections 
 of hite, the reader must not forged that the dash and roar 
 of the waves were inc(!ssant. Indeed, it would be well 
 if he were to read with a larg(i conch-sludl at his ear. 
 But notwithstanding that it was very cold and windy to- 
 day, it was such a cold as we thought would not cause 
 one to t[ike cold who was exposed to it, owing to the 
 saltness of the air and the dryness of the soil. Yvi the 
 author of the old Description of Wellfleet says : " The 
 atmosphere is very much impregnated with saline i)ar- 
 ticles, which, perhaps, with the great use of fish, and the 
 neglect of cider and spruce-beer, may be a rcaso!i why 
 the people are more subject to sore mouths and throats 
 than in other places." 
 
VII. 
 
 ACROSS THE CAPE 
 
 When we have returned from the sea-side, we some- 
 times ask ourselves why we did not spend more time in 
 gazing at the sea ; but very soon the traveller does not 
 look at the sea more than at the heavens. As for the 
 interior, if the elevated sand-bar in the midst of the 
 ocean can be said^ to have any interior, it was an 
 exceedingly desolate landscape, with rarely a cultivated 
 or cultivable field in sight. We saw no villages, and 
 seldom a house, for these are generally on the Bay side. 
 It was a succession of shrubby hills and valleys, now 
 wearing an autumnal tint. You would frequently think, 
 from the character of the surface, the dwarfish trees, and 
 the bearberries around, that you were on the top of a 
 mountain. The only wood in Eastham was on the edge 
 of TTellfieet. The pitch-pines were not commonly more 
 than fifteen or eighteen feet high. Tlie lai'ger ones were 
 covered with lichens, — often hung with the long gray 
 Usnea. There is scarcely a white-pine on the forearm 
 of the Cape. Yet in the northwest part of Easthimi, 
 near the Camp Ground, we saw, the next summer, some 
 quite rural, and even sylvan retreats, for the Cape, 
 where small rustling groves of oaks and locusts and 
 whispering pines, on perfectly level ground, made a little 
 
( ACROSS THE CAPE. 119 
 
 paradise. . The locusts, both transplantetl and growing 
 naturally about the houses there, appeared to flourish 
 better than any other tree. There were thin belts of 
 wood in Wellfleet and Truro, a mile or more from the 
 Atlantic, but, for the most part, we could see the horizon 
 through them, or, if extensive, the trees were not large. 
 Both oaks and pines had often the same flat look with 
 the apple-trees. Commonly, the oak woods twenty-flve 
 years old were a mere scraggy shrubbery nine or ten 
 feet high, and we could frequently reach to their topmost 
 leaf. Much that is c:\lled " woods " was about half as 
 high as this, — only patches of shrub-oak, bayberry, 
 beach-plum, and wild roses, overrun witli woodbine. 
 When the roses were in bloom, these patches in the 
 midst of the sand displayed such a profusion of blossoms, 
 mingled with the aroma of the bayberry, that ^D Italian 
 or other artificial rose-garden could equal them. They 
 were perfectly Elysian, and realized my idea of an oasis 
 in the desert. Huckleberry-bushes were very abundant, 
 and the next summer they bore a remarkable quantity 
 of that kind of gall called Huckleberry-apple, tbrraing 
 quite handsome though mop<?trous blossoms. But it 
 must be added, that this sj>^ubbery swarmed with wood- 
 ticks, sometimes very tnemblesome parasites, and which 
 it takes very horny fip^ers to crack. 
 
 The inhabitants of these towns have a great regard 
 for a tree, though their standard for one is necessarily 
 neither large nor high ; and when they tell you of the 
 large trees that once grew here, you must think of them, 
 not as absolutely large, but large compared with the 
 present generation. Their *' brave old oaks," of which 
 they speak with so much respect, and which they will 
 point out to you as relics of the primitive forest, 
 
120 CAPE COD. 
 
 one hundred or one hundred and fifty/ ay, for aught 
 they know, two hundred years old,/ have a ridicu- 
 lously dwarfish appearance, which Excites a smile in 
 the beholder. The largest and most venerable which 
 they will show you in such a cnse are, perhaps, not 
 more than twenty or twenty-^e feet high. I was 
 especially amused by the Liliputian old oaks in the 
 south part of Truro. To the inexperienced eye, which 
 appreciated their proportions only, they might appear 
 vast as the tree which saved his royal majesty, but 
 measured, they were dwarfed at once almost into lichens 
 which a deer might eat up in a morning. Yet they will 
 tell you that large schooners were once built of timber 
 which grew in Wellfleet. The old houses also are built 
 of the timber of the Cape ; but instead of the forests in 
 the midst of which they originally stood, barren heaths, 
 with poverty-grass for heather, now stretch away on 
 every side. The modern houses are built of what is 
 called "dimension timber," imported from Maine, all 
 ready to be set up, so that commonly they do not touch 
 it again with an axe. Almost all the wood used for fuel 
 is imported by vessels or currents, and of course all the 
 coal. I was told that probably a quarter of the fuel and 
 a considerable part of the lumber used in North Truro 
 was drift-wood. Many get all their fuel from the 
 beach. 
 
 Of birds not found in the interior of the State, — at 
 least in my neighborhood, — I heard, in the summer, the 
 Black-throated Bunting (^Fringilla Americana) amid the 
 shrubbery, and in the open land the Upland Plover 
 {Totanus Bartramius)^ whose quivering notes were ever 
 and anon prolonged into a clear, somewhat plaintive, 
 yet hawk-like scream, which sounded at a very indefi- 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE 121 
 
 nllo dista.ice. The bird may have been in the next 
 Held, tliough it sounded a mile oflf. 
 
 To-day we were walking through Truro, a town of 
 about eighteen hundred inhabitants. We had already 
 come to Pamet River, which empties into the Bay. 
 This was the limit of the Pilgrims* journey up the Ca{)e 
 from Provincetown, when seeking a place for settlement. 
 It rises in a hollow within a few rods of the Atlantic, 
 and one who lives near its source told us that in high 
 tides the sea leaked through, yet the wind and waves 
 preserve intact the barrier between them, and thus the 
 whole river is steadily driven westward butt-end fore- 
 most, — fountain-head, channel, and light-house at the 
 mouth, all together. 
 
 Early in the afternoon we reached the Highland 
 Light, whose white tower we had seen rising out of the 
 bank in front of us for the last mile or two. It is four- 
 teen miles from the Nauset Lights, on what is called the 
 Clay Pounds, an immense bed of clay abutting on the 
 Atlantic, and, as the keeper told us, stretching quite 
 across the Cape, which is here only about two miles 
 wide. AVe perceived at once a difference in the soil, for 
 there was an interruption of the desert, and a slight 
 a{)pearance of a sod under our feet, such as we had not 
 seen for the last two days. 
 
 After arranging to lodge at the light-house, we ram- 
 bled across the Cape to the Bay, over a singularly bleak 
 and barren looking country, consisting of rounded hills 
 and hollows, called by geologists diluvial elevations and 
 depressions, — a kind of scenery which has been corn- 
 pared to a chof)ped sea, though this suggests too sudden 
 a transition. There is a delineation of tlii< vciy land- 
 scape in Hitchcofk's Rcjiort on ♦he Cco'tv} o' Masa- 
 ti 
 
122 CAPE COD. 
 
 chusetts, a work which, by its size at least, reminds one 
 of a dihivial elevation itself. Looking southward from 
 the light-house, the Cape appeared like an elevated 
 plateau, sloping very regularly, though slightly, down- 
 ward from the edge of the bank on the Atlantic side, 
 about one hundred and fifty feet above the ocean, to 
 that on the Bay side. On traversing this we found it 
 to be interrupted by broad valleys or gullies, which 
 become the hollows in the bank when the sea has worn 
 up to them. They are commonly at right angles with 
 the shore, and often extend quite across the Cape. 
 Some of the vaUeys, however, are circular, a hundred 
 feet deep without any outlet, as if the Cape had sunk in 
 those places, or its sands had ran out. The few scat- 
 tered houses which we passed, being placed at the bot- 
 tom of the hollows for shelter and fertility, were, for the 
 most part, concealed entirely, as much as if they had 
 been swallowed up in the earth. Even a village with 
 its meeting-house, which we had left little more than 
 a stone's throw behind, had sunk into the earth, spire 
 and all, and we saw only the surface of the upland 
 and the sea on either hand. When approaching it, we 
 had mistaken the belfry for a summer-house on the 
 plain. We began to think that we might tumble into 
 a village before we were aware of it, as into an ant- 
 lion's hole, and be drawn into the sand irrecoverably. 
 The most conspicuous objects on the land were a dis- 
 tant windmill, or a meeting-house standing alone, for 
 only they could atlbrd to occupy an exposed place. 
 A great part of the township, however, is a barren, 
 heath-like plain, and perhaps one third oi' it lies in 
 common, though the property of individuals. The 
 author of the old *• Description ot" Truro," speaking 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE. 123 
 
 of the soil, says : " The snow, which would be of 
 essential service to it provided it lay level and cov- 
 ered the ground, is blown into drifts and into the sea." 
 This peculiar open country, with here and there a 
 patch of shrubbery, extends as much as _seven rftiles, 
 or from Pamet River on the south to Iligii Head on 
 the north, and from Ocean to Bay. To walk over it 
 makes on a stranger such an impression as being at 
 sea, and he tinds it impossible to estimatp distances in 
 any weather. A windmill or a herd qf I'ows may seem ^^ 
 to be far away in the horizon, yt>f, after going a few ^ 
 rods, he will be close upon them. He is also deluded , 
 by other kinds of mirage. When, in the summer, I saw j 
 a family a-blueberrying a mile off, walking about amid ] 
 the dwarfish bushes which did not come up higher than V^ 
 their ankles, they seemed to me to be a race of giants, 
 twenty feet high at least, i ' 
 
 The highest and sandiest portion next the Atlantic 
 was thinly covered with Beach-grass and Indigo-weed. 
 Next to this the surface of the upland generally con- 
 sisted of white sand and gravel, like coarse salt, through 
 which a scanty vegetation found its way up. It will 
 give an ornithologist some idea of its barrenness if I 
 mention that the next June, the month of grass, I 
 found a night-hawk's eggs there, and that almost any 
 square rod thereabouts, taken at random, would be an 
 eligible site for such a deposit. The kildeer-plover, 
 which loves a similar locality, also drops its eggs there, 
 and fills the air above with its din. This upland also 
 produced Cladonia lichens, poverty-grass, savory-leaved 
 aster {^Diplopappus Imariif alius), mouse-ear, bearberry, 
 &c. On a lew hillsides the savory -leaved aster and 
 mouse-ear alone, made quite a dense sward, said to bo 
 
 i« 
 

 It4 CAFK CV>IV 
 
 ivrr i^vr^ty wbeti the *?ler k in Uoom. lu sctme iteurts 
 
 and m»W4^*)» which de:><^rve ;» bewsar Mm^ i^«^ for 
 BiiiW$ m Ktii? h«MQis(kherk«kI tufts or is;)ei:$« hk<* wkx^j?, 
 s^'tUt^rxNl o\n?r the wA^t^. They Kiis?*r in bloom ther^ 
 till the midvlle ot* July. CKv*>*>iwiUy near the K^ch 
 the>ae rvxindeti beil?* as ali^^ thvv«e of the seshsjsaiHlxwvrt 
 {^MmJbrwfkTi y^tpkMuiesX w^re filled with sami within an iiK*h 
 i^* their iit^v>s aiul weiv harvi like lar^ ant-hiUis w hile the 
 surrvxuKlin^ saiKl w^is a^V In ?uuuner» if the p^^^erty- 
 gt^iss; prvnt^ at the head ot' a Hollow loo^in^ towar^TiKe 
 s^J in a bleak position where the wind rus^he:? u{\ the 
 northern or e:x.{x>e!:ed hah' ot* the tnt^ is s^vueiimes all 
 bWk and deavl like an oveti-broom, while the Of^jxx^ie 
 hah' is yellow with bk>>$^>m:s« the whole hillside thus 
 |>rvseuiin^ a remarkable cv«trast when seen frvwn the 
 jx»Yerty-<iinv4ien an^l the tfourtshin^ side. This plant, 
 whioh in many plaee$ wouU be «|R^med an orua « 
 nv :, is here despised by nwi^jr on acovHint of its 
 K: ;: a<s<viatt\l with l«rretuw^ It mi^i well b«? 
 adopted K>r the Bart\stable cv>at<<a:Vartus« in a lield 
 ftiMfMur. I shonkl be |«vxk I ^ it. Hen* and there 
 were tracts oi' Beaoh-^inrass mingled with the Se^ks:^ 
 Gv»idtn-rvxl aiKl Bt aoh^-jx^*, which remiixled us still mon» 
 f<,^reibly ot* the ocv^iui, 
 
 We read that there was not a brvx>k in Truro. Yet 
 there were deer here ouvv, which must otWn have ps^ntevl 
 in Tain ; but 1 am pretty sure that 1 arWrwarvl saw a 
 small ftesh-water bax^k emjT4ying into the south skle of 
 I^unet Kiver, ihoiigh 1 was so het\lless> ^jkh toja^te 
 \t aiiy ra:e. a little K»y near by tokl me that he 
 drank at it. There was not a tree a< tar as we couKl 
 see, ai\d that whs manv miles each w^»>\ the irt*neml 
 
ACIJOStJ TlllO CAIM':. 
 
 125 
 
 h^viil of the M|>ljiinl \tr\w^ about tlin Hjunr^ cvorywlK^rc. 
 JOvcn Inmi ihc AllMiilic sidt; vv(! ovrrlookcd l\u'. Wny^iiml 
 Miw to AlaiKMiu^L Point in IMynioiilli, (uid Ix-llcr IVoiri 
 Miat s'ulv. l)(!('.aus(5 it wuk tlic liiglicst. Tlic iiImoHt univer- 
 sal barcncHH and suujoIImkihm of llic landscaiM) W(T«? hh 
 a^ru(!ablu iih novel, niukiu^j; it so inu(d) tiic inon^ like, tho 
 deck of a vcss^d. W(i saw vcsHrls Mn,ilin;jj Houtli into tlio 
 Hay, on (b(^ (>n<'. band, and noiib alon;^ tin; Allautio 
 Nbor(^, on (lu^ otht^r, all vvilb an alt wind. 
 
 Tlai .sinjj;l(5 road wbicb runs Icn^^tliwisr, tbc, (!a|M', now 
 winding ovit llio plain, now lln()U<;li tlic .sbrid)b<My 
 wbicb Hcrajx'M I be. wIm-c-Is of tbc. s(a^<', was a mere cart- 
 Irac.k in tli(; sand, connncudy williout any ('(Miccm to con- 
 iiiK^ it, and continually cbanging IVoni tbis side (o (liat, to 
 balder ;^round, or sonietinuis to avoi<l tbe ti<le. liul tbe 
 inbabitanis (rav(d (be vvast(! lusre and Iberc; |)il;;riui-wis(5 
 and slair in band, by narrow fbolpatbs, tbrougb wbicb 
 tb(i sand (lows out and ntveals tbc nakedn(!ss o("lbe land^ 
 Wo sbudden^d at tbe tbougbt of living tben; and taking 
 our arternoon walks over tliose barren swells, wbere wo 
 con Id overlook itw.vy step of our walk beror(! taking it, 
 and would bave to pray for a log oi" a snow-stonu to 
 conceal our destiny. Tbe wa,lk(!r tbere nnist soon (;at 
 bisju^art. 
 
 In tbe nortb part of tbe town (bert; is no bouse I'roiu 
 Hboro to sboro for siiveral niil<\s, and it is as wild and soli- 
 tary as tbe Western I'rairies — uscul to b(^ IndcMid, one 
 wbo bas seen every bouse in 'i'ruro will be surprised to 
 bear of tb(^ ninnber of tin; inbabilants, bnt perbaps five 
 luuidred of tbe men and boys of Ibis small (own were 
 tbon abroad on tbeir lisbing-grounds. Only a lew men 
 Btay at borne to till tbo sand or watcdi for black fisb. 
 Tlic lurmors arc lisbermon-farmcrs and underbtand bettor 
 
1-6 CAPE COD. 
 
 ploughing the sea than the land. They do not disturb 
 their sands much, though there is a plenty of sea-weed in 
 the creeks, to say nothing of blaoktish occasionally rot- 
 ting on the shore. Bet\veen the Pond and East Harbor 
 Village there was an interesting plantation of pitch-pines, 
 twenty or thirty acres in extent, like those which we had 
 already seen from the stage. One who liyed near said 
 that the land was purchased by two men for a shilling 
 or twenty-fiye cents an acre. Some is not considered 
 worth writing a deed for. This soil or sand, which was 
 partially coyered with poyerty and beach grass, sorrel, etc., 
 was furrowed at intervals of about four feet and the seed 
 dropped by a machine. The pines had come up admirably 
 and grown the first year three or four inches, and the 
 second six inches and more. TThere the seed had been 
 lately planted the white sand was freshly exposed in an 
 endless fun-ow winding round and round the sides of the 
 deep hollows, in a vortical spiral manner, which pro- 
 duced a very singular effect, as if you were looking into 
 the reverse side of a vast banded shield. This experi- 
 ment, so important to the Cape, appeared very success- 
 ful, and perhaps the time will come when the greater 
 part of this kind of land in Barnstable County will be 
 thus covered with an artificial pine forest, as has been 
 done in some parts of France. In that country 12,500 
 acres of downs had been thus covered in 1811 near 
 Bayonne. They are called pig7iadas, and according to 
 Loudon "'constitute the principal riches of the inhab- 
 itants, where there was a drifting desert before." It 
 .seemed a nobler kind of grain to raise than corn even. 
 
 A few years ago Truro was remarkable among the 
 Cape towns tor the number of sheep raised in it ; but I 
 Wiis told that at this time only two men kept sheep in the 
 
ACROSS THE CAFF. 127 
 
 town, aiul in IS^T). a Truro boy ton yoars old told nio 
 tliat he had never seen one. They were formerly pas- 
 tiiRHl on tlie unteneed lands or general tields, but now 
 the owners were more partieular to assert their rights, 
 and it eost too mueh lor feneing. The rails are eedar 
 from Maine, and two rails will answer for ordinary pur- 
 poses, but four are required for sheep. This was the 
 reason assigned by one who had formerly kept them for 
 not keeping them any longer. Feneing stutf is so ex- 
 pensive that I saw fenees made with only one rail, 
 and very often the rail when split was earefully tied 
 with a string. In one of the villages 1 saw the next 
 summer a eow tethered by a rope six rods long, the ro[ie 
 long in proportion as the feed was short and thin. Sixty 
 rods, ay, all the eables ot" the Cape, would have been no 
 more than fair. Tethered in the desert for fear that she 
 would get into Arabia Felix ! I helped a man weigh a 
 bundle of hay whieh he was selling to his neighbor, 
 holding one end of a pole from whieh it swung by a steel- 
 yard hook, and this was just half his whole erop. In 
 short, the eountry looked so barren that I several times 
 refrained from asking the inhabitant;? for a string or a 
 pieee of w rapping-paper, for fear I should rob them, for 
 they plainly were obliged to import these things as well 
 as rails, and where there were no news-boys, I did not 
 see what they would do tor waste paper. y 
 
 The objeets around us, the make-shitls of tishermen 
 ashore, often made us look down to see if we were stand- 
 ing on terra tirma. In the wells everywhere a bloek 
 and taekle were used to raise the bueket, instead of a 
 windlass, and by almost every house was laid up a v<par 
 s>v a plank or two full of auger-holes, saved fix)m a 
 vreek. The windmills were partly built of these, and 
 
128 CAPE COD. 
 
 they were worked into the public bridges. The light- 
 house keeper, who was having his barn shingled, told me 
 casually that he had made three thousand good shingles 
 for that purpose out of a mast. You would sometimes 
 see an old oar used for a rail. Frequently also some 
 fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near 
 the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw 
 fastened to a shed near the light-house a long new sign 
 with the words "Anglo Saxon" on it in large gilt let- 
 ters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could 
 afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the 
 same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat 
 as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing 
 through the Symplegades. 
 
 To the fisherman, the Cape itself is a sort of store- 
 ship laden with supplies, — a safer and larger craft which 
 carries the women and children, the old men and the 
 sick, and indeed sea-phrases are as common on it as on 
 board a vessel. Thus is it ever with a sea-going people. 
 The old Northmen used to speak of the " keel-ridge " of 
 the country, that is, the ridge of the Doffrafield Mountains, 
 as if the land were a boat turned bottom up. I was 
 frequently reminded of the Northmen here. The in- 
 habitants of the Cape are often at once farmers and sea- 
 rovers ; they are more than vikings or kings of the 
 bays, for their sway extends over the open sea also. A 
 farmer in Wellfleet, at whose house I afterward spent a 
 night, who had raised fifty bushels of potatoes the pre- 
 vious year, which is a large crop for the Cape, and had 
 extensive salt-works, pointed to his schooner, which lay 
 in sight, in which he and his man and boy occasionally 
 ran down the coast a-trading as far as the Capes of Vir 
 ginia. This was his market-cart, and his hired man 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE. 129 
 
 knew how to steer her. Thus he drove two teams 
 
 a-field, 
 
 " ere the high seas appeared 
 Under the opening eyelids of the morn." 
 
 Though probably he would not hear much of the " gray- 
 fly " on his way to Virginia. 
 
 A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are 
 always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean 
 highway or other, and the history of one of their ordi- 
 nary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the 
 shade. I have just heard of a Cape Cod captain who 
 was expected home in the beginning of the winter from 
 the West Indies, but was long since given up for lost, 
 till his relations at length have heard with joy, that, after 
 getting within forty miles of Cape Cod light, he was driven 
 back by nine,successive gales to Key West, between Flor- 
 ida and Cuba, and was once again shaping his course 
 for home. Thus he spent his winter. In ancient times 
 the adventures of these two or three men and boys would 
 have been made the basis of a myth, but now such tales 
 are crowded into a line of short-hand signs, like an alge- 
 braic formula in the shipping news. " Wherever over 
 the world," said Palfrey in his oration at Barnstable, 
 " you see the stars and stripes floating, you may have 
 good hope that beneath them some one will be found 
 who can tell you the soundings of Barnstable, or Well- 
 fleet, or Chatham Harbor." 
 
 I passed by the home of somebody's (or everybody's) 
 Uncle Bill, one day over on the Plymouth shore. It 
 was a schooner half keeled-up on the mud : we aroused 
 the master out of a sound sleep at noonday, by thump- 
 ing on the bottom of his vessel till he presented himself 
 at the hatch-way, for we wanted to borrow his clam-dig- 
 6* I 
 
; 
 
 130 CAPE COD. 
 
 ger. Meaning to make him a call, I looked out the next 
 morning, and lo ! he had run over to " the Pines " the 
 evening before, fearing an easterly storm. He outrode 
 the great gale in the spring of 1851, dashing about alone 
 in Plymouth Bay. He goes after rockweed, lighters 
 vessels, and saves wrecks. I still saw him lying in the 
 mud over at " the Pines " in the horizon, which place he 
 could not leave if he would, till flood tide. But he 
 would not then probably. This waiting for the tide is a 
 singular feature in life by the sea-shore. A frequent 
 answer is, " Well ! you can't start for two hours yet." It 
 is something new to a landsman, and at first he is not 
 disposed to wait. History says that " two inhabitants 
 of Truro were the first who adventured to the Falkhmd 
 Isles in pursuit of whales. This voyage was undertaken 
 in the year 1774, by tlie advice of Admiral Montague 
 of the British navy, and was crowned with success." 
 
 At the Pond Village we saw a pond three eighths of 
 a mile long densely filled with cat-tail flags, seven feet 
 high, — enough for all the coopers in New England. 
 • The western shore was nearly as sandy as the eastern, 
 but the water was much ^oother, and the bottom was 
 partially covered with the \lender grass-like sea-weed 
 (^Zostera), which we had not ^en on the Atlantic side ; 
 there were also a few rude shedsv/or trying fish on the 
 beach there, which made it appear less wild. In the few 
 marshes on this side we afterward saw Samphire, Rose- 
 mary, and other plants new to us inlanders. 
 
 In the summer and fall sometimes, hundreds of black- 
 fish (the Social Whale, Glohicephnlus melas of De Kay ; 
 called also Black Whale-fish, Howling Whale, Bottle- 
 head, &c.), fifteen feet or more in length, are driven 
 ashore in a sin<z;le school here. I witnessed such a scene 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE. JL31 
 
 in July, 1855. A carpenter who was working at tlie 
 light-house arriving early in the morning remarked that 
 he did not know but he had lost titty dollars by coming 
 to his work ; tor as he came along the Bay side he heard 
 them driving a school of blacktish ashore, and he had 
 debated with himself whether he should not go mid join 
 them and take his share, but had concluded to come to 
 his work. After breakfast I ciime over to this place, 
 about two miles distant, and near the beach met some of 
 tbe fishermen returning from their chase. Looking up 
 and down the shore, I could see about a mile south some 
 large black masses on the sand, which I knew must be 
 blacktish, and a man or two about them. As I walked 
 along towards them I soon came to a huge carcass whose 
 head was gone and whose blubber had been stripped off 
 some weeks before ; the tide was just beginning to move 
 it, and the stench compelled me to go a long way 
 round. ,tWhen I came to Great Hollow I found a fish- 
 erman and some boys on the watch, and counted about 
 thirty blacktish, just killed, with many lance wounds, and 
 the water was more or less bloody around. They were 
 partly on shore and partly in the water, held by a rope 
 round their tails till the tide should leave them. A boat 
 had been somewhat stove by the tail of one. They were 
 a smooth shining black, like India-rubber, and had 
 remarkably simple and lumpish forms for animated 
 creatures, with a blimt round snout or head, whale-like, 
 and simple stitl-looking flippers. The largest were about 
 fifteen feet long, but one or two were only five feet 
 long, and still without teeth. The fisherman slashed 
 one with his jackknife, to show me how thick the blubber 
 was, — about three inches ; and as I passed my finger 
 throu!2;h the cut it was covered thick with oil. The 
 
132 CAPE COD. 
 
 blubber looked like pork, and this man said that when 
 thev were trjing it the boys would sometimes come 
 round with a piece of bread in one hand, and take a 
 piece of blubber in the other to eat with it, prefening it 
 to pork scraps. He also cut into the tlesh beneath, 
 which was drm and red Uke beef, and he said that for 
 
 his part he preferred it when fresh to beef.\ It is stated 
 
 that in 1812 blacklish were used as food by the poor of 
 Bretagne, They were waiting for the tide to leave these 
 fishes high and dry, that they might strip off the blubber 
 and Ciirry it to their try-works in their boats, where they 
 try it on the beach. They get commonly a baiTel of 
 oil, wonh tifteen or twenty dollars, to a fish. There 
 were many lances and harpoons in the boats, — much 
 slenderer instruments than I had expected. An old man 
 came along the beach with a horse and wagon distribut- 
 ing the dinners of the fishermen, which their wives had 
 put up in little pails and jugs, and irhich he had collected 
 in the Pond Village, and for thjs service, I suppose, he 
 received a share of the oil. Xf one could not tell his 
 own pail, he took the first he "tame to. 
 
 As I stood there they raised the cry of "another 
 school," and we could see their black backs and their 
 blowing about a mile noithwan.1, as they went leaping 
 over the sea like horses. Some boats were already in 
 pursuit there, driving them toward the beach. Other 
 fishermen and boys running up began to jump into the 
 boats and push them off from where I stood, and I might 
 have gone too had I chosen.. Soon there were twenty- 
 five or thirty boats in pursuit, some large ones under 
 sail, and others rowing with might and main, keeping 
 outside of the school, those neai^est to the fishes striking 
 on the sides of their boats and blowinsr horns to drive 
 
 \ 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE. 133 
 
 them on to the beach. It was an exciting race. If tliey 
 succeed in driving them ashore each boat takes one share, 
 and tlien each man, but if they are compelled to strike 
 them off shore each boat's company take what they strike. 
 I walked rapidly along the shore toward the north, while 
 the tishermen were rowing still more swiftly to join their 
 companions, and a little boy who walked by my side was 
 congratulating himself that his father's boat was beating 
 another one. An old blind lisherman whom we met, 
 inquired, '' Where are they, I can't see. Have they got 
 them ? " In the mean while the tishes had turned and 
 were escaping northward towanl Provincetown, only 
 occasionally the back of one being seen. So the nearest 
 crews were compelled to strike them, and we saw several 
 boats soon made fast, each to its fish, which, four or five 
 rods ahead was drawini^ it like a race-horse straisjjht 
 toward the beach, leaping half out of water blowing blood 
 and water from its hole, and leaving a streak of foam 
 behind. But they went ashore too far north ibr us, 
 though we could see the fishermen leap out and lance 
 them on the sand. It was just like pictures of whaling 
 which I have seen, and a fisherman told me that it was 
 nearly as dangerous. In his first trial he had been much 
 excited, and in his haste had used a lance with its scab- 
 bai'd on, but nevertheless had thrust it quite through his 
 fish. 
 
