Cape Cod

Class
Book.

133

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

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COTUIT

CAPE COD

BY

HENRY D. THOREAU

WITH INTKODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATIONS

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

BY CHARLES S. OLCOTT

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1914

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'^$5

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

AUG -8 1914

CI,A376929

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introductory Note . . . , ,

• • vii

I. The Shipwreck

. 1

II. Stage-Coach Views

20

III. The Plains of Nauset

. 34

IV. The Beach

65

V. The Wellpleet Oysterman

. 92

VI. The Beach Again ....

. 120

VII. Across the Cape ....

.153

VIII. The Highland Light

. . 179

IX. The Sea and the Desert

. 211

X. Provincetown . ♦ • , «

. 255

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

CoTuiT Frontispiece V^'

A Street in Yarmouth 24 \/^

Evening, Chatham Harbor 30 '^

The Oldest House on Cape Cod, built in 1690 32 ^'^

Old Mill, Eastham 381/

The Beach, from Highland Light . . . 66 ^
A Sand Dune, showing the Stone that marks the

Boundary between Wellflbbt and Truro . 94 ^
Higgins and Gull Ponds, near Wellfleet . 104 '^

Fish Wagon, Yarmouth 140 '^

Pond Village (North Truro) .... 168 "^

Mackerel and Butterfish 218 ^

Beach Peas 248

Scallop Shacks, Mill Pond, Chatham . . . 266 ^ .

Beach Plums 278 ^

A Cranberry Bog, near Harwich .... 294
Bass River from West Dennis .... 318 K

INTRODUCTION TO THE
VISITOR'S EDITION

BY CHARLES S. OLCOTT

Although the activities of sixty-five years
have done much to change the aspect of Cape
Cod since Thoreau made his first visit in 1849,
yet the visitor of to-day who follows in his foot-
steps may gather many of the same impressions
and experience many of the same conditions.
Thoreau traveled by rail to Sandwich, thence by
stage-coach to Orleans, and from there walked to
Provincetown. The visitor to-day may travel the
entire distance by train, or he may, preferably,
glide over the well-oiled roads at a rapid pace in
an automobile ; but if he wishes to see things
with the eyes of Thoreau he must do neither
of these, but get an old-fashioned " horse and
buggy " and travel over some of the sandy roads
among the scraggly pitch pines and shrub oaks,
or walk along the seashore through the sand, as
Thoreau did, stopping at frequent intervals to
empty his shoes.

A journey of this kind is really necessary to en-
able one to get the full flavor of Thoreau's " Cape
Cod." The sands of the seashore are constantly

viii INTRODUCTION

shifting and forming yearly a different coast-line,
and yet their aspect is essentially the same. One
can look up, as Thoreau did, to the towering
beach bluffs, or, climbing these heights, he can
surVey a country of sand-dunes and desert. If
the present-day visitor should proceed as far
north as the division line between Wellfleet and
Truro, he might find, if he had a well-informed
native to guide him, the stone post, half buried
in sand, that marked the boundary line when
Thoreau walked along the shore and where he
diverted his route toward the interior. He could
then walk over a sandy road by the margin of
some pretty lakes, or ponds, and eventually come
to one of those " sober-looking houses within
half a mile " which Thoreau saw. The first of
these is the identical house where Thoreau
knocked at the door and found the inhabitants
gone. The second is the veritable home of the
"Wellfleet oysterman," where our traveler of
two generations ago stopped over night with the
old man of eighty-eight years, who remembered
hearing the cannon fire at the time of the battle
of Bunker Hill. His name was John Young New-
comb, and he is well remembered as " Uncle
Jack." The two houses are well preserved, though
unoccupied. They are the sole survivors of the
settlement which originally occupied this immedi-
ate vicinity. Many apple trees and lilac bushes

INTRODUCTION ix

scattered between this neighborhood and the
present village of Wellfleet, mark the spots
where farm-houses formerly stood, but the old
part of the village of Wellfleet is now entirely
depopulated.

From the home of Uncle Jack, or better, from
the hill near by, may be seen a number of ponds,
the largest and most beautiful of which is Gull
Pond, about a mile in circumference. The others
are Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse-Leech,
Kound, and Herring Ponds. Thoreau mentions
that the old man made him repeat the names to
see that he got them right. The scenery from this
point is as beautiful as in any part of Cape Cod.
On another hill, not far away, is the place where
the old man found a comfortable seat and sat
down to see the Franklin wrecked, a boy having
notified him that the vessel was too near the
shore.