 I learned that a few days before this one hundred and 
 eighty blackfish had been driven ashore in one school 
 at Eastham, a little farther south, and that the keeper of 
 BiUingsgate Point tight -went out one morning about the 
 same time and cut his initials on the backs of a large 
 school which had run ashore in the night, and sold his 
 right to them to Provincetown for one thousand dollars, 
 
134 CAPE COD. 
 
 and probably Provincetown made as much more. An- 
 other fisherman told me that nineteen years ago three 
 hundred and eighty were driven ashore in one school at 
 Great Hollow. In the Naturalists' Library, it is said 
 that, in the winter of 1809 - 10, one thousand one hundred 
 and ten " approached the shore of Hralfiord, Iceland, and 
 were captured." De Kay says it is not known why 
 they are stranded. But one fisherman declared to me 
 that they ran ashore in pursuit of squid, and that they 
 generally came on the coast about the last of July. 
 
 About a week afterward, when I came to this shore, 
 it was strewn as far as I could see with a glass, with 
 the carcasses of blackfish stripped of their blubber and 
 their heads cut ofi"; the latter lying higher up. Walk- 
 ing on the beach was out of the question on account of 
 the stench. Between Provincetown and Truro they lay 
 in the very path of the stage. Yet no steps were taken 
 to abate the nuisance, and men were catching lobsters 
 as usual just off the shore. I was told that they did 
 sometimes tow them out and sink them ; yet I wondered 
 where they got the stones to sink them with. Of course 
 they might be made into guano, and Cape Cod is not so 
 fertile that her inhabitants can afford to do without this 
 manure, — to say nothing of the diseases they may pro- 
 duce. \ 
 
 After my return home, wishing to\ learn what was 
 known about the Blackfish, I had recourse to the re- 
 ports of the zoological surveys of the State, and I found 
 that Storer had rightfully omitted it in his Keport on the 
 Fishes, since it is not a fish ; so I turned to Emmons's 
 Report of the Mammalia, but was surprised to find that 
 the seals and whales were omitted by him, because ho 
 had had no op[)ortunity to observe them. Considering 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE. 135 
 
 now this State has risen and thriven by its fisheries, — - 
 tliat the legislature which authorized the Zoological Sur- 
 vey sat under the emblem of a codfish, — that Nan- 
 tucket and New Bedford are within our limits, — that 
 an early riser may find a thousand or fifteen hundred 
 dollars' worth of blackfish on the shore in a morning, — 
 that the Pilgrims saw the Indians cutting up a blackfish 
 on the shore at Eastham, and called a part of that shore 
 *' Grampus Bay," from the number of blackfish they 
 found there, before they got to Plymouth, — and that 
 from that time to this these fishes have continued to 
 enrich one or two counties almost annually, and that 
 their decaying carcasses were now poisoning the air of 
 one county for more than thirty miles, — I thought it 
 remarkable that neither the poi)ular nor scientific name 
 was to be found in a report on our mammalia, — a cata^ 
 logue of the productions of our land and water. 
 
 We had here, as well as all across the Cape, a fair 
 view of Provincetown, five or six miles distant over the 
 water toward the west, under its shrubby sand-hills, with ■ 
 its harbor now full of vessels whose masts mingled with / 
 the spires of its churches, and gave it the appearance '' 
 of a quite large seaport town. 
 
 The inhabitants of all the lower Cape towns enjoy 
 thus the prospect of two seas. Standing on the western 
 or larboard shore, and looking across to where the dis- 
 tant mainland looms, they can say. This is Massachu- 
 setts Bay ; and then, after an hour's sauntering walk, 
 ihey may stand on the starboard side, beyond which 
 MO land is seen to loom, and say, This is the Atlantic 
 Ocean. 
 
 On our way back to the light-house, \y whose white- 
 washed tower we steered as securely as the mariner by 
 
136 CAPE COD. 
 
 its light at night, we passed through a graveyard, which 
 apparently was saved from being blown away by its 
 slates, for they had enabled a thick bed of huckleberry- 
 bushes to root themselves amid the graves. We thought 
 it would be worth the while to read the epitaphs where 
 so many were lost at sea ; however, as not only their 
 lives, but commonly their bodies also, were lost or not 
 identified, there were fewer epitaphs of this sort than we 
 expected, though there were not a few. Their grave- 
 yard is the ocean. Near the eastern side we started up 
 a fox in a hollow, the only kind of wild quadruped, if 
 I except a skunk in a salt-marsh, that we saw in all 
 our walk (unless painted and box tortoises may be 
 called quadrupeds). He was a large, plump, shaggy 
 fellow, like a yellow dog, with, as usual, a white tip 
 to his tail, and looked as if he ftired well on the Cape. 
 He cantered away into the shrub-oaks and bayberry- 
 bushes which chanced to grow there, but were hardly 
 high enough to conceal him. I saw another the next 
 summer leaping over the top of a beach-plum a little 
 farther north, a small arc of his course (which I trust 
 is not yet run), from which I endeavored in vain to cal- 
 culate his whole oj-bit : there were too many unknown 
 attractions to be allowed for. I also saw the exuvias 
 of a third fast sinking into the sand, and added the skull 
 to my collection. Hence I concluded that they must be 
 plenty thereabouts ; but a traveller may meet with more 
 than an inhabitant, since he is more likely to take an 
 unfrequented route across the country. They told me 
 that in some years they died off in great numbers by a 
 kind of madness, under the effect of which they were 
 seen whirling round and round as if in pursuit of their 
 tails. In Crantz's account of Greenland, he says : " They 
 
ACROSS THE CAPE. 137 
 
 (the foxes) live upon birds and their egg?, and, when 
 they can't get them, upon crow-berries, mussels, crabs, 
 and what the sea casts out." 
 
 Just before reaching the light-house, we saw the sun 
 set in the Bay, — for standing on that narrow Cape was, 
 as I have said, like being on the deck of a vessel, or 
 rather at the masthead of a man-of-war, thirty miles at 
 sea, though we knew that at the same moment the sun 
 was setting behind our native hills, which were just 
 below the horizon in that direction. This sight drove 
 everything else quite out of our heads, and Homer and 
 the Ocean came in again with a rush, — 
 
 *Ev 8* firea *QK€ava Xafnrpov <l>dos rjfXioto, 
 
 the shining torch of the sun fell into the ocean. 
 
VIII. 
 nXHE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 
 
 This light-house, known to mariners as the Cape Cod 
 or Highland Light, is one of our "primary sea-coast 
 lights," and is usually the first seen by those approach- 
 ing the entrance of Massachusetts Bay from Europe. 
 It is forty-three miles from Cape Ann Light, and forty- 
 one from Boston Light. It stands about twenty rods 
 from the edge of the bank, which is here formed of clay. 
 I borrowed the plane and square, level and dividers, 
 of a carpenter who was shingling a barn near by, and 
 using one of those shingles made of a mast, contrived a 
 rude sort of quadrant, with pins for sights and pivots, 
 and got the angle of elevation of the Bank opposite the 
 light-house, and with a couple of cod-lines the length of 
 its slope, and so measured its height on the shingle. It 
 rises one hundred and ten feet above its immediate base, 
 or about one hundred and twenty-three feet above mean 
 low water. Graham, who has carefully surveyed the ex- 
 tremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred and thirty 
 feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an angle of forty 
 degrees with the horizon, where I measured it, but the 
 clay is generally much steeper. No cow nor hen ever 
 gets down it. Half a mile farther south the bank is 
 fifteen or twenty -five feet higher, and that appeared to 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 139 
 
 be the highest land in North Truro. Even this vast 
 clay bank is fast wearing away. Small streams of water 
 trickling down it at intervals of two or three rods, have 
 left the intermediate clay in the form of steep Gothic 
 roofs fifty feet high or more, the ridges as sharp and 
 rugged-looking as rocks ; and in one place the bank is 
 curiously eaten out in the form of a large semicircular 
 crater. " 
 
 According to the light-house keeper, the Cape is wast- 
 mg here on both sides, though most on the eastern. In 
 some places it had lost many rods within the last year, 
 and, erelong, the light-house must be moved. We cal- 
 culated, from Ms data, how soon the Cape would be 
 quite worn away at this point, " for," said he, " I can 
 remember sixty years back." We were even more sur- 
 prised at this last announcement, — that is, at the slow 
 waste of life and energy in our informant, for we had 
 taken him to be not more than forty, — than at the rapid 
 wasting of the Cape, and we thought that he stood a fair 
 chance to outlive the former. 
 
 Between this October and June of the next year, 1 
 found that the bank had lost about forty feet in one 
 place, opposite the light-house, and it was cracked more 
 than forty feet farther from the edge at the last date, the 
 shore being strewn with the recent rubbish. But I 
 judged that generally it was not wearing away here at 
 the rate of more than six feet annually. Any conclu- 
 sions drawn from the observations of a few years or one 
 generation only are likely to prove false, and the Cape 
 may balk expectation by its durability. In some places 
 even a wrecker's foot-path down the bank lasts several 
 years. One old inhabitant told us that when the light- 
 house v-as built, in 1798, it was calculated that it would 
 
140 CAPE COD. 
 
 stand forty-five years, allowing the bank to waste one 
 / length of fence each year, " but," said he, " there it is " 
 I (or rather another near the same site, about twenty rods 
 \ from the edge of the bank). 
 ^■^ The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere, for 
 one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago on the 
 north of Provincetown whose ^^ bones" (this was his 
 word) are still visible many rods within the present lino 
 of the beach, half buried in sand. Perchance they lie 
 alongside the timbers of a whale. The general state- 
 ment of the inhabitants is, that the Cape is wasting on 
 both sides, but extending itself on particular points 
 on the south and west, as at Chatham and Monomoy 
 Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long, and Race Points. 
 James Freeman stated in his day that above three miles 
 had been added to Monomoy Beach during the previous 
 fifty years, and it is said to be still extending as fast as 
 ever. A writer in the Massachusetts Magazine, in the 
 \ last century, tells us that " wlien the English first settled 
 upon the Cape, there was an island off Chatham, at three 
 leagues' distance, called Webbs' Island, containing twenty 
 acres, covered with red-cedar or savin. The inhabitants 
 of Nantucket used to carry w^ood from it " ; but he adds 
 that in his day a large rock alone marked the spot, and 
 the water was six fathoms deep there. The entrance to 
 Nauset Harbor, which was once in Eastham, has now 
 travelled south into Orleans. The islands in Wellfleet 
 Harbor once formed a continuous beach, though now 
 small vessels pass between them. And so of many 
 other parts of this coast. 
 
 Perhaps what the Ocean takes from one part of the 
 Cape it gives to another, — robs Peter to pay Paul. 
 On the eastern side the sea appears to be everywhere 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 141 
 
 encroanltiing on the land. Not only the land is under 
 mined, and its ruins carried off by currents, but the 
 sand is blown from the beach directly up the steep bank 
 where it is one hundred and fifty feet high, and covers 
 the original surface there many feet deep. If you sit on 
 the edge you will have ocular demonstration of this by 
 soon getting your eyes full. Thus the bank preserves 
 its height as last as it is worn away. This sand is 
 steadily travelling westward at a rapid rate, " more than 
 a hundred yards," says one writer, within the memory 
 of inhabitants now living ; so that in some places peat- 
 meadows are buried deep under the sand, and the peat 
 is cut through it ; and in one place a large peat-meadow 
 has made its appearance on the shore in the bank cov- 
 ered many feet deep, and peat has been cut there. Tliis 
 accounts for that great pebble of peat which we saw in 
 the surf. The old oysterman had told us that many 
 years ago he lost a " crittur " by her being mired in a 
 swamp near the Atlantic side east of his house, and 
 twenty years ago he lost the swamp itself entirely, but 
 has since seen signs of it appearing on the beach. He 
 also said that he had seen cedar stumps " as big as cart- 
 wheels" (!) on the bottom of the Bay, three miles off 
 Billingsgate Point, when leaning over the side of his 
 boat in pleasant weather, and that that was dry land not 
 long ago. Another told us that a log canoe known to 
 have been buried many years before on the Bay side at 
 East Harbor in Truro, where the Cape is extremely nar- 
 row, appeared at length on the Atlantic side, the Cape 
 having rolled over it, and an old woman said, — " Now, 
 you see, it is true what I told you, that the Cape is 
 moving." 
 
 The bars along the coast shift with every storm, and 
 
1-1-: CAFE COP. 
 
 in many places there is oeoasionaHv none at all. Wo 
 ourselves observed the effect f»f a single storm with a 
 high tide in the night, in J14K, ISoo. It moved the sand 
 on the beach opposite t)fte light-house to the deptli of 
 six feet, and three rod^ in width a.^ far as we could see 
 north and south, aj^ carried it bodily off no one knows 
 exactly where, JiCying b{\re in one place a large rcvk 
 five feet high which w;\s invisible befoi*e, :\nd narixnv- 
 ing the beach to that extent. There is usually, as I 
 have Siiid, no bathing on the back side of the Cape, on 
 account of the undertow, but when we were there last, 
 the sea had, three months betore, cast up a bar near this 
 light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over whicii 
 the tidti did not tiow, leaving a narivw cove, then a 
 quarj<pf of a mile long, between it tmd the shore, which 
 at^\ied excellent bathing. This cove had fivm time to 
 time been closed up as the bar travelled northwaixl. in 
 one instance imprisoning four or live hundred whiting 
 jvnd coti, which died there, and the water as otten turned 
 fresh and tiniUly gtwe place to sand. This bar, the in- 
 habitants assnriHi us, might be wholly removed, and the 
 water six feet deep there in two or three days. 
 
 The light-house keeper said that when the wind blowcd 
 stixmg on to the shore, the waves ate last into the bank, 
 but when it blowed off they took no sand away ; for in 
 the former case the wind heaped up the surface of the 
 water next to the beach, and to preserve its equilibrium 
 a strong undertow immediately set back agjiin into the 
 sea which carried with it the sand and whatever else was 
 in the way. and let't the beach hard to walk on ; but in 
 the latter case the undertow set on. and carried the sand 
 with it, so that it was particularly dithcult for shipwi-eckcd 
 men to get to land when tlie wind blowed on to the shore, 
 
THE IIICULAKD LIGHT. 143 
 
 but easier when it blowed otV. This uiulertow, meeting 
 the next surfaee wave on the bar whieh itself has made, 
 forms part of the dam over wliieh the hitter breaks, as 
 over an upright walh The sea thus phiys with the huul 
 hokiing a sand-bar in its moutli awhile belbre it swallows 
 it, as a eiit plays with a mouse ; but the fatal gripe is 
 sure to eome at last. The sea sends its rapaeious east 
 wind to rob tiie land, but before the former has got tar 
 with its prey, the land sends its honest west wind to re- 
 eover some of its own. But, aeeording to liieutenant 
 Davis, the forms, extent, and distribution of sand-bars 
 and banks are prineipally determined, not by winds and 
 waves, but by tides. 
 
 Our host said that you Avould be sur[>rised if you were 
 on the beach when the wind blew a luirrieane diieetly 
 on to it, to see that none of the driit-wood eame ashore, 
 but all was earried direetly northward and parallel with 
 the shore as fast as a man ean walk, by the inshore cur- 
 rent, whieh sets strongly in that (Jli*eetion at tlood tiile. 
 The strongest swimmers also ;ir(* earried along with it, 
 and never gain an inch toward the beaeh. Even a large 
 rock has been moved half a mile northward along the 
 beaeh. He assured us that the sea was never still on 
 the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as 
 your head, so that a great part of the time you could 
 not launch a boat there, and even in the calmest weather 
 the waves run six or eight feet up the beach, though 
 then yon could get ot^' on a plank. Chaniplain and 
 Pourtrincourt could not land here in 1 GOG, on account of 
 the swell {Ja /loulic), yt-t the savages came olV to thcni 
 in a canoe. In the Sieur de la Bordc's " Relation d(>s 
 Caraibes," my edition of which was published at Am* 
 sterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says: — 
 
U-t CAPE COD. 
 
 '• Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [i. e. a god], 
 makes the great lames a la mer, and overturns canoes. 
 Lames a la mer are the long vagiies which are not 
 broken (entrecotipees), and such as one sees come to land 
 all in one piece, from one end of a beach to another, 
 so that, however little wind there may be, a shallop or 
 a canoe could hardly land {ahorder terre) without turn- 
 ing over, or being tilled with water." 
 
 But on the Bay side the water even at its edge 
 is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Commonly 
 there are no boats used along this beach. There was 
 a boat belonging to the Highland Light which the 
 next keeper after he had been there a year had not 
 launched, though he said that there was good fishing just 
 off the shore. Generally the Life Boats cannot be used 
 when needed. When the waves run very high it is im- 
 possible to get a boat off, however skilfully you steer it, 
 for it will often be completely covered by the curving 
 edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so 
 hlled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned 
 directly over backwards and all the contents spilled out. 
 A spar thirty feet long is served in the same way. 
 
 I heard of a party who went off fishing back of Well- 
 5eet some years ago, in two boats, in calm weather, 
 tvho, when they had laden their boats with fish, and 
 approached the land again, found such a swell break- 
 mg on it, though there was no wind, that they were 
 afraid to enter it. At first they thought to pull for 
 Provmcetown. but night was coming on, and that was 
 many miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate 
 one. As often as they approached the shore and saw 
 the terrible breakers that intervened, they were deterred. 
 in shurt, they were thoroughly frightened. Finally, hav- 
 
THE fflGHLAND LIGHT. 145 
 
 ing thrown tlieir lisli overboard, those in one boat chose 
 a iiivorable oi)portunity, and succeeded, by skiH and 
 good luck, in reaching the hmd, but they were unwill- 
 ing to take the responsibility of* telling the others when 
 to come in, and as the other helmsman was inex[)eri- 
 enced, their boat was swamped at once, yet all man- 
 aged to save themselves. 
 
 Much smaller waves soon make a boat " nail-sick," as 
 the phrase is. The keeper said that after a long and 
 strong blow there would be threejiirge waves, each suc- 
 cessively larger than the last, and then no large ones for 
 some time, and that, when they wished to land in a 
 boat, they came in on the last and largest wave. Sir 
 Thomas Browne (as quoted in Brand's Popular Antiq- 
 uities, p. 372), on the subject of the tenth wave being 
 *' greater or more dangerous than any other," after quot- 
 ing Ovid, — 
 
 " Qui venit hie fluctus, fluctus supcreminet omnes 
 Posterior nono est, uudecimo que prior," — 
 
 says, " Which, notwithstanding, is evidently false ; nor 
 can it be made out either by observation either upon the 
 shore or the ocean, as we have with diligence explored 
 in both. And surely in vain we expect regularity in the 
 waves of the sea, or in the particular motions thereof, as 
 we may in its general reciprocations, whose causes are 
 constant, and effects theretbre correspondent ; whereas 
 its fluctuations are but motions subservient, w^hich winds, 
 storms, shores, shelves, and every interjacency, irreg- 
 ulates." 
 
 We read that the Clay Pounds were so called, " be- 
 cause vessels have had tlie misibrtune to be pounded 
 against it in gales of wind," which we regard as a doubt- 
 7 J 
 
/ 
 
 146 CAPE COD. 
 
 ful derivation. There are small ponds here, upheld by 
 the claj, which were formerly called the Clay Pits. 
 Perhaps this, or Clay Ponds, is the origin of the name. 
 Water is found in the clay quite near the surface ; but 
 we heard of one man who had sunk a well in the sand 
 close by, " till he could see stars at noonday," without 
 finding any. Over this bare Highland the wind has full 
 sweep. Even in July it blows the wings over the heads 
 of the young turkeys, which do not know enough to 
 head against it ; and in gales the doors and windows are 
 blown in, and you must hold on to the light-house to pre- 
 vent being blown into the Atlantic. They who merely 
 keep out on the beach in a storm in the winter are some- 
 times rewarded by the Humane Society. If you would 
 feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence 
 on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland 
 Light, in Truro. 
 
 It was said in 1794 that more vessels were cast away 
 on the east shore of Truro than anywhere in Barnstable 
 County. Notwithstanding that this light-house has since 
 been erected, after almost every storm we read of one or 
 more vessels wrecked here, and sometimes more than a 
 dozen wrecks are visible from this point at one time. 
 The inhabitants hear the crash of vessels going to pieces 
 as they sit round their hearths, and they commonly 
 date from some memorable shipwreck. If the history 
 of this beach could be written from beginning to end, 
 it would be a thrilling page in the history of com- 
 merce. 
 
 Truro was settled in the year 1700 as Danrjerjield, 
 This was a very appropriate name, for I aiterward read 
 on a monument in the graveyard, near Pamet River, the 
 following inscription: — 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 147 
 
 Sacred 
 
 to the memory of 
 
 57 citizens of Truro, 
 
 who were lost in seven 
 
 vessels, which 
 
 foundered at sea in 
 
 the memorable gale 
 
 of Oct. 3d, 1841. 
 
 Their names and ages by families were recorded on dif- 
 ferent sides of the stone. They are said to have been 
 lost on George's Bank, and I was told that only one ves- 
 sel drifted ashore on the back side of the Cape, with the 
 boys locked into the cabin and drowned. It is said that 
 the homes of all were " within a circuit of two miles." 
 Twenty-eight inhabitants of Dennis were lost in the 
 same gale ; and I read that " in one day, immediately 
 after this storm, nearly or quite one hundred bodies 
 were taken up and buried on Cape Cod." The Truro 
 Insurance Company failed for want of skippers to take 
 charge of its vessels. But the surviving inhabitants 
 went a fishing again the next year as usual. I found 
 that it would not do to speak of shipwrecks there, for 
 almost every family has lost some of its members at 
 sea. " Who lives in that house ? " I inquired. " Three 
 widows," was the reply. The stranger and the inhab- 
 itant view the shore with very different eyes. The 
 former may have come to see and admire the ocean in 
 a storm ; but the latter looks on it as the scene where his 
 nearest relatives were wrecked. When I remarked to 
 an old wrecker partially blind, who was sitting on the 
 edge of the bank smoking a pipe, which he had just lit 
 with a match of dried beach-grass, that I supposed he 
 liked to hear the sound of the surf, he answered : "No, 
 
348 CAPE COD. 
 
 I do not like to hear the sound of the surf." He had 
 lost at least one son in " the memorable gale,'* and could 
 tell many a talc of the shipwrecks which he had wit- 
 nessed there. 
 
 In the year 1717, a noted pirate named Bellamy was 
 led on to the bar off Wellfleet by the captain of a snow 
 which he had taken, to whom he had offered his vessel 
 again if he would pilot him into Provincetown Harbor. 
 Tradition says that the latter threw over a burning tar* 
 barrel in the night, which drifted ashore, and the pirates 
 followed it. A storm coming on, their whole fleet was 
 wrecked, and more than a hundred dead bodies lay along 
 the shore. Six who escaped shipwreck were executed. 
 "At times to this day" (1793), says the historian of 
 Wellfleet, " there are King William and Queen Mary's 
 coppers picked up, and pieces of silver called cob-money. 
 The violence of the seas moves the sands on the outer 
 bar, so that at times the iron caboose of the ship [that 
 is, Bellamy's] at low ebbs has been seen." Another 
 tells us that, " For many years after this shipwreck, a 
 man of a very singular and frightful aspect used every 
 spring and autumn to be seen travelling on the Cape, 
 who was supposed to have been one of Bellamy's crew. 
 The presumption is that he went to some place where 
 money had been secreted by the pirates, to get such a 
 supply as his exigencies required. When he died, many 
 pieces of gold were found in a girdle which he con- 
 stantly wore." 
 
 As I was walking on the beach here in my last visit, 
 looking for shells and pebbles, just after that storm which 
 I have mentioned as moving the sand to a great depth, 
 not knowing but I might find some cob-money, I did 
 afvtually pick up a French crown piece, worth about a 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 149 
 
 dollar and six cents, near high-water mark, on the still 
 moist sand, just under the abrupt, caving base of the 
 bank. It was of a dark slate color, and looked like a 
 flat pebble, but still bore a very distinct and handsome 
 head of Louis XV., and the usual legend on the reverse, 
 Sit Nomen Domini Benedictum (Blessed be the Name 
 of the Lord), a pleasing sentiment to read in the sands 
 of the sea-shore, whatever it might be stamped on, and 
 I also made out the date, 1741. Of course, I thought 
 at firs^ that it was that same old button which I have 
 found so many times, but my knife soon showed the 
 silver. Afterward, rambling on the bars at low tide, I 
 cheated my companion by holding up round shells (/Scw- 
 tell(E) between my fingers, whereupon he quickly stripped 
 and came off to me. 
 
 In the Revolution, a British ship of war called the 
 Somerset was wrecked near the Clay Pounds, and all 
 on board, some hundreds in number, were taken prison- 
 ers. My informant said that he had never seen any 
 mention of this in the histories, but that at any rate he 
 knew of a silver watch, which one of those prisoners by 
 accident left there, which was still going to tell the story. 
 But this event is noticed by some writers. 
 
 The next summer I saw a sloop from Chatham drag- 
 ging for anchors and chains just off this shore. She 
 had her boats out at the work while she shuffled about 
 on various tacks, and, when anything was found, drew 
 up to hoist it on board. It is a singular employment, at 
 which men are regularly hired and paid for their indus- 
 try, to hunt to-day in pleasant weather for anchors which 
 have been lost, — the sunken faith and hope of mariners, 
 to which they trusted in vain ; now, perchance, it is the 
 rusty one of some old pirate's ship or Norman fisher- 
 
150 CAPE COD. 
 
 man, whose cable parted here two hundred years ago; 
 and now the best bower anchor of a Canton or a Cali- 
 fornia ship, which has gone about her business. If the 
 roadsteads of the spiritual ocean could be thus dragged, 
 what rusty flukes of hope deceived and parted chain- 
 cables of faith might again be windlassed aboard ! 
 enough to sink the finder's craft, or stock new navies 
 to the end of time. The bottom of the sea is strewn 
 with anchors, some deeper and some shallower, and 
 alternately covered and uncovered by the sand, per- 
 chance with a small length of iron cable still attached, 
 — to which where is the other end ? So many uncon- 
 cluded tales to be continued another time. So, if we 
 had diving-bells adapted to the spiritual deeps, we should 
 see anchors with their cables attached, as thick as eels 
 in vinegar, all wriggling vainly toward their holding- 
 ground. But that is not treasure for us which another 
 man has lost ; rather it is for us to seek what no other 
 man has found or can find, — not be Chatham men, 
 dragging for anchors. 
 
 The annals of this voracious beach ! who could write 
 them, unless it were a shipwrecked sailor ? How many 
 who have seen it have seen it only in the midst of dan- 
 ger and distress, the last strip of earth which their mortal 
 eyes beheld. Think of the amount of suffering which 
 a single strand has witnessed. The ancients would have 
 represented it as a sea-monster with open jaws, more 
 terrible than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabitant of 
 Truro told me that about a fortnight after the St. John 
 was wrecked at Cohasset he found two bodies on the 
 shore at the Clay Pounds. They were those of a man, 
 and a corpulent woman. The man had thick boots on, 
 though his head was off, but " it was alongside." It took 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 151 
 
 the finder some weeks to get over the sight. Perhaps 
 they were man and wife, and whom God had joined the 
 ocean currents had not put asunder. Yet by what slight 
 accidents at first may they have been associated in their 
 drifting. Some of the bodies of those passengers were 
 picked up far out at sea, boxed up and sunk ; some 
 brought ashore and buried. There are more consequen- 
 ces to a shipwreck than the underwriters notice. The 
 Gulf Stream may return some to their native shores, or 
 drop them in some out-of-the-way cave of Ocean, where 
 time and the elements will write new riddles with their 
 bones. — But to return to land again. 
 