The vegetation which Thoreau describes may
be seen in abundance in this section. The visitor
may walk over acres of ground covered with the
bearberries, which are still used for medicinal
purposes. He will see patches here and there
of the moss-like " poverty-grass," with bright
yellow blossoms, flourishing in the sand where
nothing else will grow. He will find bayberries
in abundance and plenty of huckleberries. He
will see the beach peas growing on the sandy

X INTRODUCTION

banks along the shore, and here and there, if he
happens to visit the Cape in the spring of the
year, will see the beautiful white blossoms of the
beach 23lums, in clusters of shrubbery not over
two or three feet high. At Highland Light he
may stand upon the same high bluff overlooking
the ocean and watch the breakers coming in as
Thoreau did, but he will see a different light-
house, a larger and finer one equipped with
modern apparatus. By its side he will see what
Thoreau never dreamed of, a high mast, held in
position by innumerable wire ropes and used for
the receipt and transmission of wireless mes-
sages. At Provincetown he will see the same
kind of sand-dunes and drifts that Thoreau de-
scribes, will walk through the same long narrow
street, only eighteen feet wide, and will see the
same harbor and some of the same old wharves
along the water-front.

Thoreau has much to say about the industries
of the Cape, particularly the clam and oyster
business and the fisheries. The visitor of to-day
will hear much talk of these things, although
there have been changes. The modern clam-digger
and oysterman bring in their shellfish in motor-
boats, and the boats of the old-time mackerel fleet
no longer depend upon their sails, but come to
shore under the power of gasoline engines. The
old windmills that Thoreau mentioned as char-

INTRODUCTION , xi

acteristic of the Cape may still be seen, many of
them retaining- the old mill-stones. Some of these
are kept in excellent repair by their owners,
while others have been allowed to fall into de-
cay and are half covered with the sand. Next to
the windmills as landmarks, according to Tho-
reau, were the churches, and these may still be
seen standing out conspicuously on the high
ground, acting as useful guides to the sailors at
sea, and offering their assistance in the same
capacity to any landsmen who may attend their
services.

It was never Thoreau's practice to frequent the
villages in his travels. He preferred the seashore
and the woods and the wild open places. The
visitor who goes to Cape Cod to-day in the spirit
of Thoreau may still avoid, as he did, most of
the signs of habitation and enjoy the sweep of
the sand and of the ocean, fill his lungs with the
fresh air and enjoy the atmosphere of the Cape,
observing its birds and flowers and trees, its
sands and its shellfish, in very much the same
way that Thoreau did ; and for those who enjoy
the things of nature this is really the best way
to see Cape Cod.

CAPE COD

THE SHIPWRECK

Wishing to get a better view than I had yet
had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers
more than two thirds of the globe, but of which
a man who lives a few miles inland may never
see any trace, more than of another world, I
made a visit to Cape Cod in October, 1849, an-
other the succeeding June, and another to Truro
in July, 1855; the first and last time with a
single companion, 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

2 CAPE COD

been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds
within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have
extended my excursions to the seashore.

I did not see why I might not make a book on
Cape Cod, as well as my neighbor on " Human
Culture." It is but another name for the same
thing, and hardly a sandier phase of it. As for
my title, I suppose that the word Cape is from
the French cap ; which is from the Latin caput,
a head ; which 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 ai3pears 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
the quantity of spawn it contains; whence also,
perhaps, codling i^'''' pommn coctile^''f^ and
coddle, — to cook green like peas. (V. Die.)

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of
Massachusetts: the shoulder is at Buzzard's
Bay; the elbow, or crazy -bone, at Cape Malle-
barre ; the wrist at Truro ; and the sandy fist at
Provincetown, — behind which the State stands
on her guard, with her back to the Green Moun-
tains, and her feet planted on the floor of the

THE SHIPWRECK 3

ocean, like an athlete protecting' her Bay, —
boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and
anon, heaving up 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 uninterrupted beach on the east or outside
of the forearm of the Cape, more than thirty
miles from the general line of the coast,' which
would afford a good sea view, but that, on ac-
count of an opening in the beach, forming the
entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must
strike it in 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 9, 1849. On reaching Boston, we found
that the Provincetown steamer, which should
have got in the day before, had not yet arrived,
on account of a violent storm; and, as we no-
ticed in the streets a handbill headed, '' Death !
one hundred and forty-five lives lost at Cohas-
set,'* we decided to go by way of Cohasset.
We found many Irish in the cars, going to iden-
tify bodies and to sympathize with the survivors,
and also to attend the funeral which was to take
place in the afternoon ; — and when we arrived

4 CAP^ COD

at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly all the pas-
sengers were bound for the beach, which was
about a mile distant, and many other persons
were flocking in from the neighboring country.
There wei^e several hundreds of them streaming
off over Cohasset common in that direction,
some on foot and some in wagons, — and among
them were some sportsmen in their hunting-
jackets, with their guns, and game-bags, and
dogs. As we passed tlie 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 -rig-
gings and farm-wagons coming away toward 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 undertakers. 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
examinino^ the frao^ments of the wreck. There
was a small island called Brook Island, with a
hut on it, lying just off the shore. This is said
to be the rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from
Nantasket to Scituate, — hard sienitic rocks,
which the waves have laid bare, but have not
been able to crumble. It has been the scene of
many a shipwreck.

THE SHIPWRECK 6

The brig St. John, from Galway, 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
hillside, a few rods from the water, and sur-
rounded by a crowd. The bodies which had
been recovered, twenty -seven or eight in all, had
been collected there. Some were rapidly nail-
ing down the lids, others were carting the boxes
away, and others were lifting the lids, which
were yet loose, and peeping under the cloths,
for each body, with such rags as still adhered to
it, was covered loosely with a white sheet. 1
witnessed no signs of grief, but there was a sober
dispatch of business which was affecting. One
man was seeking to identify a particular body,
and one undertaker or c^irpenter was calling 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 pro-
bably had intended to go out to service in some
American family, — to which some rags still ad-
hered, 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

6 CAPE COD

bloodless, — merely red and white, — with wide-
open and staling eyes, yet lustreless, dead-
lights ; or like the cabin windows of a stranded
vessel, filled with sand. Sometimes there were
two or more children, or a parent and child, in
the same box, and on the lid would perhaps be
written 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 super-
scription I have quoted — her child in her sis-
ter'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 seaweed, 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 tradi-
tion about it in the neighborhood. I asked a

THE SHIPWRECK 7

sailor if that was the St. John. He said it
was. I asked him where she struck. He
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."

It appeared to us that there was enough rub-
bish to make the wreck of a large vessel in this
cove alone, and that it would take many days to
cart it off. It was several 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
seaweed which the storm had cast up, and con-
veying 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.

8 CAPE COD

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 Harbor. 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 the
water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a
part of one side of the vessel, still hanging to-
gether. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by
fourteen wide. I was even more surprised at
the power of the waves, exhibited on this shat-
tered fragment, than I had been at the sight of
the smaller fragments before. The largest tim-
bers and iron braces were broken superfluously,
and I saw that no material could withstand the
power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces
in such a case, and an iron vessel would be
cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some
of these timbers, 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, and in what condition, I
wondered that any had been saved on it. A lit-

THE SHIPWRECK 9

tie further on a crowd of men was collected
around the mate of the St. John, who was tell-
ing his story. He was a slim-looking youth,
who spoke of the captain as the master, and
seemed a little excited. He was saying that
when they jumped into the boat, she filled, and,
the vessel lurching, the weight of the water in
the boat caused the painter to break, and so
they were separated. Whereat one man came
away, saying, —

"Well, I don't see but he 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 inter-
est 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 questions,

10 CAPE COD

which he answered ; but he seemed unwilling to
talk about it, and soon walked away. By his
side stood one of the life-boat men, in an oil-
cloth jacket, who told us how they went to
the relief of the British brig, thinking that the
boat of the St. John, which they passed on the
way, held all her crew, — for the waves pre-
vented their seeing those who were on the vessel,
though they might have saved some had they
known there were any there. A little further
was the flag of the St. John spread on a rock to
dry, and held down by stones at the corners.
This frail, but essential and significant 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 re-
coverinof 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 pro-
montory called Whitehead, that we might see
more of the Cohasset Rocks. In a little cove,
within half a mile, there were an old man and
his son collecting, with their team, the seaweed
which that fatal storm had cast up, as serenely
employed as if there had never been a wreck in
the world, though they were within sight of the
Grampus Kock, on which the St. John had

THE SHIPWRECK 11

struck. The old man had heard that there was
a wreck and knew most of the particulars, but
he said that he had not been up there since it
happened. It was the wrecked weed that con-
cerned him most, rock- weed, kelp, and sea-
weed, as he named them, which he carted to his
barnyard; 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
emergency, — and in the afternoon we saw the
funeral procession at a distance, at the head of
which walked the captain with the other sur-
vivors.