 In this bank, above the clay, I counted in the summer, 
 two hundred holes of the Bank Swallow within a space 
 six rods long, and there were at least one thousand old 
 birds within three times that distance, twittering over the 
 surf. I had never associated them in my thoughts with 
 the beach before. One little boy who had been a-birds- 
 nesting had got eighty swallows' eggs for his share ! 
 Tell it not to the Humane Society. There were many 
 young birds on the clay beneath, which had tumbled out 
 and died. Also there were many Crow-blackbirds hop- 
 ping about in the dry fields, and the Upland Plover were 
 breeding close by the light-house. The keeper had once 
 cut off" one's wing while mowing, as she sat on her eggs 
 there. This is also a favorite resort for gunners in the 
 fall to shoot the Golden Plover. As around the shores of 
 a pond are seen devil's-needles, butterflies, &c., so here, 
 to my surprise, I saw at the same season great devil's- 
 needles of a size proportionably larger, or nearly as big 
 as my finger, incessantly coasting up and down the edge 
 of the bank, and butterflies also were hovering over it, 
 and I never saw so many dorr-bugs and beetles of various 
 
152 CAPE COD. 
 
 kinds as Ptrewed the beach. They had apparently 
 flown over the bank in the night, and could not get up 
 again, and some had perhaps fallen into the sea and were 
 washed ashore. They may have been in part attracted 
 by the light-house lamps. 
 
 The Clay Pounds are a more fertile tract than usual. 
 We saw some fine patches of roots and corn here. As 
 generally on the Cap^the plants had little stalk or leaf, 
 but ran remarkabl^o seed. The corn was hardly more 
 than half as high as in the interior, yet the ears were 
 large and full, and one farmer told us that he could raise 
 forty bushels on an acre without manure, and sixty with 
 it. The heads of the rye also were remarkably large. 
 The Shadbush (Amelanchier), Beach Plums, and Blue- 
 berries ( Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum) , like the apple- 
 trees and oaks, were very dwarfish, spreading over the 
 sand, but at the same time very fruitful. The blueberry 
 was but an inch or two high, and its fruit often rested on 
 the ground, so that you did not suspect the presence of the 
 bushes, even on those bare hills, until you were treading 
 on them. I thought that this fertility must be owing 
 mainly to the abundance of moisture in the atmosphere, 
 for I observed that what little grass there was was re- 
 markably laden with dew in the morning, and in summer 
 dense imprisoning fogs frequently last till midday, turn- 
 ing one's beard into a wet napkin about his throat, and 
 the oldest inhabitant may lose his way within a stone's 
 throw of his house or be obliged to follow the beach for 
 a guide. The brick house attached to the light-house 
 was exceedingly damp at that season, and writing-paper 
 lost all its stiffness in it. It was impossible to dry your 
 towel after bathing, or to press flowers without their mil- 
 dewing. The air was so moist that we rarely wished to 
 
THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 153 
 
 drink, though we could at all times taste the salt on 
 our^ips. Salt was rarely used at table, and our host 
 told us that his cattle invariably refused it when it was 
 offered them, they got so much with their grass and at 
 every breath, but he said that a sick horse or one just 
 from the country would sometimes take a hearty draught 
 of salt water, and seemed to like it and be the better 
 for it. 
 
 It was surprising to see how much water was con- 
 tained in the terminal bud of the sea-side golden rod, 
 standing in the sand early in July, and also how turnips, 
 beets, carrots, &c., flourished even in pure sand. A man 
 travelling by the shore near there not long before us 
 noticed something green growing in the pure sand of the 
 beach, just at high-water mark, and on approaching found 
 it to be a bed of beets flourishing vigorously, probably 
 from seed washed out of the Franklin. Also beets and 
 turnips came up in the sea-weed used for manure in 
 many parts of the Cape- This suggests how variou.i 
 plants may have been dispersed over the world to distant 
 islands and continents. Vessels, with seeds in their car- 
 goes, destined for particular ports, where perhaps they 
 were not needed, have been cast away on desolate islands, 
 and though their crews perished, some of their seeds have 
 been preserved. Out of many kinds a few would find 
 a soil and climate adapted to them, — become naturalized 
 and perhaps drive out the native plants at last, and so fit 
 the land for the habitation of man. It is an ill wind that 
 blows nobody any good, and for the time lamentable 
 shipwrecks may thus contribute a new vegetable to a 
 continent's stock, and prove on the whole a lasting bless- 
 ing to its inhabitants. Or winds and currents might 
 effect the same without the intervention of man. What 
 7* 
 
154 CAFE COP. 
 
 indeed are the various suooulent plants v.-hioh grow on 
 the beach but suoh beds of beets and turnips, sprung 
 originally t"i\nu seeds which perhaps were east on the 
 waters tor this end, though we do not know the Frank- 
 lin which they eame out of ? In ancient times some Mr. 
 Bell (?) was sailing this way in his ark with seeds o{ 
 roeket, Siiltwort, sandwort, beach-grass, samphire, bay- 
 berry, poverty-grass, Ote., all nicely labelled with direc- 
 tions, intending to establish a nursery somewhere : and 
 did not a nursery get established, though he thought that 
 he had failed ? 
 
 About the light-house I observed in the summer the 
 prettv Po!i/(jaIa poIt/i]/ama, spreading r;iy-wise tlat on the 
 ground, white pasture thistles {Cirshtm pumihtm), and 
 amid the shrubbery the S :i: lax phi (tea, which is commonly 
 said not to gn.iw so tV.r north ; near the edge of the banks 
 about half a mile southwanl, the brotnn crowl)erry {Em- 
 petnim Conradti), tor which Plymouth is the only locality 
 in Mass:\chusetts usually named, forms pretty green 
 mounds four or tive feet in diameter by one foot high, — 
 sofl, springy beds for the wayfarer. I saw it afterward 
 in rixnincetown. but prettiest of all the scarlet pimper- 
 nel, or poor-man's weather-glass {Anacjallis arrensis), 
 greets you in tair weather on almost every square yard 
 of sand. From Yarmouth, 1 have received the C/irt/s- 
 opst's Jalcata (golden aster), and }'acciiu'iim sfmniiwnm 
 (Deerberry or Squaw Huckleberry), with truit not edible, 
 sometimes as large as a cranberry (Sept. 7). 
 
 The Highland Light-house,* wheiv we were staying, is 
 
 a substantial-looking building of brick, painted white, 
 
 and surmounted by an iron cap. Attached to it is 
 
 the dwelling of the keeper, one story high, also of 
 
 • The liglit-house has since beeu rebuilt, aud shows a /■"lysntf light 
 
THK HIGHLAND LIGHT. 155 
 
 brick, and built by govcrninont. As we were ^ohv^ to 
 spoiul tlio night in Ji light-house, we wished to make the 
 most of so novel an experience, and therefore told our 
 host that we would like to accomi)any him when he went 
 to light up- At rather early candle-light he lighted a 
 small Japan lamp, allowing it to smoke rather more than 
 we like on ordinary occasions, and told us to follow him. 
 He led the way first through his bedroom, which was 
 placed nearest to the light-house, and then through a 
 long, narrow, covered passage-way, between whitewaslunl 
 walls like a prison entry, into the lower part of the 
 ligiit-house, where many great butts of oil were ar- 
 ranged around ; thence we ascended by a winding and 
 open iron stairway, with a steadily increasing scent of 
 oil and lamp-smoke, to a trap-door in an iron floor, and 
 through this into the lantern. It was a neat building, 
 with everything in apple-pie order, and no danger of 
 anything rusting there for want of oil. The light consist- >^ 
 ed of fifteen argand lamps, placed within smooth concave \ 
 reflectors twenty-one inches in diameter, and arranged / 
 in two horizontal circles one above the other, facing 
 every way excepting directly down the Cape. These 
 wei:e surrounded, at a distance of two or three feet, by 
 large plate-glass windows, which defied the storms, with 
 iron sashes, on which rested the iron cap. All the iron 
 work, exce[)t the floor, was painted white. And thus 
 the light-house was completed. We walked slowly 
 round in that narrow space as the keeper lighted each 
 lamp in succession, conversing with him at the same 
 moment that many a sailor on the deep witnessed the 
 lighting of the Highland Light. His duty was to fill 
 and trim and light his lamps, and keep bright the reflec- 
 tors. He filled them every morning, and trimmed them 
 
156 CAPE OOP. 
 
 commonly oiuv in the ^\iiirso of the night. Ho i.vm- 
 pl:iint\l of the qiuiUty of the oil which >v:i>: fiinushtHi. 
 This house oousumoj! aK)iit eight hnndiwi gallons in a 
 year, which ci>st not far from one dolhir a g:\llon : but 
 jvrhaj^s a few lives would Ix? Si\vt\i if Ivtter oil were 
 prv.nidet.1. Another Hght-house keeper Siiid that the 
 ;?{^me proportion of winter-straineii oil was sent to the 
 southernmost light-house in the Union a^ to the n\a<t 
 northern. Formerly, when this light-house had windows 
 with small and thin panels a severe storm would svMne- 
 times breiik the glass, and then they were oblig^\l to put 
 up a wooden shutter in h;iste to siive their lights and 
 retlootors, — and sometimes in temjvsts, when the mari- 
 ner stooii most in need of their guidance, they had thus 
 nearly ov>nverted the light-house into a dark lantern, 
 which emitted only a few feeble ni}-^ and those com- 
 monly on the liuui or lee side. He s[x^ke of the anxiety 
 and sense of resj-K.^nsibility which he felt in cv^ld and 
 stormy nights in the winter ; when he knew that many 
 a ]^KX»r fellow was de^HMiding on him, and his lam^^ 
 burned dimly, the oil l>eing chilled. Sometimes he was 
 obliged to warm the oil in a kettle in his house at mid- 
 night, and till his lam^v* over agj\in, — tor he could not 
 have a tiiv in the light-house, it pnxlu^vd such a sweat 
 on the windows. His successor told me that he could 
 not keep too hot a fire in such a c:\se. All this because 
 the oil w.as |xx>r. * A government lighting the mari- 
 ners on its wintry ctvist with summer-strained oil, to 
 save expense I Th:U woiv suivly a summer-strained 
 mercy. 
 
 This keeper's successor, who kindly entertained me 
 the next year, stated that one extrtMnely cvld night, 
 when this and all the neiirhlK^ring lights were burning 
 
THE HIGHLAND lAC.llT. 157 
 
 Aiuiniiicr oil, bill, lio liud been provident cnoupjli to re- 
 fieiv*', a lilll(! winter oil ajjjMiiiHt einei'f^encieH, he w:ih 
 wukcd uj) with sinxi(!ty, and found tliat liis oil wsis con- 
 j^caled, aird liirt hglits almost extin^^iji.shed ; and w hen, 
 al'Ujr many hours' (exertion, he had sue(;eed<;d in replen- 
 jsliinj^ his n^servoirs with winter oil at the wiek end, and 
 with difliculty had made them burn, he looked out and 
 found (hat the oth(!r lights in the y(M<jjhboi"hoo<l, whieh 
 were usually visible to him, had j^onci onl, and he heard 
 afterward that the Pamet Kiver and iJillingsgate ijights 
 also had been extinguished. 
 
 Our host fiaid that the frost, too, on the windows 
 caused him mueh trouble, and in sultry Hummer nights 
 the moths eov(ired them and dinmuid his lights ; some- 
 times even small birds flew against the thiek i)late glass, 
 and were found on the ground beneath in the morning 
 with their neeks broken. In the spring of 1855 he 
 found nineteen small yellowbirds, perhaps goldfmehes 
 or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead around the; light-house ; 
 and sometimes in the fall he had seen when; a golden 
 ])lover had struck the glass in the night, and left the 
 down and the fatty part of its breast on it. 
 
 Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep hla light 
 shining before men. Surely the light-house keeper has 
 a responsible, if an easy, olliee. When his lamp goes 
 out, he goes out ; or, at most, only one such accident is 
 pardoned. 
 
 I thought it a pity that some poor student did not live 
 there, to profit by all that light, since he would not rob 
 the mariner. " Well," he said, " I do somcitimes come 
 up here and read the newspa[)er when they arc noisy 
 down below." Think of fifteen argand lamps to read 
 the newspaper by! Government oil! — light, enough, 
 
15S CAPE COD. 
 
 perchance, to read the Con«timtion by I I thought that 
 he should read nothing le^ than his Bible bv that light. 
 I had a classmate who/fitted for college bv the lamps 
 of a light-house, whi/^ was more light, we think, than 
 the University aflb/aed. 
 
 -- When we had come down and walked a dozen rods 
 from the light-house, we found that we could not get the 
 full strength of it^ light on the narrow strip of land 
 between it and the shore, being too low for the focus, 
 and we saw only so many feeble and rayless stars ; but 
 at forty rods inland we could see to read, though we 
 were still indebted to only one lamp. Each retlector 
 sent forth a separate '* fan " of light, — one shone on the 
 windmill, and one in the hollow, while the intervening 
 spaces were in shadow. This hght is said to be visible 
 twenty nautical miles and more, from an observer fifteen 
 feet above the level of the sea. TVe could see the 
 revolving light at Kace Point, the end of the Cape, 
 about nine miles distant, and also the light on Long 
 Point, at the entrance of Provincetown Harbor, and 
 one of the distant Plymouth Harbor Lights, across the 
 Bay. nearly in a range with the last, like a star in the 
 horizon. The keeper thought that the other Plymouth 
 Light was concealed by being exactly in a range with 
 the Long Point Light, He told us that the mariner 
 was sometimes led astray by a mackerel fisher's lantern, 
 who was afraid of being run down in the night, or even 
 by a cottager's light, mistaking them for some well-known 
 light on the coast, and, when he discovered his mistake, 
 was wont to curse the prudent fisher or the wakeful cot- 
 tager without reason. 
 
 Though it was once declared that Providence placed 
 this mass of clay here on purpose to erect a hght-house 
 
THE HIGHLAXD LIGHT. 159 
 
 on. the keeper said that the light-house should have been 
 erected hi^.A mile £sirther south, where the coast begins 
 tgj^ud, and where the light could be seen at the same 
 time with the Nauset Lights, and distinguished from 
 them. They now talk of building one there. It hap- 
 pens that the present on© is the more useless now. so 
 near the extrcmitT of the Cape, because other light- 
 houses have since been erected there. 
 
 Among the many regulations of the Light-house 
 Board, hanging against the wall here, many of them 
 excellent, perhaps, if there were a regiment stationed 
 here to attend to them, there is one requiring the 
 keeper to keep an account of the number of vessels 
 which pass his light during the day. But there are a 
 hundred vessels in sight at once, steering in all direc- 
 tions, many on the very verge of the horizon, and he 
 must have more eyes than Argus, and be a good deal 
 farther-sighted, to tell which are passing his light. It 
 is an employment in some respects best suited to the 
 habits of the gulls which coast up and down here, and 
 circle over the sea. 
 
 I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th of 
 June following, a particularly clear and beautiful morn- 
 ing, he rose about half an hour before sunrise, and 
 ha\"ing a httle time to spare, for his custom was to 
 extinguish his lights at sumise^ walked down toward 
 the shore to see what he might find. TVTien he got to 
 the edge of the bank he looked up. and. to his astonish- 
 ment, saw the sun rising, and already part waj above 
 the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong, he 
 made haste back, and tliough it was still too early by the 
 clock, extinguished his lamps, and when he had got 
 through and come down, he looked out the wind-jw, and. 
 
160 CAPE COD. 
 
 to his 5tin greater astomshment, saw the stm just whero 
 it was before, two thirds above the horizon. He showed 
 me where its rajs fell on the wall across the room. He 
 proceeded to make a fire, and when he had done, there 
 was the stm still at the same height. TVhereapon, not 
 trusting to his own eves any longer, he called up his 
 wife to look at it, and she saw it also. There were ves- 
 sels in sight on the ocean, and their crews, too, he said, 
 mnst have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained 
 at that height for about fifteen minutes by the clock, and 
 then rose as usual, and nothing else extraordinary hap- 
 pened during that day. Though accustomed to the 
 coast, he had never witnessed nor heard of such a phe- 
 nomenon before. I suggested that there might have 
 been a cloud in the horizon invisible to him, whicli rose 
 with the sun, and his clock was only as accurate as the 
 average ; or perhaps, as he denied the possibility of 
 this, it was such a looming of the sun as is said to occur 
 at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John Franklin, 
 for instance, says in his ^Narrative, that when he was on 
 the shore of the Pokr Sea, the horizontal retraction 
 varied so much one morning that "^the upper limb of 
 the sun twice appeared at the horizon before it finally 
 rose." 
 
 He certainly must be a sun of Aurora to whom the 
 son looms, when there are so many millions to whom 
 it glooms rather, or who never see it till an hour after 
 it has risen. But it behooves us old stagers to keep our 
 lamps trimmed and burning to the last, and not trust to 
 the sun's looming. 
 
 This keeper remarked that the centre vi the fi;ime 
 should be exactly opposite the centre of the reflectors, 
 and that accordingly, if he was not careful to turn dowu 
 
THE UIGTILAND I.ICHT. 161 
 
 his wicks in tlio niorniiii::, the sun talHni; on the rotU\*- 
 toi*s on the south side of the buiUliuix >vouUl set tiro to 
 them, Hke a burniug-ghiss, in the coKlest day, and he 
 wouUl look up at ncx)n and see them all lighted ! AVhen 
 your lamp is ready to ujive light, it is readiest to receive 
 it, and the sun will light it. His successor said that ho 
 had never known thcni to blaze in such a case, but 
 merely to smoke. 
 
 I saw tliat this was a place of wonders. In a sea 
 turn or shallow fog while I was there the next suin- 
 mer, it being clear overhead, the edge of the bank 
 twenty rods distant appeared like a mountain pasture in 
 the horizon. I was completely deceived by it, and I 
 could then understand why mariners sometimes niti 
 ashore in such cases, especially in the niglit, supposing 
 it to be far away, though they could see the land. Once 
 since this, being in a large oyster boat two or three hun- 
 dred miles from here, in a dark night, when there was a 
 thin veil of mist on land and w^Uer, we came so near to 
 running on to the land before our skipper was aware of it, 
 that the tii*st warning was my hearing the sound of the 
 surf under my elbow. 1 could almost have jumped 
 ashore, and we were obliged to/go about very suddenly 
 to prevent striking. The dist^it liglit for which wo" 
 were steering, supposing it a/ light-house five or six 
 miles oft', came through the /cracks of a lisherman's 
 bunk not more than six roil^ distant. 
 
 The keeper entertained life handsomely in his solitary 
 little ocean house. He w^a$ a man of singular patience 
 and intelligence, who, "V\hen our queries struck him, 
 rung as clear as a bell in response. The liglit-houso 
 Itmips a few feet distant shone full into my chamber, and 
 made it as bright as day, so I knew exactly how the 
 
162 CAPE COD. 
 
 Highland Light bore all that night, and I was in no 
 danger of being wrecked. Unlike the last, this was as 
 still as a summer night. I thought as I lay there, half 
 awake and half asleep, looking upward through the win- 
 dow at the lights above my head, how many sleepless 
 eyes from far out on the Ocean stream — mariners of all 
 nations spinning their yarns through the various watches 
 of the night — were directed toward my couch. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 
 
 The light-house lamps were still burning, though now 
 with a silvery lustre, when I rose to see the sun come 
 out of the Ocean ; for he still rose eastward of us ; but I 
 was convinced that he must have come out of a dry bed 
 beyond that stream, though he seemed to come out of the 
 
 water. 
 
 " The sun once more touched the fields, 
 Mounting to heaven from the fair flowing 
 Deep-running Ocean." 
 
 Now we saw countless sails of mackerel fishers abroad 
 on the deep, one fleet in the north just pouring round the 
 Cape, another standing down toward Chatham, and our 
 host's son went off to join some lagging member of the 
 first which had not yet left the Bay. 
 
 Before we left the light-house we were obhged to 
 anoint our shoes faithfully with tallow, for walking on the 
 beach, in the salt water and the sand, had turned them 
 red and crisp. To counterbalance this, I have remarked 
 that the sea-shore, even where muddy, as it is not here, is 
 singularly clean ; for notwithstanding the spattering of the 
 water and mud and squirting of the clams while walking 
 to and from the boat, your best black pants retain no 
 stain nor dirt, such as they would acquire from walking 
 in the country. 
 
164 CAPE COD. 
 
 We have heard that a few days after this, when the 
 Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy emissaries from 
 Provincetown made particular inquiries concerning us 
 at this light-house. Indeed, they traced us all the way 
 ; down the Cape, and concluded that we came by this un- 
 I usual route down the back side and on foot, in order that 
 I we might discover a way to get off with our booty when 
 j we had committed the robbery. The Cape is so long 
 \ and narrow, and so bare withal, that it is wellnigh im- 
 j^ possible for a stranger to visit it without the knowledge 
 of its inhabitants^ generally, unless he is wrecked on to 
 it in the nighty So, when this robbery occurred, all their 
 suspicions ^em to have at once centred on us two 
 travellers who had just passed down it. If we had not 
 chanced to leave the Cape so soon, we should probably 
 have been arrested. The real robbers were two young 
 men from Worcester County who gravelled with a centre- 
 bit, and are said to have done, their work very neatly. 
 But the only bank that we pried into was the great Cape 
 Cod sand-bank, and we robbed it only of an old French 
 crown piece, some shells and pebbles, and the materials 
 of tliis story. 
 
 Again we took to the beach for another day (October 
 13), walking along the shore of the resounding sea, de- 
 termined to get it into us. We wished to associate with 
 the Ocean until it lost the pond-like look which it wears to 
 a countryman. We still thought that we could see the 
 other side. Its surface was still more sparkling than the 
 day before, and we beheld " the countless smilings of 
 the ocean waves " ; though some of them were pretty 
 broad grins, for still the Avind blew and the billows broke 
 in foam along the beach. The nearest beach to us on 
 the other side, whither we looke'dpriue east, was on the 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 165 
 
 coast of Galicia,'in Spain, wTiose capital is Santiago, 
 though by old poet'g^-^eckoning it should have been At- 
 lantis or the Hesperid^; but, heaven is found to be far- 
 ther west now. At first W^^' were abreast of that part of 
 Portugal entre Douro e ,Mino^ and then Galicia and the 
 port of Pontevedra opened to us as we walked along ; 
 but we did not egler, the breakers ran so high. The 
 bold headland of/Cape Finisterre, a little north of east, 
 jutted toward ^^s next, with its vain brag, for we flung 
 back, — " He^ is Cape Cod, — Cape Land's-Beginning.'* 
 A little incantation toward the north, — for the land 
 loomed to pur imaginations by a common mirage, — we 
 knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we sang : 
 
 " There we lay, till next day, 
 
 In the Bay of Biscay ! " 
 
 A li^le south of east was Palos, where Columbus 
 weighed Anchor, and farther yet the pillars which Her- 
 cules set up.; concerning which when we inquired at the 
 top of our voices what was written on them, — for we 
 had the morning, sun in our faces, and could not see dis- 
 tinctly, — the inhabitants shouted Ne plus ultra (no 
 more beyond), but the wind bore to us the truth only, 
 plus ultra (more beyond), and over the Bay westward 
 was echoed ultra (beyond). We spoke to them through 
 the surf about the Far West, the true Hesperia, eco irtpas 
 or end of the day, the This Side Sundown, where the 
 sun was extinguished in the Pacijic, and we advised 
 them to pufl up stakes and plant those pillars of theirs 
 on the shore of California, whither all our folks were 
 gone, — the only ne plus ultra now. Whereat they 
 looked crestfallen on their cliffs, for we had taken the 
 wind out of all their sails. 
 
166 CAPE COD. 
 
 We could not perceive that any of their leavings 
 washed up here, though we picked up a child's toy, a 
 small dismantled boat, which may have been lost at 
 Pontevedra. 
 / The Cape became narrower and narrower as we ap- 
 / proached its wrist between Truro and Provincetown, 
 I and the shore inclined more decidedly to the west. At 
 i the head of East Harbor Creek, the Atlantic is separated 
 ' but by half a dozen rods of sand from the tide-waters of 
 the Bay. From the Clay Pounds the bank flatted off 
 for the last ten miles to the extremity at Race Point, 
 though the highest parts, which are called " islands " 
 from their appearance at a distance on the sea, were still 
 seventy or eighty feet above the Atlantic, and afforded a 
 good view of the latter, as well as a constant view of the 
 Bay, there being no trees nor a hill sufficient to interrupt 
 it. Also the sands began to invade the land more and 
 more, until finally they had entire possession from sea to 
 sea, at the narrowest part. Forythree or four miles 
 between Truro and Provinceta^Kni there were no in- 
 habitants from shore to shore, rind there were but three 
 or four houses for twice that distance. 
 
 As we plodded along, either by the edae of the ocean, 
 where the sand was rapidly drinking u/ the last wave 
 that wet it, or over the sand-hills of tM bank, the mack- 
 erel fleet continued to pour round fiie Cape north of 
 us, ten or fifteen miles distant, in/countless numbers, 
 schooner after schooner, till they^ade a city on the 
 water. They were so thick thatpiany appeared to be 
 afoul of one another ; now all landing on this tack, 
 now on that. We saw how w^ll the New-Englanders 
 had followed up Captain John Smith's suggestions with 
 regard to the fisheries, made in 1616, — to what a pitch 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 1G7 
 
 they had carried " this contemptible trade of fish," as he 
 significantly styles it, and were now equal to the Hol- 
 landers whose example he holds up for the Enghsh to 
 emulate ; notwithstanding that '^n this faculty," as he 
 says, " the former are so naturajHzed, and of their vents so 
 certainly acquainted, as ther^r' is no likelihood they will 
 ever be paralleled, having tM^o or three thousand busses, 
 flat-bottoms, sword-pinks, todes, aiid such like, that breeds 
 them sailors, mariners, soadiers, and merchants, never to 
 be wrought out of that J^ade and fit for any other." We 
 thought that it would ;iake all these names and more to 
 
 describe the numerouii craft which we saw. Even then, 
 
 r 
 
 some years before ibur " renowned sires " with their 
 " peerless dames " stepped on Plymouth Rock, he wrote, 
 " Newfoundland d^h yearly freight neir eight hundred 
 sail of ships with ^ silly, lean, skinny, poor-john, and cor 
 fish," though all /their supplies must be annually trans- 
 ported from Ej^Tope. Why not plant a colony here 
 then, and raise ibose supplies on the spot? " Of all the 
 four parts of tljfe world," says he, " that I have yet seen, 
 not inhabited^' could I have but means to transport a 
 colony, I wo^ld rather live here than anywhere. And 
 if it did nof maintain itself, were we but once indiffer- 
 ently well itted, let us starve." Then " fishing before 
 your doors/' you " may every night sleep quietly ashore, 
 with good! cheer and what fires you will, or, when you 
 please, with your wives and family." Already he an- 
 ticipates f the new towns in New England in memory 
 of their ^Id," — and who knows what may be discovered 
 in the y heart and entrails" of the land, "seeing even 
 the very edges," &c., &c. 
 
 All this has been accomplished, and more, and where 
 is Holland now ? Verily the Dutch have taken it 
 
1G8 CAPE COD. 
 
 There was no long interval between the suggestion of 
 Smith and the eulogy of Burke. 
 
 Still one after another the mackerel schooners hove in 
 sight round the head of the Cape, " whitening all the sea 
 road," and we watched each one for a moment with an 
 undivided interest. It seemed a pretty sport. Here in 
 the country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that go a- 
 fishing on a rainy day ; but there it appeared as if every 
 able-bodied man and helpful boy in the Bay had gone 
 out on a pleasure excursion in their yachts, and all 
 would at last land and have a chowder on the Cape. 
 The gazetteer tells you gravely how many of the men 
 and boys of these towns are engaged in the whale, cod, 
 and mackerel fishery, how many go to the banks of New- 
 foundland, or the coast of Labrador, the Straits of Belle 
 Isle or the Bay of Chaleurs (Shalore the sailors call it) ; 
 as if I were to reckon up the number of boys in Concord 
 who are engaged during the summer in the perch, pick- 
 erel, bream, horn-pout, and shiner fishery, of which no 
 one keeps the statistics, — though I think that it is pur- 
 sued with as much profit to the moral and intellectual 
 man (or boy), and certainly with less danger to the phys- 
 ical one. 
 