On the whole, it was not so impressive a
scene as I might have expected. If I had found
one body cast upon the beach in some lonely
place, it would have affected me more. I sym-
pathized rather with the 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
6lighted prospects of individuals. I saw that
corpses might be multiplied, as on the field of
battle, till they no longer affected us in any de-
gree, as exceptions to the common lot of human-
ity. Take all the graveyards together, they are

12 CAPE COD

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 affected by this event. They would watch
there many days and nights for the sea to give
up its dead, and their imaginations and sympa-
thies would supply the place of mourners far
away, who as yet knew not of the wreck. Many
days after this, something white was seen float-
ing 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 upright position, whose white cap
was blown back with the 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 Pilgrims did, — they 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

THE SHIPWRECK 13

universal and convincing evidence — though it
has not yet been discovered by science — than
Cohnubus had of this : not merely mariners'
tales and some paltry drift-wood and seaweed,
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 thank
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 Bos-
ton Harbor the better place ; though perhaps in-
visible to them, a skillful pilot comes to meet
him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow off
that coast, his good ship makes the land in hal-
cyon 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 I Infants by the score dashed on the
rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No,
no ! If the St. John did not make her port here,
she has been telegraphed there. The strongest
wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it is a Spirit's

14 CAPE COD

breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split
on any Grampus or material rock, but itself
will split rocks till it succeeds.

The verses addressed to Columbus, dying,
may, with slight alterations, be applied to the
passengers of the St. John, —

" Soon with them will all be over,
Soon the voyage will be begun
That shall bear them to discover,
Far away, a land unknown.

" Land that each, alone, must visit,
But no tidings bring to men ;
For no sailor, once departed.
Ever hath retxirned again.

" No carved wood, no broken branches
Ever drift from that far wild ;
He who on that ocean launches
Meets no corse of angel chUd.

" Undismayed, my noble sailors,
Spread, then spread your canvas out ;
Spirits ! on a sea 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 youi' bark right onward bear.

*' Quit, now, full of heart and comfort,
These rude shores, they are of earth ;
Where the rosy clouds are parting.
There the blessed isles loom forth."

THE SHIPWRECK 15

One summer day, since this, I came this way,
on foot, along the shore from Boston. It was
so warm, that some horses had climbed to 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 breeze. The Datura stramo-
nium, or thorn-apple, was in full bloom along
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 Bays, for it is not an inno-
cent plant; it suggests not merely commerce,
but its attendant vices, as if its fibres were the
stuff of which pirates spin their yarns. I heard
the voices of men shouting aboard a vessel, half
a mile from the shore, which sounded as if they
were in a barn in the country, they being be-
tween the sails. It was a purely rural sound.
As I looked over the water, I saw the isles
rapidly wasting away, the sea nibbling vora-
ciously at the continent, the springing arch of a
hill suddenly interrupted, as at Point Allerton,
— what botanists might call premorse, — show-
ing, by its curve against the sky, how much
space 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

16 CAPE COD

everything seemed to be gently lapsing into
futurity. Tliis isle had got the very form of a
ripple, — and I thought that the inhabitants
should bear a ripple for device on their shields,
a wave passing over them, with the datura,
which is said to produce mental alienation of
long duration without affecting the bodily
health,^ springing from its edge. The most in-
teresting thing which I heard of, in this town-
ship of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose lo-
cality was pointed out to me, on the side of a
distant hill, as I was panting along the shore,
though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should
go tlirough Rome, it would be some spring on
the Capitoline Hill I should remember the long-

^ 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
effect of which was a very pleasant 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, grinning and making mows at them^ ; a fourth would
fondly kiss and paw his companions, and sneer in their faces,
with a countenance more antic than any in- a Dutch droll. In
this frantic condition 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. In-
deed, they were not very cleanly. A thousand such simple
tricks they played, and after eleven days returned to them-
selves again, not remembering anything that had passed." —
Beverly's History of Virginia, p. 120.

THE SHIPWRECK 17

est. It is true, I was somewhat interested in
the well at the old French fort, which was said
to be ninety feet deep, with a cannon at the
bottom of it. On Nantasket beach I counted a
dozen chaises from the public-house. From
time to time the riders turned their horses
toward the sea, standing in the water for the
coolness, — and I saw the value of beaches to
cities for the sea breeze and the bath.

At Jerusalem village the inhabitants were col-
lecting 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 cap-
sized 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 yourself
up by them, greatly enhanced the luxury of the
bath. The stripe of barnacles just above the

18 CAPE COD

weeds reminded me of some vegetable growth,
— the buds, and petals, and seed-vessels of
flowers. They lay along the 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 re-
ceding 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 seashore 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

THE SHIPWRECK 19

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 outlet, and
now the alewives were dving 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 were ever
shipwrecked in it ; it was not grand and sublime,
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.

n

STAGE-COACH VIEWS

After spending the night in Bridgewater,
and picking up a few arrow-heads there in the
morning, we took the cars for Sandwich, where
we arrived before noon. This was the terminus
of the "Cape Cod Railroad," though it is but
the beginning of the Cape. As it rained hard,
with driving mists, and there was no sign of its
holding up, we here took that almost obsolete
conveyance, the stage, for "as far as it went
that day," as we told the driver. We had for-
gotten how far 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 ineffectual
slams, as if the fault were all in the hinges or
the latch, — while we timed our inspirations and
expirations so as to assist him.