 One of my playmates, who was apprenticed to a print- 
 er, and was somewhat of a wag, asked his master one 
 afternoon if he might go a-fishing, and his master con- 
 sented. , He was gone three months. When he came 
 back, he said that he had been to the Grand Banks, and 
 went to setting type again as if only an afternoon had 
 intf-rvened. 
 
 I confess I was surprised to find that so many men 
 spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, 
 a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 169 
 
 make of getting their dinners, and how universally shift- 
 lessness and a grovelling taste take refuge in a merely 
 ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I 
 thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a 
 cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pur- 
 suits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous. 
 
 I once sailed three miles on a mackerel cruise myself. 
 It was a Sunday evening after a very warm day 
 in which there had been frequent thunder-showers, 
 and I had walked along the shore from Cohasset to 
 Duxbury. I wished to get over from the last place to 
 Clark's Island, but no boat could stir, they said, at that 
 stage of the tide, they being left high on the mud. At 
 length I learned that the tavern-keeper, Winsor, was 
 going out mackerelling with seven men that evening, and 
 would take me. When there had been due delay, we 
 one after another straggled down to the shore in a 
 leisurely manner, as if waiting for the tide still, and in 
 India-rubber boots, or carrying our shoes in our hands, 
 waded to the boats, each of the crew bearing an armful 
 of wood, and one a bucket of new potatoes besides. 
 Then they resolved that each should bring one more 
 armful of wood, and that would be enough. They had 
 already got a barrel of water, and had some more in the 
 schooner. We shoved the boats a dozen rods over the 
 mud and water till they floated, then rowing half a mile 
 to the vessel climbed aboard, and there we were in a 
 mackerel schooner, a fine stout vessel of forty -three tons, 
 whose name I forget. The baits were not dry on the 
 hooks. There was the mill in which they ground the 
 mackerel, and the trough to hold it, and the long-handled 
 dipper to cast it overboard with ; and already in the 
 harbor we saw the surface rippled with schools of small 
 
170 CAPE COD. 
 
 mackerel, the real Sco7nber vernalis. The crew proceeded 
 leisurely to weigh anchor and raise their two sails, there 
 being a fair but very slight wind ; — and the sun now set- 
 ting clear and shining or the vessel after the thunder- 
 showers, I thought that I could not have commenced the 
 voyage under more favorable auspices. They h.ad four 
 dories and commonly fished in them, else they fished on 
 the starboard side aft where their lines hung ready, two 
 to a man. The boom swung round once or twice, and 
 Winsor cast overboard the foul juice of mackerel mixed 
 with rain-water which remained in his trough, and then 
 we gathered about the helmsman and told stories. I re- 
 member that the compass |^as affected by iron in its 
 neighborhood and varied a few degrees. There was one 
 among us just returned from California, who was now 
 going as passenger for his health and amusement. They 
 expected to be gone ab^ut a week, to begin fishing the 
 ^ next morning, and to carry their fish fresh to Boston. 
 ;• They landed me at Cfe,rk's Island, where the Pilgrims 
 landed, for my companions wished to get some milk for 
 the voyage. But I bad seen the whole of it. The rest 
 was only going to sea and catching the mackerel. More- 
 over, it was as well that I did not remain with them, con- 
 sidering the small quantity of supplies they had taken. 
 
 Now I saw the mackerel fleet on its fishing-ground, 
 though I was not at first aware of it. So my experi- 
 ence was comple.te. 
 
 It was even more cold and windy to-day than before, 
 and we were frequently glad to take shelter behind a 
 sand-hill. None of the elements were resting. On the 
 beach there is a ceaseless activity, always something 
 going on, in storm and in calm, winter and summer, 
 night and day. Even the sedentary man here enjoys 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 171 
 
 a breadth of view which is almost equivalent to motion. 
 In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as 
 far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far 
 as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids ; or 
 if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help 
 hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. 
 The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale 
 or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in 
 the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report 
 the news it brings. No creature could move slowly 
 where there was so much life around. The few wreck- 
 ers were either going or coming, and the ships and tlie 
 sand-pipers, and the screaming gulls overhead ; nothing 
 stood still but the shore. The little beach-birds trotted 
 past close to the water's edg^, or paused but an instant 
 to swallow their food, keeping time with the elements. 
 I wondered how they ever got used to the sea, that they 
 ventured so near the wa.ves. Such tiny inhabitants the 
 land brought forth ! except one fox. And what could 
 a fox do, looking on the Atlantic from that high bank ? 
 What is the sea to a fox ? Sometimes we met a wrecker 
 with his cart and dog, — and his dog's faint bark at U3 
 Wayfarers, heard through the roaring of the surf, sounded 
 ridiculously faint. To see a little trembling dainty- 
 footed cur stand on the margin of the ocean, and ineffec- 
 tually bark at a beach-bird, amid the roar of the Atlan- 
 tic ! Come with design to bark at a whale, perchance ! 
 That sound will do for farmyards. All the dogs looked 
 out of place there, naked and as if shuddering at the 
 vastness ; and I thought that they would not have been 
 there had it not been for U^^ countenance of their mas- 
 ters. Still less could,„^u think of a cat bending her 
 steps that way, arfd shaking her wet foot over the 
 
1V2 CAPE COD. 
 
 Atlantic ; yet even this happens sometimes, they tell 
 
 me. In summer I saw the tender young of the Piping 
 
 Plover, like chickens just hatched, mere pinches of down 
 
 on two legs, running in troops, with a faint peep, along 
 
 the edge of the waves. I used to see packs of half-wild 
 
 dogs haunting the lonely beach on the south shore of 
 
 Staten Island, in New York Bay, for the sake of the 
 
 carrion there cast up; and I remember that once, when 
 
 for a long time I had heard a furious barking in the tall 
 
 grass of the naarsh, a pack of half a dozen large dogs 
 
 burst forth ou'^'to the beach, pursuing a little one which 
 
 ran straight'' to me for protection, and I afforded it with 
 
 some stones, though at some risk to myself; but the next 
 
 day the /little one was the first to bark at me. Under 
 
 these afrcumstances I could not but remember the words 
 
 of th/fe poet: — 
 
 " Blow, blow, thou winter wind 
 Thou art not so unkind 
 
 As his ingratitude; 
 Thy tooth is not so keen, 
 Because thou art not seen, 
 
 AJthough thy breath be rude. 
 
 " Freflfze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
 Tli6u dost not bite so nigh 
 
 / As benefits forgot; 
 ^hough thou the waters warp, 
 not so sharp 
 remembered not." 
 
 /Thy sting is nc 
 / As friend r 
 
 etimes/when I was a 
 
 Sometimes,' when I was approaching the carcass of 
 a horse or ox which lay on the beach there, where there 
 was no living creature in sight, a dog would unexpect- 
 edly emerge from it and slink away with a* mouthful 
 of offal. 
 
 The t^ea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 173 
 
 advantageous point from which to contemplate this 
 world. It is even a trivial place. The waves for- 
 ever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and un- 
 tamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless 
 beach amid the sun-squawl and the foam, it occurs to 
 us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime. 
 
 It is a wild, rank place, and there is no flattery in 
 it. Strewn with crabs, horse-shoes, and razor-clams, 
 and whatever the sea casts up, — a vast morgue, where 
 famished dogs may range in packs, and crows come 
 daily to glean the pittance which the tide leaves them. 
 The carcasses of men and beasts together lie stately 
 up upon its shelf, rotting and bleaching in the sun and 
 waves, and each tide turns them in their beds, and tucks 
 fresh sand under them. There is naked Nature, — inhu- 
 manly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at 
 the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray. 
 
 We saw this forenoon what, at a distance, looked like 
 a bleached log with a branch still left on it. It proved 
 to be one of the principal bones of a whale, whose car- 
 cass, having been stripped of blubber at sea and cut 
 adrift, had been washed up some months before. It 
 chanced that this was the most conclusive evidence which 
 we met with to prove, what the Copenhagen antiquaries 
 assert, that these shores were the ^ardustrandas, which 
 Thorhall, the companion of ..I'horfinn during his expe- 
 dition to Vinland in 1007,' sailed past in disgust. It 
 appears that after the^-^ad left the Cape and explored 
 the country aboij^^'^Straum-Fiordr (Buzzards' Bay!), 
 Thorhall, who vCs disappointed at not getting any wine 
 to drink th^i'e, determined to sail north again in search 
 of Vinlapfl Though the antiquaries have given us the 
 original Icelandic, I prefer to quote their translation, 
 
174 CAPE COD. 
 
 since theirs is the only Latin which I know to have been 
 aimed at Cape Cod. 
 
 " Cum parati erant, sublato 
 velo, cecinit Thorhallus: 
 E6 redeamus, ubi conterranei 
 sunt nostril faciamus aliter, 
 expausi arenosi peritum, 
 lata navis explorare curricula: 
 dum procellam incitantes gladii 
 morse impatientes, qui terram 
 collaudant, Furdustrandas 
 inhabitant et coquunt balaenas.'^ 
 
 In other words : " When they were re^dy and their sail 
 hoisted, Thorhall sang: Let us return thither where 
 our fellow-countrymen are. Let us make a bird * skil- 
 ful to fly through the heaven of sand,t to explore the 
 broad track of ships ; while warriors who impel to the 
 tempest of swords,J who praise the land, inhabit Wonder- 
 Strands, and cook whales.'^ And so he sailed north past 
 Cape Cod, as the antiquaries say, " and was shipwrecked 
 on to Ireland." / 
 
 Though once there were mp^e whales cast up here, 
 I think that it was never mor^ wild than now. We do 
 not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor 
 wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do 
 of the land, for it wa^- equally wild and unfathomable 
 always. The Indians have left no traces on its surface, 
 but it is the same to the civilized man- and the savage. 
 The aspect of the shore only has changed. The ocean 
 is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a 
 Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very 
 wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side 
 
 * I. e. a vessel. 
 
 *• The sea, which is arched over its sandy bottom like a heaven. 
 
 \ Battle. 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 175 
 
 residences. Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers, rapidly van- 
 ish as civilization advances, but the most populous and 
 civilized city cannot scare a shark far from its wharves. 
 It is no further advanced than Singapore, with its tigers, 
 in this respect. The Boston papejps'had never told me 
 that there were seals in the har>6r. I had always asso- 
 ciated these with the Esquiriiaux and other outlandish 
 people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the 
 coast you may see fan>jlies of them sporting on the flats. 
 They were as straifge to me as the merman would be. 
 Ladies who nev^r walk in the woods, sail over the sea. 
 To go to sea ! Why, it is to have the experience of 
 Noah, — to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an 
 ark. 
 
 We saw no fences as we walked the beach, no birchen 
 riders, highest of rails, projecting into the sea to keep the 
 cows from wading round, nothing to remind us that man 
 was proprietor of the shore. Yet jj Truro man did tell us 
 that owners of land on the eas^side of that town were 
 regarded as owning the beaclyin order that they might 
 have the control of it so ftfr as to defend themselves 
 against the encroachmentj^ of the sand and the beach- 
 grass, — for even this friend is sometimes regarded as 
 a foe ; but he said that /lis was not the case on the Bay 
 side. Also I have sd5n in sheltered parts of the Bay 
 temporary fences ruii/iing to low-water mark, the posts 
 being set in sills or peepers placed transversely. 
 
 After we had been walking many hours, the mackerel 
 fleet si ill hovered in the northern horizon nearly in the 
 same direction, but farther off, hull down. Though their 
 sails wore set they never sailed away, nor yet came to 
 anchor, but stood on various tacks as close together as 
 vessels in a haven, and we, in our ignorance, thought 
 
176 CAPE COD. 
 
 that they were contending patiently with adverse winds, 
 beating eastward^ but we learned afterward that ihey 
 were even then- on their fishing-ground, and that they 
 caught mackjeirel without taking in their mainsails or 
 coming to^-anchor, "a smart breeze" (thence called a 
 mackerej^'f)reeze) being," as one says, " considered most 
 favora^e " for this purpose. TVe counted about two 
 hundred sail of mackerel fishers within one small arc 
 of the horizon, and a nearly equal number had disap- 
 peared southward. Thus they hovered about the ex- 
 tremity of the Cape, hke moths round a candle ; the 
 lights at Race Point and Long Point being bright can- 
 dles for them at night, — and at this distance they 
 looked fair and white, as if they had not yet flown 
 into the light, but nearer at hand afterward, we saw 
 how some had formerly singed their wrings and bodies. 
 
 A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are 
 all ploughing the ocean together, as a common field. 
 In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their 
 doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are 
 harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, 
 on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, 
 just as in the country the farmers' wives sometimes 
 see their husbands working in a distant hill-side field. 
 But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher's 
 ear. 
 
 Having passed the narrowest part of the waist of the 
 Cape, though still in Truro, foi;, this township is about 
 twelve miles long on the sh/6re, we crossed over to 
 the Bay side, not half a mile/4listant, in order to spend 
 the noon on the nearest shrubby sand-hill in Province- 
 town, called Mount Ararat/which rises one hundred feet 
 above the ocean. On ourAvay thither w^e had occasion to 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 177 
 
 admire the various beautiful forms and colors of the sand, 
 and we noticed an interesting mirage, which I have 
 since found that Hitchcock also observed on the sands 
 of the Cape. We were crossing a shallow valley in 
 the Desert, where the smooth and spotless sand sloped 
 upward by a small angle to the horizon on every side, 
 and at the lowest part was a long chain of clear but 
 shallow pools. As we were approaching these for a 
 drink in a diagonal direction across the valley, they 
 appeared inclined at a slight but decided angle to the 
 horizon, though they were plainly and broadly con- 
 nected with one another, and there was not the least 
 ripple to suggest a current; so tha^ by the time we 
 liad reached a convenient part of ,one we seemed to 
 have ascended several feet. They /appeared to lie by 
 magic on the side of the vale, like a mirror left in a 
 slanting position. It was a very /pretty mirage for a 
 Provincetown desert, but not adfiounting to what, in 
 Sanscrit, is called "the thirst of/the gazelle," as there 
 was real water here for a base,' and we were able to 
 quench our thirst after all. 
 
 Professor Rafn, of Copenhagen, thinks that the mi- 
 rage which I noticed, but which an old inhabitant of 
 Provincetown, to whom I mentioned it, had never seen 
 nor heard of, had something to do with the name " Fur- 
 dustrandas," i. e. Wonder-Strands, given, as I have said, 
 in the old Icelandic account of Thorfinn's expeditioq 
 to Vinland in the year 1007, to a part of the coast 
 on which he landed. But these sands are more re- 
 markable for their length th^ for their mirage, which 
 is common to all deserts, and the reason for the name 
 which the Northmen theinselves give, — "because it 
 took a long time to sail by them," — is sufficient and 
 
178 CAPE COD. 
 
 more applicable to these shores. However, if you should 
 sail all the way from Greenland to Buzzard's Bay along 
 the coast, you would get sight of a good many sandy 
 beaches. But whether Thor-finn saw the mirage here 
 or not, Thor-eau, one of the same family, did ; and per- 
 chance it was because Lief the Lucky had, in a previous 
 voyage, taken Thor-er and his people off the rock in the 
 middle of the sea, that Thor-eau was born to see it. 
 
 This was not the only mirage which I saw on the 
 Cape. That half of the beach next the bank is com- 
 monly level, or nearly so, while the other slopes down- 
 ward to the water. As I was walking upon the edge 
 of the bank in Wellfleet at sundown, it seemed to me 
 that the inside half of the beach sloped upward toward 
 the water to meet the other, forming a ridge ten or 
 twelve feet high the whole length of the shore, but 
 higher always opposite to where I stood ; and I was not 
 convinced of the contrary till I descended the bank, 
 though the shaded outlines left by the waves of a pre- 
 vious tide but half-way down the apparent declivity 
 might have taught me better. A stranger may easily 
 detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the 
 strange is his province. The old oysterman, speaking 
 of giill-shooting, had said that you must aim under, 
 when firing down the bank. 
 
 A neighbor tells me that one August, looking through 
 a glass from Naushon to some vessels which were sail- 
 ing along near Martha's Vineyard, the water about thera 
 appeared perfectly smooth, so that they were reflected in 
 it, and yet their full sails proved that it must be rippled, 
 and they who were with him thought that it was a mi- 
 rage, i. e. a reflection from a haze. 
 /' From the above-mentioned sand-hill we overlooked 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 179 
 
 Provincetown and its harbor, now emptied of vessels, 
 and also a wide expanse of ocean. As wo did not wish 
 to enter Provincetown before night, though it was cold 
 and windy, we returned across the Deserts to the Atlan- 
 tic side, and walked along the beach again nearly to 
 Race Point, being still greedy of the sea influence. All 
 the while it was not so calm as the reader may suppose, 
 but it was blow, blow, blow, — roar, roar, roar, — tramp, 
 tramp, tramp, — without interruption. Tlie shore now 
 trended nearly east and west. 
 
 Before sunset, having already seen the mackerel fleet 
 returning into the Bay, we left the sea-shore on the north 
 of Provincetown, and made our way across the Desert to 
 the eastern extremity of the town. From the first high 
 sand-hill, covered with beach-grass and bushes to its top, 
 on the edge of the desert, we overlooked the shrubby 
 hill and swamp country which surrounds Provincetown 
 on the north, and protects it, in some measure, from the 
 invading sand. Notwithstanding the universal barren- 
 ness, and the contiguity of the desert, I never saw an 
 autumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this was. 
 It was like the richest rug imaginable spread over an 
 uneven surface ; no damask nor velvet, nor Tyrian dye 
 or stuffs, nor the work of any loom, could ever match it. 
 There was the incredibly bright red of the Huckleberry, 
 and the reddish brown of the Bayberry, mingled with 
 the bright and living green of small Pitch-Pincto, and also 
 the duller green of the Bayberry, Boxberry, and Plum, 
 the yellowish green of the Shrub Oaks, and the various 
 golden and yellow and fawn colored tints of the Birch 
 and Maple and Aspen, — each making its own figure, 
 and, in the midst, the few yellow sand-slides on the sides 
 of tlie hills looked like the white floor seen thi-ough 
 
 \ 
 
180 CAPE COD. 
 
 rents in the rug. Coming from the country as I did, 
 and many autumnal woods as I had seen, this was per- 
 haps the most novel and remarkable sight that I saw on 
 the Cape. Probably the brightness of the tints was en- 
 hanced by contrast with the sand which surrounded this 
 track. This was a part of the furniture of Cape Cod. 
 We had for days walked up the long and bleak piazza 
 which runs along her Atlantic side, then over the sanded 
 floor of her halls, and now we w^ere being introduced 
 into her boudoir. The hundred white sails crowding 
 round Long Point into Provincetown Harbor, seen over 
 the painted hills in front, looked like toy ships upon a 
 mantle-piece. 
 
 The peculiarity of this autumnal landscape consisted 
 in the lowness and thickness of the shrubbery, no less 
 than in the brightness of the tints. It was like a thick 
 stuflf of worsted or a fleece, and looked as if a giant 
 could take it up by the hem, or rather the tasselled fringe 
 which trailed out on the sand, and shake it, though it 
 needed not to be shaken. But no doubt the dust would 
 fly in that case, for not a little has accumulated under 
 neath it. Was it not such an autumnal landscape a? 
 this which suggested our high-colored rugs and carpets ? 
 Hereafter when I look on a richer rug than usual, and 
 study its figures, I shall think, there are the huckleberry 
 hills, and there the denser swamps of boxberry and 
 blueberry : there the shrub oak patches and the bay- 
 berries, there the maples and the birches and the pines. 
 What other dyes are to be compared to these ? They 
 were warmer colors than I had associated with the New 
 England coast. 
 
 After threading a swamp full of boxberry, and dimb- 
 ing several hills covered with shrub-oaks, witliout a path, 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 181 
 
 where shipwrecked men would be in danger of perish- 
 ing in the night, we came down upon the eastern ex- 
 tremity of the four planks which run the whole length 
 of Provincetown street. Tliis, which is the last town 
 on the Cape, lies mainly in one street along the curving 
 beach fronting the southeast. The sand-hills, covered 
 with shrubbery and interposed with swamps and ponds, 
 rose immediately behind it in the form of a crescent, 
 which is from half a mile to a mile or more wide in the 
 middle, and beyond these is the desert, which is the 
 greater part of its territory, stretching to the sea on the 
 east and west and north. The town is compactly built 
 in the narrow space, from ten to fifty rods deep, between 
 the harbor and the sand-hills, and contained at that time 
 about twenty-six hundred inhabitants. The houses, in 
 which a more modern and pretending style has at length 
 prevailed over the fisherman's hut, stand on the inner or 
 plank side of the street, and the fish and store houses, 
 with the picturesque-looking windmills of the Salt-works, 
 on the water side. The narrow portion of the beach 
 between forming the street, about eighteen feet wide, the 
 only one where one carriage could pass another, if there 
 was more than one carriage in the town, looked much 
 "heavier" than any portion of the beach or the desert 
 which we had walked on, it being above the reach of the 
 highest tide, and the sand being kept loose by the occa- 
 sional passage of a traveller. We learned that the four 
 planks on which we were walking had been bought by the 
 town's share of the Surplus Revenue, the disposition of 
 which was a bone of contention between the inhabitants, 
 till they wisely resolved thus to put it under foot. Yet 
 some, it was said, were so provoked because they did not 
 receive their particular share in money, that they per- 
 
182 CAPE COD. 
 
 sisted in walking in the sand a long time after the side- 
 walk was built. This is the only instance which I 
 happen to know in which the surplus revenue proved a 
 blessing to any town. A surplus revenue of dollars 
 from the treasury to stem the greater evil of a surplus 
 revenue of sand from the ocean. They expected to 
 make a hard road by the time these planks were worn 
 out. Indeed, they have already done so since we were 
 there, and have ahnost forgotten their sandy baptism. 
 
 As we passed along we observed the inhabitants en- 
 gaged in curing either fish or the coarse salt hay which 
 they had brought home and spread on the beach before 
 their doors, looking as yellow as if they had raked it out 
 of the sea. The front-yard plots appeared like what in- 
 deed they were, portions of the beach fenced in, with 
 Beach-grass growing in them, as if they were sometimes 
 covered by the tide. You might still pick up shells and 
 pebbles there. There were a few trees among the 
 houses, especially silver abeles, willows, and balm-of- 
 Gileads ; and one man showed me a young oak which he 
 Lad transplanted from behind the town, thinking it an 
 apple-tree. But every man to his trade. Though he 
 had little woodcraft, he was not the less weatherwise, and 
 gave us one piece of information ; viz. he had observed 
 that when a thunder-cloud came up with a flood-tide it 
 did not rain. This was the most completely maritime 
 town that we were ever in. It was merely a good har- 
 bor, surrounded by land dry, if not firm, — an inhabited 
 beach, whereon fishermen cured and stored their fish, 
 without any back country. When ashore the inhabitants 
 still walk on planks. A few small patches have been 
 reclaimed from the swamps, cont<'\ining commonly half a 
 dozen square rods only each. We saw one which was 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 183 
 
 fenced with four lengths of rail ; also a fence made 
 wholly of hogshead-staves stuck in the ground. These, 
 and such as these, were all the cultivated and cultiva- 
 ble land in Provincetown. We were told that there 
 were thirty or forty acres in all, but we did not discover 
 a quarter part so much, and that was well dusted with 
 sand, and looked as if the desert was claiming it. They 
 are now turning some of their swamps into Cranberry 
 Meadows on quite an extensive scale. 
 
 Yet far from being out of the way, Provincetown is 
 directly in the way of the navigator, and he is lucky who 
 does not run afoul of it in the dark. It is situated on 
 one of the highways of commerce, and men from all 
 parts of the globe touch there in the course of a year. 
 
 The mackerel fleet had nearly all got in before us, it 
 being Saturday night, excepting that division which had 
 stood down towards Chatham in the morning ; and from 
 a hill where we went to see the sun set in the Bay, we 
 counted two hundred goodly looking schooners at anchor 
 m the harbor at various distances from the shore, and 
 more were yet coming round the Cape. As each came 
 to anchor, it took in sail and swung round in the wind, 
 aiid lowered its boat. They belonged chiefly to Well- 
 fleet, Truro, and Cape Ann. This was that city of 
 canvas which we had seen hull down in the horizon. 
 Near at hand, and under bare poles, they were unex- 
 pectedly black-looking vessels, fxeXaivai v^fs. A fish- 
 erman told us that there were fifteen hundred vessels in 
 the mackerel fleet, and that he had counted three 
 hundred and fifty in Provincetown Harbor at one time. 
 Beinor oblisred to anchor at a considerable distance from 
 the shore on account of the shallowness of the water, 
 they made the impression of a larger fleet than the ves- 
 
184 CAPE COD. 
 
 sels at the wharves of a large city. As they had been 
 manoeuvring out there all day seemingly for our enter- 
 tainment, while we were walking northwestward along 
 the Atlantic, so now we found them flocking into Prov- 
 incetown Harbor at night, just as we arrived, as if to 
 meet us, and exhibit themselves close at hand. Stand- 
 iiig by Race Point and Long Point with various speed, 
 they reminded me of fowls coming home to roost. 
 
 These were genuine New England vessels. It is 
 stated in the Journal of Moses Prince, a brother of the 
 annalist, under date of 1721, at which time he visited 
 Gloucester, that the first vessel of the class called 
 schooner was built at Gloucester about eight years before, 
 by Andrew Robinson ; and late in the same century one 
 Cotton Tufts gives us the tradition with some particulars, 
 which he learned on a visit to the same place. Accord- 
 ing to the latter, Robinson having constructed a vessel 
 which he masted and rigged in a peculiar manner, on her 
 going off the stocks a by-stander cried out, " 0, how she 
 scoons ! " whereat Robinson replied, " A schooner let 
 her be ! " " From which time," says Tufts, " vessels 
 thus masted and rigged have gone by the name of 
 schooners ; before which, vessels of this description were 
 not known in Europe." (See Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. 
 IX., 1st Series, and Vol. I., 4th Series.) Yet I can 
 hardly believe this, for a schooner has always seemed to 
 me — the typical vessel. 
 
 According to C. E. Potter of Manchester, New 
 Hampshire, the very word schooner is of New England 
 origin^ being from the Indian schoon or scoot, meaning to 
 rush, as Schoodic, from scoot and anke, a place wdiere 
 \ w^ater rushes. N. B. Somebody of Gloucester was to 
 read a paJDer on this matter before a genealogical society, 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 185 
 
 in Boston, March 3, 1859, according to the Boston Jour- 
 nal, q. V. 
 
 Nearly all who come out must walk on the four 
 planks which I have mentioned, so that you are pretty 
 sure to meet all the inhabitants of Provincetown who 
 come out in the course of a day, provided you keep out 
 yourself. This evening the planks were crowded with 
 mackerel fishers, to whom we gave and from whom we 
 took the wall, as we returned to our hotel. This hotel 
 Avas kept by a tailor, his shop on the one side of the 
 door, his hotel on the other, and his day seemed to be 
 divided between carsang meat and carving broadcloth. 
 
 The next morning, though it was still more cold and 
 blustering than the day before, we took to the Deserts 
 again, for we spent our days wholly out of doors, in the 
 sun when there was any, and in the wind which never 
 failed. After threading the shrubby hill country at the 
 southwest end of the town, west of the Shank-Painter 
 Swamp, whose expressive name — for we understood 
 it at first as a landsman naturally would — gave it im- 
 portance in our eyes, we crossed the sands to the shore 
 south of Race Point and three miles distant, and thence 
 roamed round eastward through the desert to where we 
 had left the sea the evening before. We travelled five 
 or six miles after we got out there, on a curving line, 
 and might have gone nine or ten, over vast platters of 
 pure sand, from the midst of which we could not see a 
 particle of vegetation, excepting the distant thin fields of 
 Beach-grass, which crowned and made the ridges toward 
 which the sand sloped upward on each side ; — all the 
 while in the face of a cutting wind as cold as January ; 
 indeed, we experienced no weather so cold as this for 
 nearly two months afterward. This desert extends from 
 
186 CAPE COD. 
 
 the extremity of the Cape, through Provincetown into 
 Truro, and many a time as we were traversing it we 
 were reminded of " Riley's Narrative " of his captivity 
 in the sands of Arabia, notwithstanding the cold. Our 
 eyes magnified the patches of Beach-grass into corn- 
 fields in the horizon, and we probably exaggerated 
 the height of the ridges on account of the mirage. 
 I was pleased to learn afterward, from Kalm's Travels 
 in North America, that the inhabitants of the Lower 
 St. Lawrence call this grass ( Calmnagrostis arenaria), 
 and also Sea-lyme grass {Elymus arenarius), seigle de 
 mer ; and he adds, " I have been assured that these plants 
 grow in great plenty in Newfoundland, and on other 
 North American shores ; the places covered with them 
 looking, at a distance, like cornfields ; which might ex- 
 plain the passage in our northern accounts [he wrote in 
 1749] of the excellent wine land [ Vinlayid det goda^ 
 Translator], which mentions that they had found whole 
 fields of wheat growing wild." 
 
 The Beach-grass is " two to four feet high, of a sea- 
 green color," and it is said to be widely diffused over the 
 world. In the Hebrides it is used for mats, pack-saddles, 
 bags, hats. &c. ; paper has been made of it at Dorches- 
 ter in this State, and cattle eat it when tender. It has 
 heads somewhat like rye, from six inches to a foot in 
 length, and it is pro;^agated both by roots and seeds. 
 To express its love ^r sand, some botanists have called 
 it Psamma are?iari<J, which is the Greek for sand, quali- 
 fi^ed by the Latin mr sandy, — or sandy sand. As it is 
 blown about by tae wind, while it is held fast by its 
 roots, it describe/ myriad circles in the sand as accu- 
 rately as if theyy\vere made by compasses. 
 
 It was the y€reariest scenery imaginable. The only 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 187 
 
 animals which we saw on the sand at that time were 
 spiders, which are to be found almost everywhere 
 whether on snow or ice-water or sand, — and a venom- 
 ous-looking, long, narrow worm, one of the myriapods, 
 or thousand-legs. We were surprised to see spider- 
 holes in that flowing sand with an edge as firm as that 
 of a stoned well. 
 
 In June this sand was scored with the tracks of turtles 
 both large and small, which had been out in the night, 
 leading to and from the swamps. I was told by a terrce 
 Jilius who has a " farm " on the edge of the desert, and 
 is familiar with the fame of Provincetown, that one man 
 had caught twenty-fixe„.siiapping-turtles there the pre- 
 vious spring.'- . His own method of catcljing them waX 
 to put a toad on a mackerel-hook and cast it into a pond, \ 
 tying the line to a stump or stake on sKore. Invariably ■ 
 the turtle when hooked crawled up the line to the stump, I 
 and was found waiting ^here by his captor, however long | 
 afterward. He also said that minks, muskrats, foxes,J 
 coons, and wild mice were found there, but no squirrels. 
 We heard of sea-turtle as large ^^s a barrel being found 
 on the beach and on East Harbor marsh, but whether 
 they were native there, or had been lost ^ut of some ves- 
 sel, did not appear. Pert^aps they were the Salt-water 
 Terrapin, or else the Smooth Terrapin, found thus far 
 north. Many toads were met with where there was 
 nothing but sand and beach-grass. In Truro I had been 
 surprised at the number of large light-colored toads 
 everywhere hopping over the dry and sandy fields, their 
 color corresponding to that of the sand. Snakes also are 
 common on these pure sand beaches, and I have never 
 been so much troubled by mosquitoes asin such localities. 
 At the same season strawberries grew there abundantly 
 
188 CAPE COD. 
 
 in the little hollows on the edge of the desert standrng 
 amid the beach-grass in the sand, and the fruit of the shad- 
 bush or Amelanchier, which the inhabitants call Josh- 
 pears (some think from juicy ?), is very abundant on the 
 hills. I fell in with an obliging man who conducted me 
 to the best locality for strawberries. He said that he 
 would not have shown me the place if he had not seen 
 that I was a stranger, and could not anticipate him another 
 year; I therefore feel bound in honor not to reveal it. 
 When we came to a pond, he being the native did the 
 honors and carried me over pn his shoulders, like Sind- 
 bad. One good turn desertes another, and if he ever 
 comes our way I will do as much for him. 
 
 In one place we saw numerous dead tops of trees 
 projecting through the otherwise uninterrupted desert, 
 where, as we afterward learned, thirty or forty years 
 before a flourishing forest had stood, and now, as the 
 trees were laid bare from year to year, the inhabitants 
 cut off their tops for fuel. 
 
 We saw nobody that day outside of the town ; it was 
 too wintry for such as had seen the Back-side before, or 
 for the greater number who never desire to see it, to 
 venture out ; and we saw hardly a track to show that 
 any had ever crossed this desert. Yet I was told that 
 some are always out on the Back-side night and day in 
 severe weather, looking for wrecks, in order that they 
 may get the job of discharging the cargo, or the like, — 
 and thus shipwrecked men are succored. But, generally 
 speaking, the inhabitants rarely visit these sands. One 
 who had lived in Provincetown thirty years told me 
 that he had not been through to the north side within 
 that time. Sometimes the natives themselves come 
 near perishing by losing their way in snow-storms be- 
 hind the town. 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 189 
 
 The wind was not a Sirocco or Simoon, such as we 
 associate with the desert, but a New England north- 
 easter, — and we sought shelter in vain under the sand- 
 hills, for it blew all about them, rounding them into 
 cones, and was sure to find us out on whichever side 
 we sat. From time to time we lay down and drank 
 at little pools in the sand, filled with pure fresh water, 
 all that was left, probably, of a pond or swamp. The 
 air was filled with dust likg snow, and cnttrng sand 
 which made the face tinglj^^ and we saw what it must 
 be to face it when the weather was drier, and, if possi- 
 ble, windier still, — to fate a migrating sand-bar in the 
 air, which has picked up its duds and is off, — to be 
 whipped with a cat, Hot o' nine-tails, but of a myriad 
 of tails, and each one a sting to it. A Mr. Whitman, 
 a former minister of Wellfle^t, used to write to his in- 
 land friends that the blowing sand' scratched the win- 
 dows so that he was obliged to/fiave one new pane set 
 every week, that he might see out. 
 
 On the edge of the shrubby woods the sand had the 
 appearance of an inundation which was overwhelming 
 them, terminating in an abrupt bank many feet higher 
 than the surface on which they stood, and having par- 
 tially buried the outside trees. The moving sand-hills 
 of England, called Dunes or Downs, to which these have 
 been likened, are either formed of sand cast up by the 
 sea, or of sand taken from the land itself in the first 
 place by the wind, and driven still farther inward. It 
 is here a tide of sand impelled by waves and wind, 
 slowly flowing from the sea toward the town. The 
 northeast winds are said to be the strongest, but the 
 northwest to move most sand, because they are the 
 driest. On the shore of the Bay of Biscay many vil- 
 
190 CAPE COD. 
 
 lages were formerly destroyed in this way. Some of 
 the ridges of beach-grass which we saw were planted 
 by government many years ago, to preserve the har- 
 bor of Provincetown and the extremity of the Cape. 
 I talked with some who had been employed in the plant- 
 ing. In the " Description of the Eastern Coast," which 
 I have already referred to, it is said : " Beach-grass 
 during the spring and summer grows about two feet 
 and a half. If surrounded by naked beach, the storms 
 of autumn and winter heap up the sand on all sides, 
 and cause it to rise nearly to the top of the plant. In 
 the ensuing spring the grass sprouts anew ; is again 
 covered with sand in the winter; and thus a hill or 
 ridge continues to ascend as long as there is a sufficient 
 base to support it, or till the circumscribing sand, being 
 also covered with beach-grass, will no longer yield to the 
 force of the winds." Sand-hills formed in this way are 
 sometimes one hundred feet high and of every variety 
 of form, like snow-drifts, or Ai'ab tents, and are con- 
 tinually shifting. The grass roots itself very firmly. 
 When I endeavored to pull it up, it usually broke off 
 ten inches or a foot below the surface, at what had been 
 the surface the year before, as appeared by the numer- 
 ous offshoots there, it being a straight, hard, round 
 shoot, showing by its length how much the sand had 
 accumulated the last year ; and sometimes the dead 
 Btubs of a previous season were pulled up with it from 
 still deeper in the sand, with their own more decayed 
 shoot attached, — so that the age of a sand-hill, and its 
 rate of increase for several years, is pretty accurately 
 recorded in this way. 
 
 Old Gerard, the English herbahst, says, p. 1250: "I 
 find mention in Stovve's Chronicle, in A7i7io 1555, of a 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. IDl 
 
 certain pulse or pease, as they term it, wherewitli the poor 
 people at that thne, there being a great dearth, were 
 miraculously helped : he thus mentions it. In the 
 month of August (saith he), in Suffolke, at a place 
 by the sea side all of hard stone and pibble, called in 
 those parts a shelf, lying between the towns of Orford 
 and Aldborough, where neither grew grass nor any 
 earth was ever seen ; it chanced in this barren place 
 suddenly to spring up without any tillage or sowing, 
 great abundance of peason, whereof the poor gathered 
 (as men judged) above one hundred quarters, yet re- 
 mained some ripe and some blossoming, as many as ever 
 there were before : to the which place rode the Bishop 
 of Norwich and the Lord Willoughby, with others in 
 great number, who found nothing but hard, rocky stone 
 the space of three yards under the roots of these peason, 
 which roots were great and long, and very sweet." He 
 tells us also that Gesner learned from Dr. Cajus that 
 there were enough there to supply thousands of men. 
 He goes on to say that " they without doubt grew there 
 many years before, but were not observed till hunger 
 made them take notice of them, and quickened their 
 invention, which commonly in our people is very dull, 
 especially in finding out food of this nature. My wor- 
 shipful friend Dr. Argent hath told me that many 
 years ago he was in this place, and caused his man 
 to pull among the beach with his hands, and follow 
 the roots so long until he got some equal in length 
 unto his height, yet could come to no ends of them." 
 Gerard never saw them, and is not certain what kind 
 they were. 
 
 In Dwight's Travels in New England it is stated that 
 the inhabitants of Truro were formerly regularly warned 
 
192 CAPE COD. 
 
 under the authority of law in the month of April yearly, 
 to plant beach-grass, as elsewhere they are warned to 
 repair the highways. They dug up the grass in bunches, 
 which were afterward divided into several smaller ones, 
 and set about three feet apart, in rows, so arranged as 
 to break joints and obstruct the passage of the wind. It 
 spread itself rapidly, the weight of the seeds when ripe 
 bending the heads of the grass, and so dropping directly 
 by its side and vegetating there. In this way, for in- 
 stance, they built up again that part of the Cape be- 
 tween Truro and Provincetown where the sea broke 
 over in the last century. They have now a public road 
 near there, made by laying sods, which were full of 
 roots, bottom upward and close together on the sand, 
 double in the middle of the track, then spreading brush 
 evenly over the sand on each side for half a dozen feet, 
 planting beach-grass on the banks in regular rows, as 
 above described, and sticking a fence of brush against 
 the hollows. 
 
 The attention of the general government was first 
 attracted to the danger which threatened Cape Cod 
 Harbor from the inroads of the sand, about thirty 
 years ago, and commissioners were at that time ap- 
 pointed by Massachusetts to examine the premises. 
 They reported in June, 1825, that, owing to " the trees 
 and brush having been cut down, and the beach-grass 
 destroyed on the seaward side of the Cape, opposite the 
 Harbor," the original surface of the ground had been 
 broken up and removed by the wind toward the Har- 
 bor, — during the previous fourteen years, — over an 
 extent of " one half a mile in breadth, and about four 
 and a half miles in length." — " The space where a few 
 years since were some of the highest lands on the Cape, 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 193 
 
 covered with trees and bushes," presenting "an exten- 
 sive waste of undulating sand " ; — and that, during the 
 previous twelve months, the sand " had approached the 
 Harbor an average distance of fifty rods, for an extent 
 of four and a half miles ! " and unless some measures 
 were adopted to check its progress, it would in a few 
 years destroy both the harbor and the town. They 
 therefore recommended that beach-grass be set out on 
 a curving line over a space ten rods wide and four and 
 a half miles long, and that cattle, horses, and sheep be 
 prohibited from going abroad, and the inhabitants from 
 cutting the brush. 
 
 I was told that about thirty thousand dollars in all had 
 been appropriated to this object, though it was com- 
 plained that a great part of it was spent foolishly, as the 
 public money is wont to be. Some say that while the 
 government is planting beach-grass behind the town for 
 the protection of the harbor, the inhabitants are rolling 
 the sand into the harbor in wheelbarrows, in order to 
 make house-lots. The Patent-Office has recently im- 
 ported the seed of this grass from Holland, and distrib- 
 uted it over the country, but probably we have as much 
 as the Hollanders. 
 
 Thus Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens, as it 
 were, by a myriad little cables of beach-grass, and, if 
 they should fail, would become a total wreck, and ere- 
 long go to the bottom. Formerly, the cows were per- 
 mitted to go at large, and they ate many strands of 
 the cable by which the Cape is moored, and wellnigh 
 set it adrift, as the bull did the boat which was moored 
 with a grass rope ; but now they are not permitted to 
 wander. 
 
 A portion of Truro which has considerable taxable 
 
 9 M 
 
194 CAPE COD. 
 
 property on it has lately been added to Provlncetown, 
 and I was told by a Truro man that his townsmen 
 talked of petitioning the legislature to set off the next 
 mile of their territory also to Provincetown, in order 
 that she might have her share of the lean as well as 
 the fat, and take care of the road through it; for its 
 whole value is literally to hold the Cape together, and 
 even this it has not always done. But Provincetown 
 strenuously declines the gift. 
 
 The wind blowed so hard from the northeast, that, 
 cold as it was, we resolved to see the breakers on the 
 Atlantic side, whose din we had heard all the morning ; 
 so we kept on eastward through the Desert, till we struck 
 the shore again northeast of Provincetown, and exposed 
 ourselves to the full force of the piercing blast. There 
 are extensive shoals there over which the sea broke with 
 great force. For half a mile from the shore it was one 
 mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such 
 a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak. Of 
 this part of the coast it is said : " A northeast storm, 
 the most violent and fatal to seamen, as it is frequently 
 accompanied with snow, blows directly on the land : a 
 strong current sets along the shore : add to which that 
 ships, during the operation of such a storm, endeavor 
 to work northward, that they may get into the bay. 
 Should they be unable to weather Race Point, the wind 
 drives them on the shore, and a shipwreck is inevitable. 
 Accordingly, the strand is everywhere covered with the 
 fragments of vessels." But since the Highland Light 
 was erected, this part of the coast is less dangerous, and 
 it is said that more shipwrecks occur south of that light, 
 where they were scarcely known before. 
 
 This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed, — more 
 
THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 195 
 
 tumultuous, my companion affirmed, than the rapids of 
 Niagara, and, of course, on a far greater scale. It was 
 the ocean in a gale, a clear, cold day, with only one sail 
 in sight, which labored much, as if it were anxiously 
 seeking a harbor. It was high tide when we reached 
 the shore, and in one place, for a considerable distance, 
 each wave dashed up so high that it was difficult to pass 
 between it and the bank. Further south, where the 
 bank was higher, it would have been dangerous to 
 attempt it. A native of the Cape has told me, that 
 many years ago, three boys, his playmates, having gone 
 to this beach in Wellfleet to visit a wreck, when the sea 
 receded ran down to the wreck, and when it came in 
 ran before it to the bank, but the sea following fast 
 at their heels, caused the bank to cave and bury them 
 alive. 
 
 It was the roaring sea, OaKaaaa rjxrjea-aa, — 
 
 dfiCJ)! Se T aKpai 
 H'ioi/ef ^ooaaiv, epevyofieurjs dXoi c^co. 
 
 And the summits of the bank 
 Around resound, the sea being vomited forth. 
 
 As we stood looking on this scene we were gradually 
 convinced that fishing here and in a pond were not, in 
 all respects, the same, and that he who waits for fair 
 weather and a calm sea may never see the glancing skin 
 of a mackerel, and get no nearer to a cod than the 
 wooden emblem in the State-House. 
 
 Having lingered on the shore till we were wellnigh 
 chilled to death by the wind, and were ready to take 
 shelter in a Charity-house, we turned our weather-beaten 
 faces toward Provincetown and the Bay again, having 
 now more than doubled the Cape. 
 
X. 
 
 PROVINCETOWN. 
 
 Early the next morning I walked into a fish-how > 
 near our hotel, where three or four men were engpgr/l 
 in trundling out the pickled fish on barrows, and sprer/.- 
 ing them to dry. They told me that a vessel b>id latfly 
 come in from the Banks with forty-four thouF^d codfiph. 
 Timothy Dwight says that, just before h*- arrived at 
 Provincetown, "a schooner came in fron the Great 
 Bank with fifty-six thousand fish, almost one thousand 
 five hundred quintals, taken in a single voyage ; the 
 main deck being, on her r'^turn, eight inches under water 
 in calm weather." The cod in this fish-house, just ou* 
 of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and *h^e'- 
 or four men stood on them in cowhide boots, pi<^chi^^ 
 them on to the Narrows with an instrument which had a 
 single iron point. One young man, who chewed tobacco, 
 spat on the fish repeatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when 
 that older man sees you he will speak to you. But 
 presently 1 saw the older man do the same thing. It re- 
 minded Tne of the figs of Smyrna. " How long does it 
 take to cure these fish ? " I asked. 
 
 " Two good drying days, sir," was the answer. 
 
 I walked across the street again into the hotel to break- 
 fast, and mine host inquired if I would take "hashed fish 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 197 
 
 or beans." I took beans, though they never were a 
 favorite dish of mine. I found next summer that this 
 was still the only alternative proposed here, and the land- 
 lord was still ringing the changes on these two words. 
 In the former dish there was a remarkable proportion of 
 fish. As you travel inland the potato predominates. 
 It chanced that I did not taste fresh fish of any kind on 
 the Cape, and I was assured that they were not so much 
 used there as in the country. That is where they are 
 cured, and where, sometimes, travellers are cured of eating 
 them. No fresh meat was slaughtered in Provincetown, 
 but the little that was used at the public houses was 
 brought from Boston by the steamer. 
 
 A great many of the houses here were surrounded by 
 fish-flakes close up to the sills on all sides, with only a 
 narrow passage two or three feet wide, to the front door ; 
 so that instead of looking out into a flower or grass plot, 
 you looked on to so many square rods of cod turned 
 wrong side outwards. These parterres were said to be 
 least like a flower-garden in a good drying day in mid- 
 summer. There were flakes of every age and pattern, 
 and some so rusty and overgrown with lichens that they 
 looked as if they might have served the founders of the 
 fishery here. Some had broken down under the weight 
 of successive harvests. The principal employment of 
 the inhabitants at this time seemed to be to trundle out 
 their fish and spread them in the morning, and bring 
 them in at night. I saw how many a loafer who chanced 
 to be out early enough, got a job at wheeling out the fish 
 of his neighbor who was anxious to improve the whole 
 of a fair day. Now then I knew where salt fish were 
 caught. They were everywhere lying on their backs, 
 their collar-bones standing out like the lapels of a man- 
 
198 CAPE COD. 
 
 o'-war-man's jacket, and inviting all things to come and 
 rest in their bosoms ; and all things, with a few exceptions, 
 accepted the invitation. I think, by the way, that if you 
 should wrap a large salt fish round a small boy, he would 
 have a coat of such a fashion as I have seen many a one 
 wear to muster. Salt fish were stacked up on the 
 wharves, looking like corded wood, maple and yellow 
 birch with the bark left on. I mistook them for this at 
 first, and such in one sense they were, — fuel to maintain 
 our vital fires, — an eastern wood which grew on the 
 Grand Banks. Some were stacked in the form of huge 
 flower-pots, being laid in small circles with the tails out- 
 wards, each circle successively larger than the preceding 
 until the pile was three or four feet high, when the cir- 
 cles rapidly diminished, so as to form a conical roof. 
 On the shores of New Brunswick this is covered with 
 birch-bark, and stones are placed upon it, and being thus 
 rendered impervious to the rain, it is left to season before 
 being packed for exportation. 
 
 It is rumored that in the fall the cows here are some- 
 times fed on cod's heads ! The* godlike part of the cod, 
 which, like the human head, is curiously and wonderfully 
 made, forsooth has but little less brain in it, — coming 
 to such an end ! to be craunched by cows ! I felt my 
 own skull crack from sympathy. What if the heads of 
 men were to be cut oflf to feed the cows of a superior 
 order of beings who inhabit the islands in the ether ? 
 Away goes your fine brain, the house of thought and in- 
 stinct, to swell the cud of a ruminant animal ! — How- 
 ever, an inhabitant assured me that they did not make a 
 practice of feeding cows on cod's heads ; the cows merely 
 would eat them sometimes ; but I might live there all my 
 I days and never see it done. A cow wanting salt would 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 199 
 
 also sometimes lick out all the soft part of a cod on the 
 flakes. This he would have me believe was the foun- 
 dation of this fish-stoiy. 
 
 It has been a constant traveller's tale and perhaps 
 slander, now for thous^tids of years, the Latins and 
 Greeks have repeated it, that this or that nation feeds 
 its cattle, or horses^r sheep, on fish, as may be seen in 
 CElian and Plin^*, but in the Journal of Nearchus, who 
 was Alexanders admiral, and made a voyage from the 
 Indus to theyEuphrates three hundred and twenty six 
 years before Christ, it is said that the inhabitants of a 
 portion of the intermediate coast, whom he called 
 Icthyophagi or Fish-eaters, not only ate fishes raw and 
 also dried and pounded in a whale'^ vertebra for a mor- 
 tar and made into a paste, but gave them to their cattle, 
 there being no grass on the coast ; and several modern 
 travellers, — Braybosa, Niebuhr, and others make the 
 same report. Therefore in balancing the evidence I am 
 still in doubt about the Provincetown cows. As for 
 other domestic animus. Captain King in his continuation 
 of Captain Cook's. "Journal in 1779, says of the dogs of 
 Kamtschatka, "Xheir food in the winter consists entirely 
 of the head, ^entrails, and backbones of salmon, which 
 are put aside and dried for that purpose ; and with this 
 diet they are fed but sparingly." (Cook's Journal, 
 Vol.VII. p. 315.) 
 
 As we are treating of fishy matters, let me insert 
 what Pliny says, that f the commanders of the fleets of 
 Alexander the Grealf have related that the Gedrosi, who 
 dwell on the banksrof the river Arabis, are in the habit 
 of making the doors of their houses with the jaw-bones 
 of fishes, and raftering the roofs with their bones." Strabo 
 tells the same of the Ichthyophagi. " Hardouin re- 
 
200 CAPE COD. 
 
 marks, that the Basques of his day were in the habit of 
 fencing their gardens with the ribs of the whale, which 
 sometimes exceeded twenty feet in length ; and Cuvier 
 says, that at the present time the jaw-bone of the whale 
 is used in Norway for the purpose of making beams or 
 posts for buildings." (Bohn's ed. trans, of Pliny, Vol. II. 
 p. 361.) Herodotus says the inhabitants on Lake Pra- 
 sias in Thrace (living on piles), " give fish for fodder to 
 their horses and beasts of burden." 
 
 Provincetown was apparently what is called a flourish- 
 ing town. Some of the inhabitants asked me if I did 
 not think that they appeared to be well off generally. I 
 said that I did, and asked how many there were in the 
 almshouse. "O, only one or two, infirm or idiotic," 
 answered they. The outward aspect of the houses and 
 shops frequently suggested a poverty which their interior 
 comfort and even richness disproved. You might meet 
 a lady daintily dressed in the Sabbath morning, wading 
 in among the sand-hills, from church, where there ap- 
 peared no house fit to receive her, yet no doubt the 
 interior of the house answered to the exterior of the 
 lady. As for the interior of the inhabitants I am still in 
 the dark about it. I had a little intercourse with some 
 whom I met in the street, and was often agreeably dis- 
 appointed by discovering the intelligence of rough, and 
 what would be considered unpromising specimens. Nay, 
 I ventured to call on one citizen the next summer, 
 by special invitation. I found him sitting in his front 
 doorway, that Sabbath evening, prepared for me to come 
 in unto him ; but unfortunately for his reputation for 
 keeping open house, there was stretched across his gate- 
 way a circular* cobweb of the largest kind and quite en- 
 tire. This looked so ominous that I actually turned 
 aside and went in the back way. 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 201 
 
 This Monday morning was beautifully mild and calm, 
 both on land and water, promising us a smooth passage 
 across the Bay, and the fishermen feared that it would 
 not be so good a drying day as the cold and windy one 
 which preceded it. There could hardly have been a 
 greater contrast. This was the first of the Indian sum- 
 mer days, though at a late hour in the morning we found 
 the wells in the sand behind the town still covered with 
 ice, which had formed in the night. What with wind 
 and sun my mo^t prominent feature fairly cast its slough. 
 But I assure you it will take more than two good drying 
 days to cure me of rambling. After making an excur- 
 sion among the hills in the neighborhood of the Shank- 
 Painter Swamp, and getting a httle work done in its line, 
 we took our seat upon the highest sand-hill overlooking 
 the town, in mid air, on a long plank stretched across 
 between two hillocks of sand, where some boys were en- 
 deavoring in vain to fly their kite ; and there we 
 remained the rest of that forenoon looking out over the 
 placid harbor, and watching for the first appearance of 
 the steamer from Wellfleet, that we might be in readiness 
 to go on board when we heard the whistle off Long 
 Point. 
 
 We got what we could out of the boys in the mean- 
 while. Provincetown boys are of course all sailors and 
 have sailors' eyes. When we were at the Highland 
 Light the last summer, seven or eight miles from Prov- 
 incetown Harbor, and wished to know one Sunday morn- 
 ing if the Olata, a well-known yacht, had got in from 
 Boston, so that we could return in her, a Provincetown 
 boy about ten years old, who chanced to be at the table, 
 remarked that she had. I asked him how he knew. 
 " I just saw her come in," said he. When I expressed 
 9* 
 
dl 
 
 202 CAPE COD. 
 
 surprise that he could distinguish, her from other vessels 
 so far, he said that there were not so many of those 
 two-topsail schooners about but that he could tell her. 
 Palfrey said, in his oration at Barnstable, the duck does 
 not take to the water with a surer instinct than the 
 Barnstable boy. [He might have said the Cape Cod 
 boy as well.] He leaps from his leading-strings into 
 the shrouds, it is but a bound from the mother's lap 
 to the masthead. He boxes the compass in his infant 
 sohloquies. He can hand, reef, and steer by the time 
 he flies a kite. 
 
 This was the very day one would have chosen to sit 
 upon a hill overlooking sea and land, and muse there. 
 The mackerel fleet was rapidly taking its departure, one 
 schooner after another, and standing round the Cape, 
 like fowls leaving their roosts in the morning to disperse 
 themselves in distant fields. The turtle-like sheds of the 
 salt-works were crowded into every nook in the hills, 
 immediately behind the town, and their now idle wind- 
 mills lined the shore. It was worth the while to see by 
 w hat coarse and simple chemistry this almost necessary 
 of life is obtained, with the sun for journeyman, and a 
 single apprentice to do the chores for a large establish- 
 ment. It is a sort of tropical labor, pursued too in the 
 sunniest season ; more interesting than gold or diamond- 
 washing, which, I fancy, it somewhat resembles at a dis- 
 tance. In the production of the necessari es of lif e Na--v.^ 
 ture is ready enough to assist man. So at the potash 1 1 
 works which I have seen at Hull, where they burn the 
 stems of the kelp and boil the ashes. Verily, chemistry 
 is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen 
 raw Irishmen in the laboratory. It is said, that owing 
 to the reflection of the sun from the sand-hills, and there 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 203 
 
 being absolutely no fresh water emptying into the harbor, 
 the same number of superficial feet yields more salt here 
 than in any other part of the county. A little rain is 
 considered necessary to clear the air, and make salt fast 
 and good, for as paint does not dry, so water does not 
 evaporate in dog-day weather. But they were now, as 
 elsewhere on the Cape, breaking up their salt-works and 
 selling them for lumber. 
 