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 21

We were now fairly on the Cape, which ex-
tends from Sandwich eastward thirty -five miles,
and thence north and northwest thirty more, in
all sixty-five, and has an average breadth of
about five miles. In the interior it rises to the
height of two hundred, and sometimes perhaps
three hundred feet above the level of the sea.
According to Hitchcock, the geologist of the
State, it is composed almost entirely of sand,
even to the depth of three hundred 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 the shores,
which 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 other 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 garment not likely to be

22 CAPE COD

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 Histori-
cal Society, printed in 1802, which contains
some short notices of the Cape towns, and be-
gan to read up to where I was, for in the cars I
could not read as fast as I traveled. 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
traveler." Another writer speaks of this 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 beau-
tiful villages, embellished, perchance, with a
"fulling-mill," "a handsome academy," or a
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 traveler, or the returning native,
— or, perchance, the repentant misanthrope;
not to him who, with unprejudiced senses, has

ST A GE-COA CH VIE WS * 23

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 almshouse. 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 opportu-
nity to test the truth of this statement. It may
have referred, however, to the quantity "of oil
they would yield." It further said, "The in-
habitants of Sandwich generally manifest a fond
and steady adherence to the manners, employ-
ments 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 re-
semblance, which, at this day, will constitute no

24 • CAPE COD

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
profitably 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

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 26

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 windmills on
the hills, — large weather-stained octagonal
structures, — and the salt-works scattered all
along the shore, with their long rows of vats
resting on piles driven into the marsh, their
low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter wind-
mills, were novel and interesting objects to an
inlander. The sand by the roadside was par-
tially covered with bunches of a moss-like plant,
Hudsonia tomentosa^ which a woman in the
stage told us was called "poverty grass," be-
cause it grew where nothing else would.

I was struck by the pleasant equality which
reigned among the stage company, and their
broad and invulnerable good humor. They
were what -is called free and easy, and met one
another to advantage, as men who had, at
length, learned how to live. They appeared to
know each other when they were strangers, they
were so simple and downright. They were well
met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met aa
well as they could meet, and did not seem to be
troubled with any impediment. They were not
afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were
contented to make just such a company as the
ingredients allowed. It was evident that the
same foolish respect was not here claimed, for

26 CAPE COD

mere wealth and station, that is in many parts
of New England; yet some of them were the
"first people," as they are called, of the various
towns through which we passed. Retired sea-
captains, in easy circumstances, who talked of
farming as sea-captains are wont; an erect, re-
spectable, and trustworthy-looking man, in his
wrapper, some of the salt of the earth, who had
formerly been the salt 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 Cod man, who had
seen too many storms to be easily irritated; or
a fisherman's wife, who had been waiting a
week for a coaster to leave Boston, and had at
length come by the cars.

A strict regard for truth obliges us to say,
that the few women whom we saw that day
looked exceedingly pinched up. They had
prominent chins and noses, having lost all their
teeth, and a sharp W would represent their
profile. They were not so well preserved as
their husbands; or perchance they were well
preserved as dried specimens. (Their hus-
bands, however, were pickled.) But we respect
them not the less for all that; our own dental
system is far from perfect.

Still we kept on in the rain, or, if we stopped,
it was commonly at a post-office, and we thought

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 27

that writing letters, and sorting them against
our arrival, must be the principal employment
of the inhabitants of the Cape this rainy clay.
The post-office appeared a singularly domestic
institution here. Ever and anon the stage
stopped before some low shop or dwelling, and
a wheelwright or shoemaker appeared 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
travelers, while he retailed some piece of gossip
to the driver, really as indifferent to the pres-
ence of the former as if they were so much bag-
gage. In one instance, we understood that a
woman was the post-mistress, and they said that
she made the best one on the road ; but we sus-
pected that the letters must be subjected to a
very close scrutiny there. While we were
stopping, for this purpose, at Dennis, we ven-
tured to put our heads out of the windows, to
see where we were going, and saw rising before
us, through the mist, singular 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 side, notwithstanding that the
horses were still headed that way. Indeed,
that part of Dennis which we saw was an exceed-
ingly barren and desolate country, of a char-

28 CAPE COD

acter which I can find no name for ; such a sur-
face, perhaps, as the bottom of the sea made
dry hind day before yesterday. It was covered
with poverty-grass, and there was hardly a tree
in sight, but here and there a little weather-
stained, one-storied house, with a red roof, —
for often the roof was painted, though the rest
of the house was not, — standing bleak and
cheerless, yet with a broad foundation to the
land, where the comfort must have been all in-
side. Yet we read in the Gazetteer, — for we
carried that too with us, — that, in 1837, one
hundred and fifty masters of vessels, belonging
to this town, sailed from the various ports of
the Union. There must be many more houses
in the south part of the town, else we cannot
imagine where they all lodge when they are at
home, if ever they are there; but the truth is,
their houses are floating 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 is true, there
was a meeting-house, set round with Lombardy
poplars, in a hollow square, the rows fully as
straight as the studs of a building, and the cor-
ners as square; but, if I do not mistake, every
one of them was dead. I could not help think-
ing that they needed a revival here. Our bool^
said that, in 1795, there was erected in Dennis

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 29

" an elegant meeting-house, with a steeple."
Perhaps this was the one ; though whether it
had a steeple, or had died down so far from
sympathy with the poplars, I do not remember.
Another meeting-house in this town was de-
scribed as a " neat building ; " but of the meet-
ing-house in Chatham, a neighboring town, for
there was then but one, nothing is said, except
that it '* is in good repair," — both which re-
marks, I trust, may be understood as applying
to the churches spiritual as well as material.
However, " elegant meeting-houses," from that
Trinity one on Broadway, to this at Nobscus-
set, in my estimation, belong to the same cate-
gory with " beautiful villages." I was never in
season to see one. Handsome is that handsome
does. What they did for shade here, 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 they serve
in summer, instead of trees, to shelter the houses
against the heat of the sun. To those who de-
light in extensive vision," — is it to be inferred
that the inhabitants of Chatham do not ? —
" they are unpleasant, but they are not found
to be unhealthful." Probably, also, the unob-
structed sea-breeze answers the purpose of a fan.
The historian of Chatham says further, that " in
many families there is no difference between the

30 CAPE COD

breakfast and supper; cheese, cakes, and pies
belnfj 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 the Bay-shore, having the Bay on one side,
and "the rough hill of Scargo," said to be the
highest land on the Cape, on the other. Of the
wide prospect of the Bay afforded by the sum-
mit of this hill, our guide says, "The view has
not much of the beautiful in it, but it commu-
nicates a strong emotion of the sublime." That
is the kind of communication which we love to
have made to us. We passed through the vil-
lage of Suet, in Dennis, on Suet and Quivet
Necks, of which it is said, "when compared with
Nobscusset," — we had a misty recollection of
having 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

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 31

1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt
was scarce and dear. The Historical Collec-
tions contain an interesting account of his ex-
periments, 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 invested
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, ac-
cordingly, her salt-works are fast going to de-
cay. From making salt, they turn to fishing
more than ever. The Gazetteer will uniformly
tell you, under the head of each town, how 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 manufacturing palm -leaf hats, leather,
boots, shoes, and tinware, and then it has done,
and leaves you to imagine the more truly do-
mestic manufactures which are nearly the same
all the world over.

Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brews-
ter, so named after Elder Brewster, for fear he
would be forgotten else. Who has not heard
of Elder Brewster ? Who knows who he was ?
This appeared to be the modern -built town of

32 CAPE COD

the Cape, the favorite residence of retired sea«
captains. It is said that "there are more mas-
ters and mates of vessels which sail on foreign
voyages belonging to this place than to any other
town in the country." There were many of the
modern American houses here, such as they turn
out at Cambridgeport, 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
are paid for by Americans, and "put up" by
American carpenters; but they are little re-
moved from lumber; only Eastern stuff dis-
guised 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 car-
penter 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 Numidian 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

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 83

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 domestic pleasures. They are
not in the habit of frequenting 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 Hig-
gins's tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as
if we were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not
knowing: whether we should see land or water
ahead when the mist cleared away. We here
overtook two Italian boys, who had waded thus
far down the Cape through the sand, with their
organs on their backs, and were going on to
Provincetown. What a hard lot, we thought,
if the Provincetown 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, where other music
than that of the surf must be rare. Thus the
great civilizer sends out his 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.

ni

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET

The next morning, Thursday, October 11, it
rained as hard as ever; but we were determined
to proceed on foot, nevertheless. We first
made some inquiries, with regard to the practi-
cability of walking up the shore on the Atlantic
side to Provincetown, whether we should meet
with any creeks or marshes 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 inconven-
ient and even dangerous walking under the
bank, when there was a great tide, with an east-
erly wind, which caused the sand to cave. For
the first four or five miles we followed the road,
which here turns to the north on the elbow, — •
the narrowest part of the Cape, — that we might
clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of Nauset

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 35

Harbor, in Orleans, on our right. We found
the traveling good enough for walkers on the
sides of the roads, though it was "heavy" for
horses in the middle. We walked with our um-
brellas behind us since it blowed hard as well as
rained, with driving mists, as the day before,
and the wind 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 be-
tween, 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 scarcity 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 firm-
ness of the land, without studying their postures
or habiliments. To them it was merely tery^a
firma and cogriita, not yet feyiilis Sindjucimda.
Every landscape which is dreary enough has a
certain beauty to my eyes, and in this instance
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.