 From that elevation we could overlook the operations 
 of the inhabitants almost as completely as if the roofs 
 had been taken off. Tliey were busily covering the 
 wicker-worked flakes about their houses with salted fish, 
 and we now saw that the back yards were improved for 
 this purpose as much as the front ; where one man's fish 
 ended another's began. In almost every yard we detected 
 some little building from which these treasures were 
 being trundled forth and systematically spread, and we 
 saw that there was an art as well as a knack even in 
 spreading fish, and that a division of labor was profit- 
 ably practised. One man was withdrawing his fishes a 
 few inches beyond the nose of his neighbor's cow which 
 had stretched her neck over a paling to get at them. It 
 seemed a quite domestic employment, like drying clothes, 
 and indeed in some parts of the county the women take 
 part in it. 
 
 I noticed in several places on the Cape a sort of 
 ciothe^-Jlakes. %hey spread brush on the ground, and 
 fence it roun^f and then lay their clothes on it, to keep 
 them frona'^'the sand. This is a Cape Cod clothes-yard. 
 
 The sand is the great enemy here. The tops of some 
 of the hills were enclosed and a board put up forbidding 
 all persons entering the enclosure, lest their feet should 
 disturb the sand, and set it a-blovving or a-sliding. Th^ 
 
204 CAPE COD. 
 
 inhabitants are obliged to get leave from the authorities 
 to cut wood behind the town for fish-flakes, bean-poles, 
 pea-brush, and the like, though, as we were told, they 
 may transplant trees from one part of the township to 
 another without leave. The sand drifts like snow, and 
 sometimes the lower story of a house is concealed by it, 
 though it is kept off by a wall. The houses were for- 
 merly built on piles, in order that the driving sand might 
 pass under them. We saw a few old ones here still 
 standing on their piles, but they were boarded up now, 
 being protected by their younger neighbors. There was 
 a school-house, just under the hiil on which we sat, filled 
 with sand up to the tops of the desks, and of course the 
 master and scholars had fled. Perhaps they had im- 
 prudently left the windows open one day, or neglected to 
 mend a broken pane. Yet in one place was advertised 
 " Fine sand for sale here," — I could hardly believe my 
 eyes, — probably some of the street sifted, — a good in- 
 stance of the fact that a man confers a value on the most 
 worthless thing by mixing himself with it, according to 
 which rule we must have conferred a value on the whole 
 backside of Cape Cod ; — but I thought that if they 
 could have advertised " Fat Soil," or perhaps " Fine 
 sand got rid of," ay, and " Shoes emptied here," it would 
 have been more alluring. As we looked down on the 
 town, I thought that I saw one man, who probably Hved 
 beyond the extremity of the planking, steering and tack- 
 ing for it in a sort of snow-shoes, but I may have been 
 mistaken. In some pictures of Provincetown the per- 
 sons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ancles, 
 so much being supposed to be buried in the sand. Nev- 
 ertheless, natives of Provincetown assured me that they 
 /could walk in the middle of the road without trouble 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 205 
 
 even in slippers, for they had learned how to put their 
 feet down and lift them up without taking in any sand. 
 One man said, that he should be surprised if he found 
 half a dozen grains of sand in, his pumps at night, and ' 
 stated, moreover, that the young ladies had a dexterous 
 way of emptying their shoes at each step, which it would 
 take a stranger a long time to learn. The tires of the 
 stage-wheels were about five inches wide ; and the wagon- 
 tires generally on the Cape are an inch or two wider, j 
 as the sand is an inch or two deeper than elsewhere. I ! 
 saw a baby's wagon witlj' tires six inches wide to keep it 
 near the surface. The more tired the wheels, the less \ » 
 tired the horses. Yet all the time that we were in Prov- '^ 
 incetown, which was two days and nights, we saw only 
 one horse and cart, and they were conveying a coffin. 
 They did not try such experiments there on common 
 occasions. The next summer I saw only the two-wheeled 
 horse-cart which conveyed me thirty rods into the harbor 
 on my way to the steamer. Yet we read that there were 
 two horses and two yoke of oxen here in 1791, and we 
 were told that there were several more when we were 
 there, beside the stage team. In Barber's Historical Col- 
 lections, it is said, " so rarely are wheel-carriages seen in 
 the place that they are a matter of some curiosity to the 
 younger part of the community. A lad who understood 
 navigating the ocean much better than land travel, on see- 
 ing a man driving a wagon in the street, expressed his 
 surprise at his being able to drive so straight without the 
 assistance of a rudder." ' There was no rattle of carts, and 
 there would have been no rattle if there had been any \ 
 carts. ) Some saddle-horses that passed the hotel in the 
 evening merely made the sand fly with a rustling sound 
 like a writer sanding his paper copiously, but there was no 
 
206 CAPE COD. 
 
 sound of their tread. No doubt there are more horses 
 and carts there a^^resent. A sleigh is never seen, or at 
 least is a gr^flt noveUy on the Cape, the snow being 
 either absorbed by the sand or blown into drifts. 
 
 Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Cape generally 
 do not complain of their " soil," but will tell you that 
 it is good enough for them to dry their fish on. 
 
 Njtwithstanding all this sand, we counted three meet- 
 ing-houses, and four school-houses nearly as large, on 
 this street, though some had a tight board fence about 
 them to preserve the plot within level and hard. Simi- 
 lar fences, even within a foot of many of the houses, 
 gave the town a less cheerful and hospitable appear- 
 ance than it would otherwise have had. They told 
 ^js that, on the whnle, the sand had made no progress 
 for the last ten years, the cows being no longer per- 
 mitted to go at Wrge, and every means being taken 
 '*o stop the sandy tide. 
 
 In 1727 Provincetown was "invested with peculiar 
 privileges," for its encouragement. Once or twice it 
 was nearly abandoned ; but now lots on the street fetch 
 ♦I high price, though titles to them were first obtained 
 by possession and improvement, and they are still 
 transferred by quitclaim deeds merely, the township 
 being the property of the State. But though lots were 
 s>o valuable on the street, you might in many places 
 Uirow a stone over them to where a man could still 
 obtain land or sand by squatting on or improving it. 
 
 Stones are very rare on the Cape. I saw a very 
 few small stones used for pavements and for bank 
 walls, in one or two places in my walk, but they are 
 so scarce, that, as I was informed, vessels have been 
 forbidden to take them from the beach for ballast, and 
 
rEOVIXCETOWN. 207 
 
 therefore their crews used to land at night and steal 
 them. I did not hear of a rod of reguhir stone wall 
 below Orleans. Yet I saw one man underpinning a 
 new house in Eastham with some " rocks," as he called 
 them, which he said a neighbor had collected with great 
 pains in the course of years, and finally made over to 
 him. This I thought was a ' gift worthy of being re- 
 corded, — equal to a transfer of California " rocks," 
 almost. Another man who was assisting him, and who 
 seemed to be a close observer of nature, hinted to me 
 the locality of a rock in that neighborhood which was 
 " forty -two paces in circumference and fifteen feet high," 
 for he saw that I was a stranger, and, probably, would 
 not carry it off. Yet I suspect that the locality of the 
 few large rocks on the forearm of the Cape is well 
 known to the inhabitants generally. I even met with 
 one man who had got a smattering of mineralogy, but 
 where he picked it up I could not guess. I thought 
 that he would meet with some interesting geological 
 nuts for him to crack, if he should ever visit the main- 
 land, Cohasset or Marblehead, for instance. 
 
 The well stones at the Highland Light were brought 
 
 from Hingham, but the wells and cellars of the Cape 
 
 are generally built of brick, which also are imported. 
 
 /The cellars, as well as the wells, are made in a circular 
 
 / form, to prevent the sand from pressing in The wall. 
 
 I The former are only from njne to twelve feet in diam- 
 eter, and are said to be Yery cheap, since a single tier 
 of brick will suffice for/a cellar of even larger dimen- 
 sions. Of course, if you live in the sand, you will not 
 require a large cellar to hold your roots. In Province- 
 town, when formerly they suffered the sand to drive 
 under their houses, obliterating all rudiment of a cellar, 
 
208 CAPE COD. 
 
 they did not raise a vegetable to put into one. One 
 farmer in Wellfleet, who raised fifty bushels of potatoes, 
 showed me his cellar under a corner of his house, not 
 more than nine feet in diameter, looking like a cistern ; 
 but he had another of the same size under his barn. 
 •t You need dig only a few feet almost anywhere near 
 ithe shore of the Cape to find fresh water. But that 
 > which we tasted was invariably poor, though the inhab- 
 I itants called it good, as if they were comparing it with 
 salt water. In the account of Truro, it is said, " Wells 
 dug near the shore are dry at low water, or rather at 
 what is called young flood, but are replenished with the 
 flowing of the tide," — the salt water, which is lowest 
 in the sand, apparently forcing the fresh up. When 
 you express your surprise at the greenness of a Prov- 
 incetown garden on the beach, in a dry season, they will 
 sometimes tell you that the tide forces the moisture up 
 to them. It is an interesting fact that low sand-bars in 
 the midst of the ocean, perhaps even those which are 
 \ laid bare only at low tide, are reservoirs of fresh water 
 at which the thirsty mariner can supply himself. They 
 1 appear, like huge sponges, to hold the rain and dew 
 Iwhich fall on them, and which, by capillary attrac- 
 tion, are prevented from mingling with the surround 
 ing brine. 
 
 The Harbor of Provincetown — which, as well as 
 the greater part of the Bay, and a wide expanse of 
 ocean, we overlooked from our perch — is deservedly 
 famous. It opens to the south, is free from rocks, and 
 " is never frozen over. It is said that the only ice seen 
 in it drifts in sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. 
 Dwight remarks that " The storms which prevail on the 
 American coast generally come from the east ; and ther'j 
 
PEOVmCETOWN. 209 
 
 is no other harbor on a windward shore within two hun- 
 dred miles." J. D. Graham, who has made a very 
 minute and thorough survey of this harbor and the 
 adjacent waters, states that " its capacity, depth of water;, 
 excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords 
 from all winds, combine to render it one of the most val- 
 uable ship harbors on our coast." It is the harbor of the 
 Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts generally. 
 It was known to navigators several years at least before 
 the settlement of Plymouth. In Captain John Smith's 
 map of New England, dated 1614, it bears the name of 
 Milford Haven, and Massachusetts Bay that of Stuard's 
 Bay. His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name 
 of Cape Cod to Cape James ; but even princes have not 
 always power to change a name for the worse, and as 
 Cotton Mather said. Cape Cod is " a name which I sup- 
 pose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swim- 
 ming on its highest hills." 
 
 Many an early voyager was unexpectedly caught by 
 this hook, and found himself embayed. On successive 
 maps. Cape Cod appears sprinkled over with French, 
 Dutch, and English names, as it made part of New 
 France, New Holland, and New England. On one 
 map Provincetown Harbor is called " Fuic (bownet ?) 
 Bay," Barnstable Bay " Staten Bay," and the sea north 
 of it " Mare del Noort," or the North Sea. On another, 
 the extremity of the Cape is called " Staten Hoeck," or 
 the States Hook. On another, by Young, this has 
 Noord Zee, Staten hoeck or Hit hoeck, but the copy 
 at Cambridge has no date ; the whole Cape is called 
 " Niew Hollant " (after Hudson) ; and on another still, 
 the shore between Race Point and Wood End ap- 
 pears to be called " Bevechier." In Champlain's admi- 
 
210 CAPE COD. 
 
 rable Map of New France, including the oldest lecog- 
 nizable map of what is now the New England coast 
 with which I am acquainted, Cape Cod is called G. 
 Blan (i. e. Cape White), from the color of its sands, 
 and Massachusetts Bay is Baye Blanche. It was vis- 
 ited by De Monts and Champlain in 1605, and the next 
 year was further explored by Poitrincourt and Cham- 
 plain. The latter has given a particular account of these 
 explorations in his "Voyages," together with separate 
 charts and soundings of two of its harbors, — Malle 
 Barre^ the Bad Bar (Nauset Harbor?), a name now 
 applied to what the French called Cap Baturier, — and 
 Port Fortune, apparently Chatham Harbor. Both these 
 names are copied on the map of " Novi Belgii," in 
 Ogilby's America. He also describes minutely the man- 
 ners and customs of the savages, and represents by a 
 plate the savages surprising the French and killing five 
 or six of them. The French afterward killed some of 
 the natives, and wished, by way of revenge, to carry 
 otF some and make them grind in their hand-mill at 
 Port Royal. 
 
 It is remarkable that there is not in English any ade- 
 quate or correct account of the French exploration of 
 what is now the coast of New England, between 1604 
 and 1608, though it is conceded that they then made the 
 first permanent European settlement on the continent 
 of North America north of St. Augustine.. If the lions 
 had been the painters it would have /been otherwise. 
 This omission is probably to be accounted for partly by 
 the fact that the early edition of Champlain's " Voyages " 
 had not been consulted for this purpose. This contains 
 by far the most particular, and, I think, the most inter- 
 esting chapter of what we may call the Ante-Pilgrim 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 211 
 
 history of New England, extending to one hundred and 
 sixty pages quarto ; but appears to be unknown equally 
 to the historian and the orator on Plymouth Rock. 
 Bancroft does not mention Cham plain at all among the 
 authorities for De Monts' expedition, nor does he say 
 that he ever visited the coast of New England. Though 
 he bore the title of pilot to De Monts, he was, in an- 
 other sense, the leading spirit, as well as the historian 
 of the expedition. Holmes, Hildreth, and Barry, and 
 apparently all our historians who mention Champlain, 
 refer to the edition of 1632, in which all the separate 
 charts of our harbors, &c., and about one half the narra- 
 tive, are omitted ; for the author explored so many lands 
 afterward that he could afford to forget a part of what 
 he had done. Hildreth, speaking of De Monts's expe- 
 dition, says that "he looked into the Penobscot [in 
 1605], which Pring had discovered two years before," 
 saying nothing about Champlain's extensive exploration 
 of it for De Monts in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and 
 refers to Purchas) ; also that he followed in the track 
 of Pring along the coast " to Cape Cod, which he 
 called Malabarre." (Haliburton had made the same 
 statement before him in 1829. He called it Cap 
 Blanc, and Malle Barre (the Bad Bar) was the name 
 given to a harbor on the east side of the Cape.) 
 Pring says nothing about a river there. Belknap 
 says that Weymouth discovered it in 1605. Sir F. 
 Gorges says, in his narration (Maine Hist. Coll., Vol. 
 II. p. 19), 1658, that Pring in 1606 '*made a per- 
 fect discovery of all the rivers and harbors." This 
 is the most I can find. Bancroft makes Champlain to 
 have discovered more western rivers in Maine, not 
 naming the Penobscot j he, however, must have been 
 
212 CAPE COD. 
 
 the discoverer of distances on this river (see Belknap, 
 p. 147). Pring was absent from England only about 
 six months, and sailed by this part of Cape Cod (Male- 
 barre) because it yielded no sassafras, while the French, 
 who probably had not heard of Pring, were patiently 
 for years exploring the coast in search of a place of set- 
 tlement, sounding and surveying its harbors. 
 
 John Smith's map, published in 1616, from observa- 
 tions in 1614—15, is by many regarded as the oldest 
 map of New England. It is the first that was made 
 after this country was called New England, for he so 
 called it ; but in Champlain's " Voyages," edition 1 613^ 
 (and Lescarbot, in 1612, quotes a still earlier account 
 of his voyage,) there is a map of it made when it was 
 known to Christendom as New France, called Carte 
 Geographique de la Nouvelle Franse faictte par le Sieur 
 de Champlain Saint Tongois Cappitaine ordinaire pour 
 le roi en la Marine ^ — faict Ten 1612, from his obser- 
 vations between 1604 and 1607 ; a map extending from 
 Labrador to Cape Cod and westward to the Great Lakes, 
 and crowded with information, geographical, ethnograph- 
 ical, zoological, and botanical. He even gives the vari- 
 ation of the compass as observed by himself at that date 
 on many parts of the coast. This, taken together with 
 the many separate charts of harbors and their soundings 
 on a large scale, which this volume contains, — among 
 the rest. Qui ni he quy (Kennebec), Chouacoit R. 
 (Saco P.), Le Beau port, Port St. Louis (near Cape 
 Ann), and others on our coast, — but which are not 
 in the edition of 1632, makes this a completer map 
 of the New England and adjacent northern coast than 
 was made for half a century afterward, almost, we might 
 be allowed to say, till another Frenchman, Des Barres, 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 213 
 
 made another for us, which only our late Coast Survey 
 has superseded. Most of the maps of this coast made 
 for a long time after betray their indebtedness to Cham- 
 plain. He was a skilful navigator, a man of science, and 
 geographer to the King of France. He crossed the 
 Atlantic about twenty times, and made nothing of it; 
 often in a small vessel in which few would dare to go 
 to sea to-day ; and on one occasion making the voyage 
 from Tadoussac to St. Malo in eighteen days. He was 
 in this neighborhood, that is, between Annapolis, Nova 
 Scotia, and Cape Cod, observing the land and its inhab- 
 itants, and making a map of the coast, from May, 1604, 
 to September, 1 607, or about three and a half years, and 
 he has described minutely his method of surveying har- 
 bors. By his own account, a part of his map was en- 
 graved in 1604 (?). When Pont-Grav^ and others 
 returned to France in 1606, he remained at Port Royal 
 with Poitrin court, " in order," says he, " by the aid of 
 God, to finish the chart of the coasts which I had 
 begun " ; and again in his volume, printed before John 
 Smith visited this part of America, he says : " It seems 
 to me that I have done my duty as far as I could, if I 
 have not forgotten to put in my said chart whatever 
 I saw, and give a particular knowledge to the public 
 of what had never been described nor discovered so 
 particularly as I have done it, although some other may 
 have heretofore written of it ; but it was a very small 
 affair in comparison with what we have discovered 
 within the last ten years." 
 
 It is not generally remembered, if known, by the 
 descendants of the Pilgrims, that when their forefathers 
 were spending their first memorable winter in the New 
 World, they had for neighbors a colony of French no 
 
V 
 
 214 CAPE COD. 
 
 further off than Port Royal (Annapolis, Nova Scotia), 
 three hundred miles distant (Prince seems to make it 
 about five hundred miles) ; where, in spite of many 
 vicissitudes, they had been for fifteen years. They 
 built a grist-mill there as early as 1606; also made 
 bricks and turpentine on a stream, Williamson says, in 
 1606. De Monts, who was a Protestant, brought his 
 minister with him, who came to blows with the Catholic 
 priest on the subject of religion. Though these founders 
 of Acadie endured no less than the Pilgrims, and about 
 the same proportion of them — thirty-five out of seventy- 
 nine (Williamson's Maine says thirty-six out of sev- 
 enty) — died the first winter at St. Croix, 1604-5, six- 
 teen years earlier, no orator, to my knowledge, has ever 
 celebrated their enterprise (Williamson's History of 
 Maine does considerably), while the trials which their 
 successors and descendants endured at the hands of the 
 English have furnished a theme for both the historian 
 and poet. (See Bancroft's History and Longfellow's 
 Evangeline.) The remains of their fort at St. Croix 
 were discovered at the end of the last century, and 
 helped decide where the true St. Croix, our boundary, 
 was. 
 
 The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are prob- 
 ably older than the oldest English monument in New 
 England north of the Elizabeth Islands, or perhaps any- 
 where in New England, for if there are any traces 
 of Gosnold's storehouse left, his strong works are gone. 
 Bancroft says, advisedly, in 1834, "It requires a believ- 
 ing eye to discern the ruins of the fort " ; and that there 
 were no ruins of a fort m 1837. Dr. Charles T. Jack- 
 son tells me that, in th^ course of a geological survey 
 in 1827, he discovered a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, 
 
 / 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 215 
 
 on Goat Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in 
 Nova Scotia, bearing a. Masonic coat-of-arms and the 
 date 1606, which i^ fourteen years earlier than tlie 
 landing of the Pilg/ims. This was left in the possession 
 of Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia. 
 
 There were Jesuit priests in what has since been 
 called New England, converting the savages at Mount 
 Desert, then St. Savior, in 1613, — having come over 
 to Port Royal in 1611, though they were almost imme- 
 diately interrupted by the English, years before tlie 
 Pilgrims came hither to enjoy their own religion. This 
 according to Charaplain. Charlevoix says the same ; and 
 after coming from France in 1611, went west from Port 
 Royal along the coast as far as the Kennebec in 1612^ 
 and was often carried from Port Royal to Mount Desert. 
 
 Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England com- 
 mences, only when it ceases to be. New France. Though 
 Cabot was the first to discover the continent of North 
 America, Champlain, in the edition of his " Voyages " 
 printed in 1632, after the English had for a season got 
 possession of Quebec and Port Royal, complains with no 
 little justice : " The common consent of all Europe is to 
 represent New France as extending at least to the thirty- 
 fifth and thirty -sixth degre^ of latitude, as appears by 
 the maps of the world pricfted in Spain, Italy, Holland, 
 Flanders, Germany, and ^ngland, until they possessed \ 
 themselves of the coast/ of New France, where are 1 
 Arcadie, the Etchemin/ (Maine and New Brunswick), 
 the Almouchicois (Ma^achusetts ?), and the Great River I 
 St. Lawrence, where- they have imposed, according to / 
 their fancy, such narties as New England, Scotland, and / 
 others ; but it is not easy to efface the memory of a / 
 thing which is known to all Christendom." / 
 
216 CAPE COD. 
 
 That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore 
 of Labrador, gave the English no just title to New 
 England, or to the United States generally, any more 
 than to Patagonia. His careful biographer (Biddle) 
 is not certain in what voyage he ran down the coast 
 of the United States, as is reported, and no one tells 
 us what he saw. Miller, in the New York Hist. 
 Coll., Vol. I. p. 28, says he does not appear to have 
 landed anywhere. Contrast with this Verrazzani's tar- 
 rying fifteen days at one place on the New England 
 coast, and making frequent excursions into the interior 
 thence. It chances that the latter's letter to Francis I., 
 in 1524, contains "the earliest original account extant 
 of the Atlantic coast of the United States " ; and even 
 from that time the northern part of it began to be called 
 La Terra Francese, or French Land. A part of it 
 was called New Holland before it was called New Eng- 
 land. The English were very backward to explore and 
 settle the continent which they had stumbled upon. The 
 French preceded them both in their attempts to colonize 
 the continent of North America (Carolina and Florida, 
 1562-4), agd in their first permanent settlement (Port 
 Royal, 16(>5) ; and the right of possession, naturally 
 enough, was the one which England mainly respected 
 and recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and 
 also of France, from the time of Henry VII. 
 
 The explorations of the French gave to the world the 
 first valuable maps of these coasts. Denys of Honfleur 
 made a map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506. No 
 sooner had Cartier explored the St. Lawrence in 1535, 
 than there began to be published by his countrymen re- 
 markably accurate charts of that river as far up as Mon- 
 treal. It is almost all of the continent north of Florida 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 217 
 
 that you recognize on charts for more than a generation 
 afterward, — though Verrazzaiii's rude plot (made under 
 French auspices) was regarded by Hackluyt, more 
 than fifty years after his voyage (in 1524), as the 
 most accurate representation of our coast. The French 
 trail is distinct. They went measuring and sounding, 
 and when they got home had something to show for 
 their voyages and explorations. There was no danger 
 of their charts being lost, as Cabot's have been. 
 
 The most distinguished navigators of that day were 
 Italians, or of Itahan descent, and Portuguese. The 
 French and Spaniards, though less advanced in the 
 science of navigation than the former, possessed more 
 imagination and spirit of aftventure than the English, 
 and were better fitted to be the explorers of a new con- 
 tinent even as late as 1751. 
 
 This spirit it was which so early carried the French 
 to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the north, and 
 the Spaniard to the same river on the south. It was 
 long before our frontiers reached their settlements in the 
 west, and a voyageur or courdur de bois is still our con- 
 ductor there. Prairie is a French word, as Sierra is 
 a Spanish one. Augustin^ in Florida, and Santa Fe [ 
 in New Mexico [1582], ^oth built by the Spaniards, | 
 are considered the oldes| towns in the United States. 
 Within the memory of the oldest man, the Anglo- 
 Americans were confiiaed between the Apalachian 
 Mountains and the sea, "a space not two hundrea 
 miles broad," while the Mississippi was by treaty the 
 eastern boundary of New France. (See the pamphlet 
 on settling the Oiiio, London, 1763, bound up with the 
 travels of Sir John Bartrara.) So far as inland discov- 
 ery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English 
 10 
 
218 CAPF. COD. 
 
 was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their en- 
 terprise the enterprise of traders. Cabot spoke like an 
 Englishman, as he was, if he said, as one reports, in 
 reference to the discovery of the American Continent, 
 when he found it running toward the north, that it was 
 a great disappointment to him, being in his way to 
 India ; but we would rather add to than detract from 
 the fame of so great a discoverer. 
 
 Samuel Penhallow, in his History (Boston, 172G), 
 p. 51, speaking of " Port Royal and Nova Scotia," says 
 of the last, that its " first seizure was by Sir Sebastian 
 Cobbet for the crown of Great Britain, in the reign 
 of King Henry VII. ; but lay dormant till the year 
 1621," when Sir WiUiam Alexander got a patent of it, 
 and possessed it some years ; and afterward Sir David 
 Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, " to the surprise 
 of all thinking men, it was given up unto the French." 
 
 Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the first 
 Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, who was not the 
 most likely to be misinformed, who, moreover, has the 
 fame^ at least, of having discovered Wachusett Moun- 
 tain (discerned it forty miles inland), talking about the 
 " Great Lake " and the " hideous swamps about it," near 
 which the Connecticut and the " Potomack " took their 
 rise ; and among the memorable events of the year 
 1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irishman's expe- 
 dition to the " White hill," from whose top he saw east- 
 ward what he "judged to be the Gulf of Canada," and 
 westward what he "judged to be the great lake which 
 Canada River comes out of," and where he found much 
 " Muscovy glass," and " could rive out pieces of forty 
 feet long and seven or eight broad." While the very 
 inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 219 
 
 country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incog- 
 nita to them, — or rather many years before the earliest 
 date referred to, — Champlain, the j^rs^ Governor of Can- 
 ada, not to mention the inland discoveries of Cartier,* 
 Roberval, and others, of the preceding century, and his 
 own earlier voyage, had already gone to war against 
 the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the 
 Great Lakes arjH' wintered there, before a Pilgrim had * 
 heard of New/England. In Champlain's "Voyages," 
 printed in 1^3, there is a plate representing a fight in 
 which he aided the Canada Indians against the Iroquois, 
 near the south end of Lake Champlain, ip' July, 1609, 
 eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth. Ban- 
 croft says he joined the Algonquins in an expedition 
 against the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the northwest 
 of New York. This is that " Great Lake," which the 
 English^ hearing some rumor of from the French, long 
 after, locate in an " Imaginary Province called Laconia, 
 and spent several years about 1630 in the vain attempt 
 to discover." (Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. 
 Coll., Vol. 11. p. 68.) Thomas Morton has a chapter on 
 this " Great Lake." In the edition of Champlain's map 
 dated 1632, the Falls of Niagara appear; and in a great 
 lake northwest of Mer Douce (Lake Huron) there is an 
 island represented, over which is written, " Isle ou il 
 y d une mine de cuivre^'' — " Island where there is a 
 
 * It is remarkable that the first, if not the only, part of New Eng- 
 land which Cartier saw was Vermont (he also saw the mountains 
 of New York), from Montreal Mountain, in 1535, sixty-seven years 
 before Gosnold saw Cape Cod. If seeing is discovering, — and that 
 is all that it is proved that Cabot knew of the coast of the United 
 States, — then Cartier (to omit Verrazzani and Gomez) was the dis- 
 coverer of New England rather than Gosnold, who is commonly 
 to styled. 
 