36 CAPE COD

For birds there were gulls, and for carts in iKe
fields, boats turned bottom upward against the
houses, and sometimes the rib of a whale was
woven into the fence by the roadside. The
trees were, if possible, rarer than the houses,
excepting apple-trees, of which there were a
few small orchards in the hollows. These 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 circumstances, all trees would at last ac-
quire like habits of growth. I afterward saw
on the Cape many full-grown 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
you 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 canker-worms,
they looked like plants in flower-pots, and as if
they might be taken into the house in the winter.
In another place, I saw some not much larger
than currant-bushes ; yet the owner told me that
they had borne a barrel and a half of apples

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 37

that fall. If they had been placed close to-
gether, I could have cleared them all at a jump.
I measured some near the Highland Light in
Truro, which had been taken from the shrubby
woods thereabouts when young, and grafted.
One, which had been set ten years, was on an
average eighteen inches high, and spread nine
feet, with a flat top. It had borne one bushel of
apples two years 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 ajjples two
years before. The owner of these trees invari-
ably used the personal pronoun in speaking of
them; as, "I got him out of the woods, but he
doesn'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 dy-
ing. The occupant said that his father had
manured all but that one with blacktish.

This habit of growth should, no doubt, be
encouraged, and they should not be trimmed
up, as some traveling practitioners have ad-
vised. In 1802 there was not a single fruit-tree
in Chatham, the next town to Orleans, on the

38 CAPE COD

south; and the old account of Orleans says:
"Fruit-trees cannot be made to grow within a
mile of the ocean. Even those which are placed
at a greater distance are injured by the east
winds; and, after violent 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 i^arietina.
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. The 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 locomo-
tive, like huge wounded birds, trailing a wing
or a leg, and reminded 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 com-
monly, which can be seen at a distance in the
horizon ; though the outline of the land itself is
so firm and distinct, that an insignificant cone,

f-^\mifiih,iii

OLD MILL, EASTHAM

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 39

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 the meeting-house is a kind of wind mill,
which runs one day in seven, turned either by
the winds of doctrine 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 musty, if it be not plaster^ we trust to
make bread of life.

There were, here and there, heaps of shells
in the fields, where clams had been opened for
bait; for Orleans is famous for its shell-fish,
especially clams, or, as our author says, "to
speak more properly, worms." The shores are
more fertile than the dry land. The inhabi-
tants measure their crops, not only by bushels
of corn, 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
corn, and once they were procured without
more labor or expense, and the supply was
thought to be inexhaustible. "For," runs the
history, "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

40 CAPE COD

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 prevented from increasing in size." But
we were told that the small clam, Mya arenaria^
was not so plenty here as formerly. Probably
the clam -ground has been stirred too frequently,
after all. Nevertheless, one man, who com-
plained that they fed pigs with them and so
made them scarce, told me that he dug and
opened one hundred and twenty-six dollars'
worth in one winter, in Truro.

We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen
rods long between Orleans and Eastham called
Jeremiah's Gutter. The Atlantic is said some-
times 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 immediately into the sea ; and beside,
we found it difficult to run ourselves in that
sand, when there was no want of room. Hence,
the least channel where water runs, or may run,
is important, and is dignified 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^

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 41

to judge from appearances, no farmer in the in-
terior would think of cultivating, or even fenc-
ing. Generally, the ploughed fields of the Cape
look white and yellow, like a mixture of salt
and Indian meal. This is called soil. All an
inlander's notions of soil and fertility will be
confounded by a visit to these parts, and he will
not be able, for some time afterward, to distin-
guish 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 ap-
pearance of a soil beginning to be formed. It
is styled doubtful^ because it would not be ob-
served by every eye, and perhaps not acknow-
ledged 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 summer,
half a mile wide, and stretching across the town-
ship, 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
them, since they commonly have their origin on
the shore. "The sand in some places," says
the historian of Eastham, "lodging against the
beach-grass, has been raised into hills fifty feet
high, where twenty-five years ago no hills ex

42 CAPE COD

isted. In others it has filled up small valleys,
and swamps. Where a strong - rooted bush
stood, the appearance is singular; a mass of
earth and sand adheres to it, resembling a small
tower. In several places, rocks, which were
formerly covered with soil, are disclosed, 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, not-
withstanding 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 corn-
fields hereabouts, with their wigwams in the
midst, as they appeared in 1605, and it was
here that the Pilgrims, to quote their own
words, "bought eight or ten hogsheads of corn
and beans" of the Nauset Indians, in 1622, to
keep themselves from starving.^ "In 1667 the