220 CAPE COD. 
 
 mine of copper." This will do for an offset to our Gov- 
 ernor's " Muscovy Glass." Of all these adventures and 
 discoveries we have a minute and faithful account, giv- 
 ing facts and dates as well as charts and soundings, all 
 scientific and Frenchman-like, with scarcely one fable 
 or traveller's story. 
 
 Probably Cape Cod was^ visited by Europeans long 
 before the seventeenth century. It may be that Cabot 
 himself beheld it. Verrazzani, in 1524, according to his 
 own account, spent fifteen days on our coast, in latitude 
 41° 40', (some suppose in the harbor of Newport,) and 
 often went five or six'leagues into the interior there, and 
 he says that he sailed thence at once one hundred and 
 fifty leagues northeasterly, always in ^ight of the coast. 
 There is a chart in Hackluyt's " Divers Voyages," made 
 according to Verrazzani's plot, which last is praised for 
 its accuracy by Hackluyt, but I cannot distinguish Cape 
 Cod on it, unless it is the " C. Arenas," which is in the 
 right latitude, tKough ten degrees west of " Claudia," 
 which is thought to be Block Island. 
 
 The " Biographic Universelle " informs us that " An 
 ancient manuscript chart drawn in 1529 by Diego Ri- 
 beiro, a Spanish cosmographer, has preserved the mem- 
 ory of the voyage of Gomez [a Portuguese sent out 
 by Charles the Fifth]. One reads in it under (au 
 dessous) the place occupied by the States of New York, 
 Connecticut, and Rhode Island, Terre cCEtienne Go- 
 mez, qiCil decouvrit en 1525 (Land of Etienne Gomez, 
 which he discovered in 1525)." This chart, with a me- 
 moir, was published at Weimar in the last century^ 
 
 Jean Alphonse, Roberval's pilot in Canada in 1642^ 
 one of the most skilful navigators of his time, and who 
 has given remarkably minute and accurate direction for 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 221 
 
 nailing up the St. Lawrence, showing that he knows what 
 he is talking about, says in his ''^ Routier" (it is in Hack- 
 lujt), "1 have been at a bay as far as the forty-second de- 
 gree, between Norimbegue [the Penobscot ?] and Florida, 
 but I have not explored the bottom of it, and I do not 
 know whether it passes from one land to the other," i. e. 
 to Asia. (" J'ai ete a une Baye jusques par les 42® degres 
 entre la Norimbegue et la Floride ; mais je n'en ai pas 
 cherche le fond, et ne sgais pas si elle passe d'une terre a 
 I'autre.") This may refer to Massachusetts Bay, if not 
 possibly to the western inclination of the coast a little 
 farther south. When he says, " I have no doubt that 
 the Norimbegue enters into the river of Canada," he is 
 perhaps so interpreting some account which the Indians 
 had given respecting the route from the St. Lawrence to 
 the Atlantic, by the St. John, or Penobscot, or possibly 
 even the Hudson River. 
 
 We hear rumors of this country of " Norumbega " and 
 its great city from many quarters. In a discourse by a 
 great French sea-captain in Ramusio's third volume 
 (155j6j:2^65J, this is said to be the name given to the land V 
 by its inhabitants, and Verrazzani is called the discoverer 
 of it; another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or the 
 river, Aguncia. It is represented as an island on an 
 accompanying chart. It is frequently spoken of by old 
 writers as a country of indefinite extent, between Canada 
 and Florida, and it appears as a large island with Cape 
 Breton at its eastern extremity, on the map made accord- 
 ing to Verrazzani's plot in Hackluy^^* " Divers Voyages." 
 These maps and rumors may have been the origin of 
 the notion, common among the early settlers, that New J 
 England was an island. The country and city of No- 
 rumbega appear about where Maine now is on a map in 
 
222 CAPE COD. 
 
 Ortelius ("Theatrum Orbis Terrarum," Antwerp , 1570), 
 and the " R. Grande " is drawn where the Penobscot or 
 St. John might be. 
 
 In 1604, Cham plain being sent by the Sieur de 
 Monts to explore the coast of Norumbegue, sailed up 
 the Penobscot twenty-two or twenty-three leagues from 
 " Isle Haute," or till he was stopped by the falls. He 
 says : " I think that this river is that which many pilots 
 and historians call Norembegue, and which the greater 
 part have described as great and spacious, with numer- 
 ous islands ; and its entrance in the forty-third or forty- 
 third and one half, or, according to others, the forty-fourth 
 degree of latitude, more or less." He is convinced that 
 " the greater part " of those who speak of a great city 
 ehere have never seen it, but repeat a mere rumor, but he 
 thinks that some have seen the mouth of the river since 
 it answers to their description. 
 
 Under date of 1 607 Champlain writes : '' Three or 
 foui' leagues north of the Cap de Poitrincourt [near the 
 head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia] we found a 
 cross, which was very old, covered 'rith moss and almost 
 all decayed, which was an evident sign that there had 
 formerly been Christians tb'^re." 
 
 Also the following p«»<?sage from Lescarbot will show 
 how much the neighboring coasts were frequented by 
 Europeans in the sixteenth century. Speaking of his re- 
 turn from Port Royal to France in 1 607, he says ; " At 
 last, within four leagues of Campseau [the Gut of Canso], , ^ 
 we arrived at a harbor [in Nova Scotia], where a worthy 
 old gentleman from St. John de Lus, named Captain 
 Savale, was fishing, who received us with the utmost 
 courtesy. And as this harbor, which is small, but very 
 good, has no name, I have given it on my geographical 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 223 
 
 chart the name of Savalet." [It is on Champlain's 
 map also.] This worthy man told us that this voyage 
 was the forty-second which he had made to those parts, 
 and yet the Newfoundlanders [^Terre neuviers'] make 
 only one a year. He was wonderfully content with 
 his fishery, and informed us that he made daily fifty 
 crowns' worth of cod, and that his voyage would be 
 worth ten thousand francs. He had sixteen men in 
 his employ ; and his vessel was of eighty tons, which 
 could carry a Jitindred thousand dry cod." (Histoire 
 de la Nouvelle France, 1612.) They dried their fish 
 on the ro<^ks on shore. 
 
 The 'Msola della Rena " (Sable Island ?) appears on 
 the chart of " Nuova Francia " and Norumbega, accom- 
 panying the "Discourse" above referred to in Ramusio's 
 third volume, edition 1556-65. Champlain speaks of 
 there being at the Isle of Sable, in 1 604, " grass pastured 
 by oxen (hoeufs) and cows which the Portuguese carried 
 there more than sixty years ago," i. e. sixty years before 
 1613 ; in a later edition he says, which came out of a 
 Spanish vessel which was lost in endeavoring to settle 
 on the Isle of Sable ; and he states that De la Roche's 
 men, who were left on this island seven years from 1598, 
 lived on the flesh of these cattle which they found " en 
 quantie^' and built houses out of the wrecks of vessels 
 which came to the island ("perhaps Grilbert's"), there 
 being no wood or stone. Lescarbot says that they lived 
 "on fish and tjafe milk of cows left there about eighty years 
 before by ^yow de Leri and Saint Just." Charlevoix 
 says they ate up the cattle and then lived on fish. Hali- 
 burton speaks of cattle left there as a rumor. De Leri 
 and Saint Just had suggested plans of colonization on 
 the Isle of Sable as early as 1515 (1508 ?) according to 
 
224 CAPE COD. 
 
 Bancroft, referring to Charlevoix. These are but a 
 few of the instances which I might quote. 
 
 Cape Cod is comraon>y .^aid to have been discovered 
 in 1602. "We will consider at length under what cir- 
 cumstances, and with what observation and expectations, 
 the first Englishmen whom history clearly discerns ap- 
 proached the coast of New England. According to 
 the accounts of Archer and Brereton (both of whom 
 accompanied Gosnold), on the 26th of March, 1602, 
 old style, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold set sail from 
 Falmouth, England, for the North Part of Virginia, in 
 a small bark called the Concord, they being in all, says 
 one account, " thirty-two persons, whereof eight mariners 
 and sailors, twelve purposing upon the discovery to re- 
 turn ^th the ship for England, the rest remain there for 
 population." This is regarded as " the first attempt of 
 the English to make a settlement within the limits of 
 New England." Pursuing a new and a shorter course 
 than the usual one by the Canaries, " the 14th of April 
 following " they had sight of Saint Mary's, an island of 
 the Azores." As their sailors were few and " none of 
 the best," (I use their own phrases,) and they were 
 " going upon an unknown coast," they were not " over- 
 bold to stand in with the shore but in open weather" ; so 
 they made their first discovery of land with the lead. 
 The 23d of April the ocean appeared yellow, but on tak- 
 ing up some of the water in a bucket, "it altered not 
 either in color or taste from the sea azure." The 7th 
 of May they saw divers birds whose names they knew, 
 and many others in their " English tongue of no name." 
 The 8th of May " the water changed to a yellowish 
 green, where at seventy fathoms " they " had ground.' 
 The 9th; they had upon their lead " many glittering 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 225 
 
 stones," — " which might promise some mineral matter 
 in the bottom." The 10th, they were over a bank 
 which they thought to be near the western end of St. 
 John's Island, and saw schools of fish. The 12th, 
 they say, "continually passed fleeting by us sea-oare, 
 which seemed to have their movable course towards 
 the northeast." On the 13th, they observed " great 
 beds of weeds, much wood, and divers things else float- 
 ing by," and " had smelling of the shore much as from 
 the southern Cape and Andalusia in Spain." On Fri- 
 day, the 14th, early in the morning they descried land 
 on the north, in the latitude of forty-three degrees, ap- 
 parently some part of the coast of Maine. William- 
 son (History of Maine) says it certainly could not 
 have been south of the central Isle of Shoals. Bel- 
 knap inclines to think it the south side of Cape Ann. 
 Standing fair along by the shore, about twelve o'clock 
 the same day, they came to anchor and were visited by 
 eight savages, who came off to them " in a Biscay shallop, 
 with sail and oars," — *" an iron grapple, and a kettle 
 of copper." These they at first mistook for " Chris- 
 tians distressed." One of them was " apparelled with 
 a waistcoajand breeches of black serge, made after our 
 sea-fashion, hoes and shoes on his feet ; all the rest 
 (saving one tliat had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) 
 were nakecL** They appeared to have had dealings with 
 " some Bafeques of St. John de Luz, and to understand 
 much more than we," say the English, "for want of 
 language, could comprehend." But they soon " set sail 
 westward; leaving them and their coast." (This was a / 
 remarkable discovery for discoverers.) 
 
 "The 15th day," writes Gabriel Archer, "we had 
 again sight of the land, which made ahead, being as we 
 10* o 
 
226 CAPE COD. 
 
 / thought an island, by reason of a larsce sound that ap- 
 1 peared westward between it and the main, for coming to 
 
 lr\ the west end thereof, we did perceive a large opening, 
 A we called it Shoal Hope. Near this cape we came to 
 \ anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of 
 \ cod-fish, for which we altered the name and called it 
 \ Cape Cod. Here we saw skulls of herring, mackerel, 
 and other small fish, in great abundance. This is a low 
 sandy shoal, but without danger ; also we came to anchor 
 again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the land in the latitude 
 of forty-two degreesl This Cape is well near a mile 
 broad, and lieth northeast by east. The Captain went 
 here ashore, and found the ground to be full of peas, straw- 
 berries, whortleberries, &c., as then unripe, the sand also 
 ! by the shore somewhat deep ; the firewood there by us 
 taken in wa^ of cypres.-!, birch, witch-hazel, and beach. 
 A young Indian came here to the captain, armed with 
 his bow and arrows, and had certain plates of copper 
 hanging at his ears ; he showed a willingness to help us 
 In our occasions." 
 
 " The 16th we trended the coast southerly, which was 
 all champaign and full of grass, but the islands some- 
 what vToody." 
 
 Or, according to the account of John Brereton, " rid- 
 ing here," that is where they first communicated with the 
 natives, " in no very good harbor, and withal doubting 
 the weather, about three of the clock the same day in 
 the afternoon we weighed, and standing southerly off 
 into sea the rest of that day and the night following, with 
 a fresh gale of wind, in the morning we found ourselves 
 embayed with a mighty headland; but coming to an 
 anchor about nine of the clock the same day, within 
 a league of the shore, we hoisted out the one half of our 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 227 
 
 shallop, and Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and 
 three others, went ashore, being a white sandy and very 
 bold shore ; and marching all th^t afternoon with our 
 muskets on our neckfe, on the highest hills which we saw 
 (the weather very hot), at length we perceived this 
 headland to be parcel of the main, and sundry islands 
 lying almost round about it ; so returning towards even- 
 ing to our shallop (for by that time the other part was 
 brought ashore and set together), we espied an Indian, 
 a young man of proper stature, and of a pleasing coun- 
 tenance, and after some familiarity with him, we left him 
 at the sea side, and returned to our ship, where in five 
 or six hours'..absence we had pestered our ship so with 
 codfish, thafy%e threw numbers of them overboard again : 
 and surely I am persuaded that in the months of March, 
 April, ai>d May, there is upon this coast better fishing, 
 and in/as great plenty, as in Newfoundland ; for the 
 skull^ of mackerel, herrings, cod, and other fish, that we 
 daily saw as we went and came from the shore, were; 
 wonderful," &c. ' 
 
 " From this place we sailed round about this headland, 
 almost all the points of the compass, the shore very bold ; 
 but as no coast is free from dangers, so I am persuaded 
 this is as free as any. The ^nd somewhat low, full of 
 goodly woods,- but in some jSaces plain." 
 
 It is not quite clear oiy which side of the Cape they 
 landed. If it was insid^ as would appear from Brere- 
 ton's words, '' From tl>fs place we sailed round about 
 this headland almost ^11 the points of the compass," it 
 must have been on tl^ western shore either of Truro or 
 Wellfleet. To one /sailing south into Barnstable Bay 
 along the Cape, i\\i only " white, sandy, and very bold 
 shore " that appears is in these towns, though the bank 
 
228 CAPE COD. 
 
 is not so high there as on the eastern side. At a distance 
 of four or five miles the sandy cliffs there look like a 
 long fort of yellow sandstone, they are so level and 
 regular, especially in Wellfleet, — the fort of the land 
 defending itself against the encroachments of the Ocean. 
 They are streaked here and there with a reddish sand 
 as if painted. Farther south the shore is more flat, and 
 less obviously and abruptly sandy, and a little tinge of 
 green here and there in the marshes appears to the 
 sailor like a rare and precious emerald. But in the 
 Journal of Pring's Voyage the next year (and Salterne, 
 who was with Pring, had accompanied Gosnold) it is 
 said, " Departing hence [i. e. from Savage Rocks] we 
 bore unto that great gulf which Captain Gosnold over- 
 shot the year before." * 
 
 So they sailed round the Cape, calling the south- 
 easterly extremity " Point Cave," till they came to an 
 island which they named Martha's Vineyard (now called 
 No Man's Land), and another on which they dwelt 
 awhile, which they named Elizabeth's Island, in honor 
 of the queen, one of the group since so called, now 
 known by its Indian name Cuttyhunk. There they 
 built a small storehouse, the first house built by the 
 English in New England, whose cellar could recently 
 still be seen, made partly of stones taken from the beach. 
 Bancroft says (edition of 1837), the ruins of the fort 
 can no longer be discerned. They who were to have 
 
 * •' Savage Rock," which some have supposed to be, from ihe 
 name, the Salvages^ a ledge about two miles off Rockland, Capo 
 Ann, was probably the Nubble, a large, high rock near the shore, on 
 the east side of York Harbor, Maine. The first land made by Gos- 
 nold is presumed by experienced navigators to be Cape Elizabeth, 
 on the same coast. (See Babson's History of Gloucester, Massachu- 
 nett8.) 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 229 
 
 remained becoming discontented, all together set sail for 
 England with a load of sassafras and other commodities, 
 on the 18th of June following. 
 
 The next year came Martin Pring, looking for sassa- -, 
 fras, and thereafter they began to come thick and fast,/ *)s 
 until long after sassafras had lost its reputation. 
 
 These are the oldest accounts which we have of Cape 
 Cod, unless, perchance, Cape Cod is, as some suppose, 
 the same with that " Kial-ar-nes " or Keel-Cape, on 
 which, according to old Icelandic manuscripts, Thorwald, 
 son of Eric the Red, after sailing many days southwest 
 from Greenland, broke his keel in the year 1004 ; and 
 where, according to another, in some respects less trust- 
 worthy manuscript, Thor-finn Karlsefue (" that is, one 
 who promises or is destined to be an able or great man " ; 
 he is said to have had a son born in New England, from 
 whom Thorwaldsen the sculptor was descended), sailing 
 past, in the year 1007, with his wife Gudrida, Snorre 
 Thorbrandson, Biayhe Grinolfson, and Thorhall Garnla- 
 son, distinguished Norsemen, in three ships containing 
 " one hundred and sixty men and all sorts of live stock " 
 (probably the £rst Norway rats among the rest), having J 
 the land " on the right side " of them, " roved ashore," 
 and found '* Or-eeji (trackless deserts)," and " Strand-ir 
 lang-ar ok sand-ar (long narrow beaches and sand-hills)," 
 and " called the shores Furdu-strand-ir (Wonder-Strands), 
 because the sailing by them seemed long." ^ 
 
 According to the Icelandic manuscripts, Thorwald was \ 
 the first then, — unless possibly one Biarne Heriulfson ^ 
 (i. e. son of Heriulf ) who had been seized with a great 1 
 desire to travel, sailing from Iceland to Greenland in the 
 year 986 to join his father who had migrated thither, for he 
 had resolved, says the manuscript, " to spend the follow 
 
•230 CAPE COD. 
 
 ing winter, like all the preceding ones, with his father," — 
 being driven far to the southwest bj a storm, when it 
 cleared up saw the low land of Cape Cod looming faintly 
 in the distance ; but this not answering to the description 
 of Greenland, he put his vessel about, and, sailing north- 
 ward along the coast, at length reached Greenland and 
 his father. At any rate, he may put forth a strong claim 
 to be regarded as the discoverer of the American con- 
 \ tinent. 
 
 These Northmen were a hardy race, whose younger 
 sons inherited the ocean, and traversed it without chart 
 or compass, and they are said to have been " the first 
 \ who learned the art of sailing on a wind." Moreover, 
 they had a habit of casting their door-posts overboard 
 ; and settling wherever the y" went ashore. But as Biarne, 
 and Thorwald, and Tliorfinn have not mentioned the 
 latitude and longitude distinctly enough, though we have 
 great respect for tbfem as skilful and adventurous navi- 
 gators, we must for the present remain in doubt as to 
 what capes they did see. We think that they were con- 
 siderably further north. 
 
 If time and space permitted, I could present the 
 claims of several other worthy |yersons. Lescarbot, 
 in 1 609, asserts that the French sailors had been accus- 
 tomed to frequent the Newfoundland Banks from time 
 immemorial, " for the codfish ?rith which they feed al- 
 most all Europe and supply all sea-going vessels," and 
 accordingly " the language of the nearest lands is half 
 Basque " ; and he quotes Postel, a learned but extrava- 
 gant French author, born in 1510, only six years after 
 the Basques, Bretons, and Normans are said to have 
 discovered the Grand Bank and adjacent islands, as 
 saying, in his Gharte Geogrxiphique, which we have not 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 231 
 
 *een : " Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utilita- 
 tem summa litterarum raemoria a Gallis adiri solita, et 
 ante mille sexcentos annos frequentari solita est; sed 
 eo quod sit urbibus inculta et vasta, spreta est." " This 
 land, on account of its very lucrative fishery, was accus- 
 tomed to be visited by the Gauls from the very dawn 
 of history, and more than sixteen hundred years ago . 
 was accustomed to be frequented ; but because it was i 
 unadorned with cities, and waste, it was despised." • / I I ^ 
 
 / It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered the mine,\ 
 / but I discovered it to the world. And now Bob Smith J /\ 
 
 is putting in his claim. 
 I But let us not laugh at Postel and his visions. He 
 
 ^ was perhaps better posted up than we ; and if he does 
 seem to draw the long-bow, it may be because he had 
 a long way to shoot, — quite across the Atlantic. If 
 America was found and lost again once, as most of us 
 believe, then why not twice ? especially as there were \ 
 likely to be so few records of an earlier discovery. | 
 ' Consider what stuff history is made of, — that for the 
 most part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity. 
 Who will tell us even how map5r Russians were en- 
 gaged in the battle of the Chernaya, the other day? 
 Yet no doubt Mr. Scriblerus, the historian, will fix on\ 
 a definite number for th^ schoolboys to commit to their I 
 excellent memories. /What, then, of the number of Per- 
 sians at Salamis? /The historian whom I read knew as 
 much about the position of the parties and their tactics 
 in the last-me.iitioned affair, as they who describe a 
 recent battle/ in an article for the press now-a-days, 
 before the particulars have arrived. I believe that, if I j 
 were to Hve the life of mankind over again myself, / 
 (which I would not be hired to do,) with the Universal / 
 
232 CAPE COD. 
 
 History in my hands, I should not be able to tell what 
 was what. 
 
 Earlier than the date Postel refers to, at any rate, 
 Cape Cod lay in utter darkness to the civilized world, 
 though even then the sun rose from eastward out of the 
 sea every day, and, rolling over the Cape, went down 
 westward into the Bay. It was even then Cape and 
 Bay, — ay, the Cape of Codfish, and the Bay of the 
 Massachusetts, perchance. 
 I Quite recently, on the 11th of November, 1620^ old 
 ' style, as is w^ll known, the Pilgrims in the Mayflower 
 came to anchcji* in Cape Cod Harbor. They had loosed 
 from Plymoutji, England, the 6th of September, and, in 
 the words of '* Mourt's Relation," " after many difficul- 
 ties in boisteroas storms, at length, by God's providence, 
 upon the 9 th of November, we espied land, which we 
 deemed to be Cape Cod, and so afterward it proved. 
 Upon the 11th ©f November w^e came to anchor in the 
 bay, which is aJ good harbor and pleasant bay, circled 
 round except in ihe entrance, which is about four miles 
 over from land t© land, compassed about to the very sea 
 with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet 
 wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ships 
 may safely ride. < There we relieved ourselves with 
 wood and water, find refreshed our people, while our 
 shallop waiS' fitted t6 coast the bay, to search for an habi- 
 tation." There we jput up at Fuller's Hotel, passing by 
 the Pilgrim House as too high for us (we learned after- 
 ward that we need not have been so particular), and we 
 refreshed ourselves with hashed fish and beans, beside 
 taking in a supply of liquids (which were not intox- 
 icating), while our legs were refitted to coast the back- 
 side. Further say the Pilgrims : " We could not come 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 233 
 
 near the shore by three quarters of an English mile, 
 because of shallow water ; which was a great prejudice 
 to us; for our people going on shore were forced to 
 wade a bow-shot or two in going aland, which caused 
 many to get colds and coughs ; for it was many times 
 freezing cold weather." They afterwards say : " It 
 brought much weakness amongst us " ; and no doubt it 
 led to the death of some at Plymouth. 
 
 The harbor of Provincetown is very shallow near the 
 shore, especially about the head, where the Pilgrims 
 landed. When I left this place the next summer, the 
 steamer could not get up to the wharf, but we were 
 carried out to a large boat in a cart as much as thirty 
 rods in shallow water, while a troop of little boys kept 
 us company, wadlfig around, and thence we pulled to the 
 steamer by a /ope. The harbor being thus shallow and 
 sandy about /fne shore, coasters are accustomed to run in 
 here to paint their vessels, which are left high and dry 
 when the tide goes down. 
 
 It chanced that the Sunday morning that we were 
 there, I had joined a party of men who were smoking 
 and lolling over a pile of boards on one of the wharves, 
 {nihil humanum a me, S^c.,) when our landlord, who was 
 a sort of tithing-man, went off to stop some sailors who 
 were engaged in painting their vessel. Our party was 
 recruited from time to time by other citizens, who came 
 rubbing their §yes as if they had just got out of bed; 
 and one old man remarked to me that it was the custom 
 there to lie abed very late on Sunday, it being a day of 
 rest. I remarked that, as I thought, they might as well 
 let the man paint, for all us. It was not noisy work, and 
 would not disturb our devotions. But a young man in 
 the company, taking his pipe out of his mouth, said that 
 
234 CAPE COD. 
 
 it was a plain contradiction of the law of God, which he 
 
 quoted, and if they did not have some such regulation, 
 
 vessels would run in there to tar, and rig, and paint, 
 
 and they would have no Sabbath at all. This was a 
 
 i good argument enough, if he had not put it in the name 
 
 \ of religion. The next summer, as I sat on a hill there 
 
 "one sultry Sunday afternoon, the meeting-house win- 
 
 Sdovvs being open, my meditations were interrupted by 
 the noise of a preacher who shouted like a boatswain, 
 I profaning the (^iet atmosphere, and who, I fancied, 
 I must have takfen off his coat. Few things could have 
 I ^ been more disgusting or disheartening. I wished the 
 I tithing-man would stop him. 
 
 \ The Pilgrims say : " There was the greatest store of 
 
 ^, fowl that ever we saw." 
 
 We saw no fowl there, except gulls of various kinds ; 
 but the greatest store of them that ever we saw was on 
 a flat but slightly covered with water on the east side of 
 the harbor, and we observed a man who had landed 
 therefrom a boat creeping along the shore in order to 
 get a shot fit them, but they all rose and flew away in a 
 great scattering flock, too soon for him, having appar- 
 ently got their dinners, though he did not get his. 
 
 It is remarkable that the Pilgrims (or their reporter) 
 describe this part of the Cape, not only as well wooded, 
 but as having a deep and excellent soil, and hardly men- 
 tion the word sand. Now what strikes the voyager is 
 the barrenness and desolation of the land. Thei/ found 
 " the ground or eartbt" sand-hills, much like the downs in 
 Holland, but much/f)etter the crust of the earth, a spit's 
 depth, excellent olack earth." We found that the earth 
 had lost its crust, — if, indeed, it ever had any, — and 
 that there was no soil to speak of. We did not see 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 235 
 
 enough black earth in Provincetown to fill a flower-pot^ - 
 unless in the swamps. They found it " all wooded with 
 oaks, pines, sassafras, .juniper, birch, holly, vines, some 
 ash, walnut ; the wpod for the most part, open and with- 
 out underwood, fit either to go or ride in." We saw 
 scarcely anything high enough to be called a tree, except 
 a little low wood at the east end of the town, and the 
 few ornamental trees in its yards, — only a few small 
 specimens of some of the above kinds on the sand-hills 
 in the rear ; but it was all thick shrubbery, without any 
 large wood above it, very unfit either to go or ride in. 
 Ihe greater part of the land was a perfect desert of 
 yellow sand, rippled like waves by the wind, in which 
 only a little Beach-grass grew here and there. They 
 say that, just after passing the head of East Harbor 
 Creek, the boiigh3 and bushes " tore " their " very armor ^ 
 in pieces " (|he same thing happened to such armor as \ 
 we wore, when out of curiosity we took to the bushes) ; \ 
 dr they came to deep valleys, " full of brush, wood-gaile, '; 
 and long grass," and "• found springs of fresh water." | 
 
 For the most part we saw neither bough nor bush, not 
 BO much as a shrub to tear our clothes against if we 
 would, and a sheep would lose none of its fleece, even 
 if it found herbage enough to make fleece grow there. 
 We saw rather beach and poverty-grass, and merely 
 Borrel enough to. tolor the surface. I suppose, then, by y 
 
 Wood-gaile they mean the Bayberry. 
 
 All accounts agree in affirming that this part of the 
 Cape was comparatively well wooded a century ago. 
 But notwithstanding the great changes which have taken 
 place in these respects, I cannot but think that we must 
 make some allowance for the greenness of the Pilgrims 
 in these matters, which caused them to see green. We 
 
 )< 
 
236 CAPE COD. 
 
 do not believe that the trees were large or the soil v^as 
 deep here. Their account may be true particularly, but 
 I it is generally false. They saw literally, as well as 
 ^ figuratively, but one side of the Cape. They naturally 
 exaggerated the fairness and attractiveness of the land, 
 for they were glad to get to any land at all after that 
 anxious voyage. Everything appeared to them of the 
 color of the rose, and had the scent of juniper and sassa- 
 fras. Very different is the general and off-hand account 
 f given by Captain J6hn Smith, who was on this coast six 
 / years earlier, and speaks like an old traveller, voyager, 
 f and soldier, who had seen too much of the world to 
 exaggerate, or even to dwell long, on a part of it. In 
 his "Description of New England," printed in 1616, 
 after speaking of Accomack, since called Plymouth, he 
 says : " Cape Cod is the next presents itself, which is 
 [ only a headland of high hills of sand, overgrown with 
 shrubby pines, hurts [i. e. whorts, or whortleberries], 
 and such trash, but an ext;ellent harbor for all weath- 
 ers. This Cape is mad^ by the main sea on the one 
 side, and a great bay ojR the other, in form of a sickle.'* 
 Champlain had alreaay written, " Which we named Cap 
 Blanc (Cape White), because they were sands and downs 
 {sahles et dunes) which appeared thus." 
 
 When the Pilgrims get to Plymouth their reporter 
 says again, " The land for the crust of the earth is a 
 spit's depth," — that would seem to be their recipe for an 
 earth's crust, — " excellent black mould and fat in some 
 places." However, according to Bradford himself, whom 
 some consider the author of part of " Mourt's Relation," 
 they who came over in the Fortune the next year were 
 somewhat daunted when " they came into the harbor of 
 Cape Cod, and there saw nothing but a naked and barren 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 237 
 
 place." They soon found out their mistake with re- 
 spect to the goodness of Plymouth soil. Yet when at 
 length, some years later, when they were fully satisfied 
 of the poorness of the place which they had chosen, 
 "the greater part," says Bradford, "consented to a re- 
 moval to a place called Nausett," they agreed to remove 
 all together to Nauset, now Eastham, which was jump- 
 ing out of the frying-pan into the fire ; and some of 
 the most respectable of the inhabitants of Plymouth did 
 actually remove thither accordingly. 
 
 It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed but 
 few of the qualities of the modern pioneer. They were 
 not the ancestors of the American backwoodsmen. They 
 did not go at once into the woods with their axes. They 
 were a family and church, and were more anxious to 
 keep together, though it were on the sand, than to ex- 
 plore and colonize a New World. When the above- 
 mentioned company removed to Eastham, the church at 
 Plymouth was left, to use Bradford's expression, " like 
 an ancient mother grown old, and forsaken of her chil- 
 dren." Though they landed on Clark's Island in Ply- 
 mouth harbor, the 9th "of December (0. S.), and the 
 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and the 18th they 
 rambled about the mainland, and the 19th decided to 
 settle there, it was the 8th of January before Francis 
 Billington went with one of the master's mates to look 
 at the magnificent pond or lake now called " Billington 
 Sea," about two miles distant, which he had discovered 
 from the top of a tree, and mistook for a great sea. And 
 the 7th of March " Master Carver with five others went 
 to the great ponds which seem to be excellent fishing," 
 both which points are within the compass of an ordinary 
 afternoon's ramble, — however wild the country. It is 
 
238 CAPE COD. 
 
 true they were busy at first about their building, and 
 were hindered in that by much foul weather ; but a party 
 of emigrants to Califigfrnia or Oregon, with no less work 
 on their hands, — /nd more hostile Indians, — would do 
 as much exploring the first afternoon, and the Sieur de 
 Champlain would have sought an interview with the 
 savages, and examined the country as far as the Connect- 
 icut, and made a map of it, before Billington had climbed 
 his tree. Or contrast them only with the French search- 
 ing for copper about the Bay of Fundy in 1603, tracing 
 up small streams with Indian guides. ' Nevertheless, the 
 Pilgrims were pioneers, and the ancestors of pioneers, in 
 
 f a far grander pterprise. 
 
 ' By this time we saw the little steamer Naushon en- 
 tering the harbor, and heard the sound of her whistle, 
 and came down from the hills tq..meet her at the wharf. 
 So we took leave of Cape Qea and its inhabitants. We 
 liked the manners of thj^fast, what little we saw of them, 
 very much. They;^^ere particularly downright and 
 good-humored. "The old people appeared remarkably 
 well preserved, as if by the saltness of the atmosphere, 
 and after having once mistaken, we could never be cer- 
 tain whether we were talking to a coeval of our grand- 
 parents, or to one of our own age. They are said to be 
 more purely the descendants of the Pilgrims than the in- 
 habitants of any oth^'part of the State. We were told 
 that " sometimes, wfien the court comes together at Barn- 
 stable, they hay/! not a single criminal to try, and the 
 jail is shut wpJf It was " to let " when we were there. 
 Until quite recently there was no regular lawyer below 
 Orleans. Who then will oomplain of a few regular man- 
 eating sharks along the bkck-side? 
 
 One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked what 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 239 
 
 the fishermen did in the winter, answered that they did 
 nothing but go a-visiting, sit about and tell stories, — 
 though they worked hard in summer. Yet it is not a long 
 vacation they get. I am sorry that I have not been 
 there in the winter to hear their yarns. Almost every 
 Cape man is Captain of some craft or other, — every 
 man at least who is at the head of his own affairs, though 
 it is not every one that is, for some heads have the force 
 of Alpha privatii^, negativing all the efforts which Nature 
 would fain mal^ through them. The greater number of 
 men are merely corporals. It is worth the while to talk 
 with one whom his neighbors address as Captain, though 
 his craft may have long been sunk, and he may be hold- 
 ing by his teeth to the shattered mast of a pipe alone, 
 and only gets half-seas-over in a figurative sense, now. 
 Pie is pretty sure to vindicate his right to the title at 
 last, — can tell one or two good stories at least. 
 
 For the most part we saw only the back side of the 
 towns, but our story is true as far as it goes. "We might 
 have made more of the Bay side, but we were inclined 
 to open our eyes widest at the Atlantic. We did not 
 care to see those features of the Cape in which it is in- 
 ferior or merely equal to the mainland, but only those 
 in which it is peculiar or superior. We cannot say how 
 its towns look in front to one who goes to meet them ; 
 we went to see the ocean behind them. They were 
 merely the raft on which we stood, and we took notice 
 of the barnacles which adhered to it, and some carvings 
 upon it. 
 
 Before we left the wharf we made the acquaintance of 
 a passenger whom we had sefip at the hotel. When we 
 asked him which way he ca^e to Provincetown, he 
 answered that he was cast ashore Jit Wood End, Saturday 
 
 \ 
 
240 CAPE COD. 
 
 night, in the same storm in which the St. John was 
 : wrecked. He had been at work as a carpenter in Maine, 
 and took passage for Boston in a schooner laden with 
 lumber. When the storm came on, they endeavored to 
 get into Provincetown harbor. " It was dark and misty," 
 said he, " and as we were steering for Long Point Light 
 we suddenly saw the land near us, — for our compass 
 was out of order, — varied several degrees [a mariner 
 always casts the blame on his compass], — but there be- 
 ing a mist on shore, w€ thought it was farther off than 
 it was, and so held on, and we immediately struck on the 
 bar. Says the Captain, 'We are all lost.' Says I to 
 the Captain, '.Now don't let her strike again this way ; 
 head her right on.' The Captain thought a moment, 
 and then headed her on. The sea washed completely 
 over us, and wellnigh took the breath out of my body. 
 I held on to the running rigging, but I have learned to 
 hold on to the standing rigging the next time." " Well, 
 were there any drowned ? " I asked. " No ; we all got 
 safe to a house at Wood End, at midnight, wet to our 
 skins, and half frozen to death." He had apparently 
 spent the time since playing checkers at the hotel, and 
 was congratulating himself on having beaten a tall fellow- 
 boarder at that game. " The vessel is to be sold at 
 auction to-day," he added. (We had heard the sound 
 of the crier's bell which advertised it.) " The Captain is 
 '. rather down about it, but I tell him to cheer up and he 
 \ will soon get another vessel." 
 
 At that moment the Captain called to him from the 
 
 ; wharf. He looked like a man just from the country, 
 
 ; with a cap made of a woodchuck's skin, and now that I 
 
 had heard a part of his history, he appeared singularly 
 
 destitute, — a Captain without any vessel, only a great- 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 241 
 
 coat ! and that perhaps a borrowed one ! Not even a 
 dog followed him ; only his title stuck to him. I also 
 saw one of the crew. They all had caps of the same 
 pattern, and wore a subdued look, in addition to their 
 naturally aquiline features, as if a breaker — a " comb- 
 er" — had washed over them. As we passed Wood End, 
 we noticed the pile of lumber on the shore which had 
 made the cargo of their vessel. 
 
 About Long Point in the summer you commonly see 
 them catching lobsters for the New York market, from 
 small boats just off the shore, or rather, the lobsters 
 catch themselves, for they cling to the netting on which 
 the bait is placed of their own accord, and thus are 
 drawn up. They sell them fresh for two cents apiece. 
 Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in 
 order to catch him in his traps. The mackerel fleet had . 
 been getting to sea, one after another, ever since mid- 
 night, and as we were leaving the Cape we passed near 
 to many of them under sail, and got a nearer view than 
 we had had ; — half a dozen red-shirted men and boys, "^ 
 leaning over the rail to look at us, the skipper shouting \ 
 back the number of barrels he had caught, in answer to | 
 our inquiry. All sailors pause to watch a steamer, and 
 shout in welcome or derision. In one a large Newfound- 
 land dog put his paws on the rail and stood up as high }^ 
 as any of them, and looked as wise. But the skipper, 
 who did not wish to be seen no better employed than a ; 
 dog, rapped him on the nose and sent him below. Such 
 is human justice ! I thought I could hear him making 
 an effective appeal down there from human to divine 
 justice. He must have had much the cleanest breast 
 of the two. 
 
 Still, many a mile behind us across the Bay, we saw 
 11 p 
 
242 CAPE COD. 
 
 the white sails of the mackerel fishers hovering round 
 Cape Cod, and when they were all hull-down, and the 
 low extremity of the Gape was also down, their white 
 sails still appeared on both sides of it, around where it 
 had sunk, like a city on the ocean, proclaiming the rare 
 qualities of Caj)0 Cod Harbor. But before the extrem- 
 ity of the CaEre had completely sunk, it appeared like 
 a filmy slive/of land lying flat on the ocean, and later 
 still a mere reflection of a sand-bar on the haze above. 
 Its name suggests a homely truth, but it would be more 
 poetic if it described th^' impression which it makes on 
 the beholder. Some^i6'apes have peculiarly suggestive 
 names. There is Cis^e Wrath, the northwest point of 
 Scotland, for instance ; what a good name for a cape 
 lying far away dark over the water under a lowering sky ! 
 Mild as it was on shore this morning, the wind was 
 cold and piercing on the water. Though it be the hot- 
 / test day in July on land, and the voyage is to last but 
 four hours, take your thickest clothes with you, for you 
 are about to float over melted icebergs. "When I left 
 Boston in the steamboat an the 25th of June the next 
 year, it was a quite warm day on shore. The pas- 
 sengers were dressed in Aeir thinnest clothes, and at first 
 sat under their umbreflas, but when we were fairly out 
 on the Bay, such asmad only their coats were suffering 
 with the cold, and s6ught the shelter of the pilot's house 
 and the warmth f£ the chimney. But when we ap- 
 proached the hariSor of Province town, I was surprised 
 to perceive what an influence that low and narrow strip 
 of sand, only a mile or two in width, had over the tem- 
 perature of the air for many miles around. We pene- 
 trated into a sultry atmosphere where our thin coats 
 were once more in fashion, and found the inhabitants 
 sweltering. 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 243 
 
 Leaving far on one side Manomet Point in Plymouth 
 and the Scituate shore, after being out of sight of land 
 for an hour or two, for it was rather hazy, we neared 
 the Cohasset Rocks again at Minot's Ledge, and saw the 
 great Tupelo-tree on the edge of Scituate, which lifts its 
 dome, like an umbelliferous plant, high over the surround- 
 ing forest, and is Qonspicuous for many miles over land 
 and water. Here was the new iron light-house, theii\| 
 unfinished, in the shape of an egg-shell painted red, and | 
 placed high on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea mon- 
 ster floating on the waves, — destined to be phosphores- 
 cent. As we passed it at half-tide we saw the spray 
 tossed up nearly to the shell. A man was to live in that 
 egg-shell day and night, a mile from the shore. When 
 I passed it the- next summer it was finished and two men 
 lived in it, and a light-house keeper said that they told 
 him that in a recent gale it liad rocked so as to shake 
 the plates off /the table. Think of making your bed 
 thus in the crest of a breaker ! To have the waves, like 
 a pack of hungry wolves, eying you always, night and 
 day, and from time to time making a spring at you, 
 almost sure to have you at last. And not one of all 
 those voyagers can come to your relief, — but when yon 
 light goes out, it will be a sign that the light of your life 
 has gone out also. What a place to compose a work on 
 breakers ! This light-house was the cynosure of all 
 eyes. Every passenger watched it for half an hour at \ I 
 least; yet a colored cook belonging to the boat, whom I V 
 bad seen come out of his quarters several times to empty ' 
 his dishes over the side with a flourish, chancing to come 
 out just as we were abreast of this light, and not more 
 than forty rods from it, and were all gazing at it, as he \ 
 drew back his arm, caught sight of it, and with surprise 
 
 ): 
 
244: CAPE COD. 
 
 exclaimed, " What 's that ? " He had been employed on 
 this boat for a year, and passed this light every week- 
 day, but as he had never chanced to empty his dishes, 
 just at that point, had never seen it before. To look at 
 lights was the pilot's business ; he minded the kitchen 
 fire. ] It .suggested how little some who voyaged round 
 the wo^ld could manage to see. You would almost as 
 easily believe that there are men who never yet chanced 
 to come out at the right time to see the sun. What 
 avails it though a light be placed on the top of a hill, if 
 you spend all your life directly under the hill ? It might 
 as well be under a bushel. This light-house, as is well 
 known, was swept away in a st'drm in April, 1851, and 
 the two men in it, and the nj&'^t morning not a vestige of 
 it was to be seen from the shore. 
 
 A Hull man told me that he helped set up a white- 
 oak pole on Minot's Ledge some years before. It was 
 fifteen inches in diameter, forty-one feet high, sunk four 
 feet in the rock, and was secured by four guys, — but it 
 stood only one year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near 
 the same place stood eight years. . 
 
 When I crossed the Bay in _t!ie Melrose in July, we 
 hugged the Scituate shore as , long as possible, in order 
 to take advantage of the \vnnd. Far out on the Bay 
 (off this shore) we scared up a brood of young ducks, 
 probably black ones, bred hereabouts, which the packet 
 had frequently disturbed in her trips. A townsman, who 
 was making the voyage for the first time, walked slowly 
 round into the rear of the helmsman, when we were in 
 the middle of the Bay, and looking out over the sea, 
 before he sat down there, remarked with as much origi- 
 nality as was possible for one who used a borrowed 
 expression, "This is a great country." He had been 
 
/ 
 
 PKOVINCETOWN. 245 
 
 a timber merchant, and I afterward saw him taking the , 
 diameter of the mainmast with his stick, and estimating J 
 its height. I returned from the same excursion in the 
 Olata^ a very handsome and swift-saiHng yacht, which 
 left Provincetown at the same time with two other 
 packets, the Melrose and Frolic. At first there was 
 scarcely a breath of air stirring, and we loitered about 
 Long Point for an hour in company, — with our heads 
 over the rail watching the great sand-circles and the 
 fishes at the bottom in calm water fifteen feet deep. 
 But after clearing the Cape we rigged a flying-jib, and, 
 as the Captain had prophesied, soon showed our consorts 
 our heels. There was a steamer six or eight miles 
 northward, near the Cape, towing a large ship toward 
 Boston. Its smoke stretched perfectly horizontal several t 
 miles over the sea, and by a sudden change in its direc- | 
 tion, warned us of a change in the wind before we felt 
 it. The steamer appeared very far from the ship, and 
 some young men who had frequently used the Captain's 
 glass, but did not suspect that the vessels were connected, 
 expressed surprise that they kept about the same dis- 
 tance apart for so many hours. At which the Captain 
 dryly remarked, that probably they would never get any 
 nearer together. As long as the wind held we kept 
 pace with the steamer, but at length it died away almost 
 entirely, and the flying-jib did all the work. When we 
 passed the light-boat at Minot's Ledge, the Melrose and 
 Frolic were just visible ten miles astern. 
 
 Consider the islands bearing the names of all the 
 saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or echini- 
 dcB^ yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have 
 a private jarring-match on one of them, as it is a gov- 
 ernment>raono[)oly ; all the great seaports are in a box- 
 
246 CAPE COD. 
 
 ing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two 
 tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the 
 warmth of their breasts. 
 
 The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a 
 Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them, 
 " which till then," says Sir John Smith, " for six thou- 
 sand years had been nameless." The English did not 
 stumble upon them in their first voyages to Virginia; 
 and the first Englishman who was ever there was wrecked 
 on them in 1593. Smith says, "No place known hath 
 better walls nor a broader ditch." Yet at the very first 
 planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the 
 first Governor, the same year," built and laid the foun- 
 dation of eight or nine forts." To be ready, one would 
 say, to entertain the first ship's company that should be 
 next shipwrecked on to them. It would have been 
 more sensible to have built as many " Charity-houses." 
 These are the vexed Bermoothees. 
 
 Our great sails caught all the air there was, and our 
 low and narrow hull caused the least possible friction. 
 Coming up the harbor against the stream we swept by 
 everything. Some young men returning from a fishing 
 excursion came to the side of their smack, while we 
 were thus steadily drawing by them, and, bowing, ob- 
 served, with the best possible grace, " We give it up." 
 Yet sometimes we were nearly at a stand-still. The 
 sailors watched (two) objects on the shore to ascertain 
 whether we advanced or receded. In the harbor it 
 was like the evening of a holiday. The Eastern steam- 
 boat passed us with music and a cheer, as if they were 
 
 going to a ball, when they might be going to Davy's 
 
 locker. v 
 
 I heard a boy telling the story of Nix?s mate to some 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 247 
 
 girls as we passed that spot. That was the name of a 
 sailor hung there, he said. — "If I am guilty, this island 
 will remain ; but if I am innocent, it will be washed 
 away," and now it is all washed away ! 
 
 Next (?) came the fort on George's Island. These 
 are bungling contrivances : not ourforf.es, but our foibles. 
 "Wolfe sailed by the strongest fort in North America in, 
 the dark, and took it. 
 
 I admired the skill with which the vessel was at last 
 brought to her place in the dock, near the end of Long 
 Wharf. It was candle-light, and my eyes could not dis- 
 tinguish the wharves jutting ,,<)ut toward us, but it ap- 
 peared like an even line of shore densely crowded with 
 shipping. You could not have guessed within a quarter 
 of a mile of Long Wharf. Nevertheless, we were to 
 be blown to a crevice aitiid them, — steering right into 
 the maze. Down goes the mainsail, and only the jib 
 draws us along. Now we are within four rods of the 
 shipping, having already dodged several outsiders ; but 
 it is still only a maze of spars, and rigging, and hulls, 
 — not a crack can be seen. Down goes the jib, but still 
 we advance. The Captain stands aft with one hand on 
 the tiller, and the other holding his night-glass, — his 
 son stands on the bowsprit straining his eyes, — the pas- 
 sengers feel their hearts half-way to their mouths, ex- 
 pecting a crash. " Do you see any room there ? " asks 
 the Captain, quietly. He must make up his mind in 
 five seconds, else he will carry away that vessel's bow- 
 sprit, or lose his own. " Yes, sir, here is a place for 
 us " ; and in three minutes more we are fast to the 
 wharf in a little gap between two bigger vessels. 
 
 And now we were in Boston. Whoever has been 
 down to the end of Long Wharf, and walked through 
 Quincv Market, has seen Boston. 
 
248 CAPE COD. 
 
 Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New 
 Orleans, and the rest, are the names of wharves project- 
 ing into the sea (surrounded by the shops and dwellings 
 of the merchants), good places to take in and to dis- 
 charge a cargo (to land the products of other chmes and 
 load the exports of our own). I see a great many bar- 
 rels and fig-drums, — piles of wood for umbrella-sticks, 
 — blocks of granite and ice, — great heaps of goods, 
 and the means of packing and conveying them, — much 
 wrapping-paper and twine, — many crates and hogsheads 
 and trucks, — and that is Boston. The more barrels, 
 the more Boston. The museums and scientific societiefi 
 and libraries are accidental. They gather around the 
 sands to save carting. The wharf-rats and custom-house 
 officers, and broken-down poets, seeking a fortune amid 
 the barrels. Their better or worse lyceums, and preach- 
 ings, and doctorings, these, too, are accidental, and the 
 malls of commons are always small potatoes. When I 
 go to Boston, I naturally go straight through the city 
 (taking the Market in my way), down to the end of Long 
 Wharf, and look off, for I have no cousins in the back 
 alleys, — and there I see a great many countrymen in 
 their shirt-sleeves from Maine, and Pennsylvania, and 
 all along shore and in shore, and some foreigners beside, 
 loading and unloading and steering their teams about, as 
 at a country fair. 
 
 iWhen we reached Boston that October, I had a gill 
 of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at Concord there 
 was still enough left to sand my pages for many a day ; 
 and I seemed to hear the sea roar, as if I lived in a 
 shell, for a week afterward. 
 
 The places which I have described may seem strange 
 and remote to my townsmen, — indeed, from Boston to 
 
 / 
 
PROVINCETOWN. 249 
 
 Provincetown is twice as far as from England to France ; 
 yet step into the cars, and in si^' hours you may stand 
 on those four planks, and see me. Cape which Gosnold 
 is said to have discovered, ar^ which I have so poorly 
 described. If you had staled when I first advised you, 
 you might have seen our ^cks in the sand, still fresh, 
 and reaching all the wa^ from the Nauset Lights to 
 Race Point, some thirl^ miles, — for at every step we 
 made an impression ^ the Cape, though we were not 
 aware of it, and thptigh our account may have made no 
 impression on yo\i^ minds. But what is our account ? 
 In it there is noo-oar, no beach-birds, no tow-cloth. 
 
 We often love to think now of the life of men on 
 beaches, — at least in midsummer, when the weather is 
 serene ; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach- 
 grass and the bayberries, their companion a cow, their 
 wealth a jag of drift-wood or a few beach-plums, and 
 their music the surf and the peep of the beach-bird. 
 
 We went to see the Ocean, and that is probably the 
 best place of all our coast to go to. If you go by water, 
 you may experience what it is to leave and to approach 
 these shores ; you may see the Stormy Petrel by the 
 way, Bakaaa-odpoixa, running over the sea, and if the 
 weather is but a little thick, may lose sight of the land 
 in mid-passage. I do not know where there is another 
 beach in the Atlantic States, attached to the mainland, 
 so long, and at the same time so straight, and completely 
 uninterrupted by creeks or coves or fresh-water rivers or 
 marshes ; for though there may be clear places on the 
 map, they would probably be found by the foot traveller 
 to be intersected by creeks and marshes ; certainly there 
 is none where there is a double way, such as I have 
 described, a beach and a bank, which at the same time 
 
250 CAPE COD. 
 
 shows you the land and the sea, and part of the time 
 two seas. The Great South Beach of Long Island, 
 which I have since visited, is longer still without an in- 
 let, but it is literally a mere sand-bar, exposed, several 
 miles from the Island, and not the edge of a continent 
 wasting before the assaults of the ocean. Though wild 
 and desolate, as it wants the bold bank, it possesses but 
 half the grandeur of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is the 
 imagination contented with its /outhern aspect. The 
 only other beaches of great length on our Atlantic coast, 
 which I have heard sailors speak of, are those of Bar- 
 negat on the Jerse/ shore, and Currituck between Vir- 
 ginia and North Carolina ; but these, like the last, are 
 low and narrow sand-bars, lying off the coast, and sepa- 
 rated from the mainland by lagoons. Besides, as you go 
 farther south the tides are feebler, and cease to add 
 variety and grandeur to the shore. On the Pacific 
 side of our country also no doubt there is good walking 
 to be found ; a recent writer and dweller there tells us 
 that " the coast from Cape Disappointment (or the Colum- 
 bia Eiver) to Cape Flattery (at the Strait of Juan de 
 Fuca) is nearly north and south, and can be travelled 
 almost its entire length on a beautiful sand-beach," with 
 the exception of two bays, four or five rivers, and a few 
 points jutting into the sea. The common shell-fish found 
 there seem to be often of corresponding types, if not 
 identical species, with those of Cape. Cod. The beach 
 which I have described, however, yfs not hard enough 
 for carriages, but must be explored on foot. When one 
 carriage has passed along, a following one sinks deeper 
 still in its rut. It has at ppesent no name any more 
 than fame. That portion south of Nauset Harbor is 
 commonly called Chatham Beach. The part in East- 
 
PEOVINCETOWN. 251 
 
 ham is called Nauset Beach, and off Wellfleet and Truro 
 the Backside, or sometimea, perhaps, Cape Cod Beach. 
 I think that part whic^' extends without interruption 
 from Nauset H^tbor tp Race Point should be called 
 Cape Cod Beach, and €o so speak of it. 
 
 One of the most attractive points for visitors is in 
 the northeast part of Wellfleet, where accommodations 
 (I mean for men and women of tolerable health and 
 habits) could probably be had within half a mile of the 1 
 sea-shore. It best combines the country and the sea- ' 
 side. Though the Ocean is out of sight, its faintest mur- 
 mur is audible, and you have only to climb a hill to find 
 yourself on its brink. It is but a step from the glassy 
 surface of the Herring Ponds to the big Atlantic Pond 
 where the waves never cease to break. Or perhaps the > 
 Highland Light in Truro may compete with this locality, 
 for there there is a more uninterrupted view of the 
 Ocean and the Bay, and in the summer there is always 
 some air stirring on the edge of the bank there, so that 
 the inhabitants know not what hot weather is. As for 
 the view, the keeper of the light, with <Mie or more of 
 his family, walks out to the edge of the bahk after every 
 meal to look off, just as if they had not lived there all 
 their days. In short, it will wear well. And what pic- 
 ture will you substitute for that, upon your walls ? But 
 ladies cannot get down the bank there at present without 
 the aid of a block and tackle. 
 
 Most persons visit the sea-side in warm weather, i 
 when fogs are frequent, and the atmosphere is wont to 
 be thick, and the charm of the sea is to some extent lost. 
 But I suspeot^that the fall is the best season, for then the 
 atmosphere is i^ore transparent, and it is a greater 
 pleasure to look oul^pver the sea. The clear and bracing 
 
 'x 
 
252 CAPE COD. 
 
 air, and the storms of autumn and winter even, are ne- 
 cessary in order that we may get the impression which 
 the sea is calculated to make. In October, when the 
 weather is not intolerably cold, and the landscape wears 
 its autumnal tints, such as, methinks, only a Cape Cod 
 landscape ever wears, especially if you have a storm 
 during your stay, — that I am convinced is the best time 
 to visit this shore. In autumn, even in August, the 
 thoughtful days begin, and we can walk anywhere with 
 profit. Beside, an outward cold and dreariness, which 
 make it necessary to seek shelter at night, lend a spirit 
 of adventure to a walk. 
 
 The time must come when this coast will be a place 
 iof resort for those New-Englanders who really wish to 
 visit the sea-side. At present it is wholly unknown to 
 the fashionable world, and probably it will never be 
 agreeable to them. If -it is merely a ten-pin alley, or a 
 circular railway, or an ocean of mint-julep, that the 
 visitor is in search of, — if he thinks more of the wine 
 than the brine, as I suspect some do at Newport, — I trust 
 that for a long time he will be disappointed here. But 
 this shore will never be more attractive than it is now. 
 Such beaches as are fashionable are here made and un- 
 made in a day, I may almost say, by the sea shifting its 
 sands. Lynn and Nantasket ! this bare and bended arm 
 it is that makes the bay in which they lie so snugly. 
 What are springs and waterfalls ? Here is the spring 
 of springs, the waterfall of waterfalls. A storm in the 
 fall or winter is the time to visit it ; a light-house or a 
 fisherman's hut the true hotel. - A man may stand there 
 and put all America behind him. 
 
 Cambridge : Stereotjrped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Ca 
 
 LR8D79