1 They touched after this at a place called Mattachiest,
where they got more corn ; but their shallop being' cast away
in a storm, the Governor was obliged to return to Plymouth on
foot, fifty miles through the woods. According to Mourt's Re-
lation, "he came safely home, though weary and surbated,^^
that is, foot-sore. (Ital. sobattere, Lat. sub or solea battere, to
bruise the soles of the feet ; v. Die. Not " from acerbatus, em-

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 43

town [of Eastham] voted that every housekeeper
should kill twelve blackbirds, 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 unmarried 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 I 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 ac-
count of Eastham, in the "Historical Collec-
tions," printed in 1802, it is said, that "more
corn is produced than the inhabitants consume,
and above 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 Cape horse, somewhat

bittered or ag-grieved," 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 them, and might save their soles if they
eared.

44 CAPE COD

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 annually, 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 exception as the rule, and
that by far the greater number of acres are as
barren as they appear to be. It is sufficiently
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 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 inhabi-
tants are contented with small crops from a
great surface easily cultivated. It is not always
the most fertile land that is the most profitable,
aud this sand may repay cultivation, as well as

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 45

the fertile bottoms of the West. It is said,
moreover, that the vegetables raised in the sand,
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 which 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, filling the whole air, that of the sea
dashing against the land, heard several miles
inland. Instead of having a dog to growl be-
fore your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to
growl for a whole Cape! On the whole, we
were glad of the storm, which would show us
the ocean in its angriest mood. Charles Darwin
was assured that the roar of the surf on the

46 CAPE COD

coast of Chiloe, after a heavy gale, could be
heard at night a distance of "21 sea miles
across a hilly and wooded country." We con-
versed with the boy we have mentioned, who
might have been eight years old, making him
walk the while under the lee of our umbrella;
for we thought it as important to know what
was life on the Cape to a boy as to a man.
We learned from him where the best grapes
were to be found in that neighborhood. He
was carrying his dinner in a pail; and, without
any impertinent questions being put by us, it
did at length appear of what it consisted. The
homeliest facts are always the most acceptable to
an inquiring mind. At length, before we got
to Eastham meeting-house, we left the road and
struck across the country for 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 distinguished from
others; but this seemed a shiftless and costly
way of accomplishing that object. We found
ourselves at once on an apparently boundless
plain, without a tree or a fence, or, with one or
two exceptions, a house in sight. Instead of
fences, the earth was sometimes thrown up into
a slight ridge. My companion compared it to
the rolling prairies of Illinois. In the storm of
wind and rain which raged when we traversed

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 47

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 con-
cealed by mist, we did not know whether it was
high or low. A solitary traveler, whom we saw
perambulating in the distance, loomed like a
giant. He appeared to walk slouchingly, as if
held up from above by straps under his shoul-
ders, as much as supported by the plain below.
Men and boys would have appeared alike at a
little distance, there being no object by which
to measure them. Indeed, to an inlander, the
Cape landscape is a constant mirage. This
kind of country extended a mile or two each
way. These were the "Plains of Nauset," once
covered with wood, where in winter the winds
howl and the snow blows right merrily in the
face of the traveler. I was glad to have got out
of the towns, where I am wont to feel unspeak-
ably mean and disgraced, — to have left behind
me for a season the bar-rooms of Massachusetts,
where the full-grown are not weaned from sav-
age and filthy habits, — still sucking a cigar.
My spirits rose in proportion 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
appeased with cigar-smoke.

48 CAPE COD

As we thus skirted the back-side of the
towns, for we did not enter any village, till we
got to Provincetown, we read their histories un-
der our umbrellas, rarely meeting anybody.
The old accounts are the richest in topography,
which was what we wanted most; and, indeed,
in most things else, for I find that the readable
parts of the modern accounts of these towns con-
sist, in a great measure, of quotations, acknow-
ledged and unacknowledged, from the older
ones, without any additional information 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 epitaphs of the
old pastors, having been written in the good
old days of Latin and of Greek. They will go
back to the ordination of every minister, and
tell you faithfully 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 fellow-
ship, and who pronounced the benediction ; also
how many ecclesiastical councils convened from
time to time to inquire into the orthodoxy of
some minister, and the names of all who com-
posed 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.

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 49

When the committee from Plymouth had pur-
chased the territory of Eastham of the Indians,
"it was demanded, who laid claim to Billings-
gate?" which was understood 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 appear to have regarded them-
selves as Not Any's representatives. Perhaps
this was the first 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 practiced, and are still
practicing so extensively. Not Any seems to
have been the sole proprietor of all America be-
fore the Yankees. But history says, that when
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 knocking at the door of the White
House some day? At any rate, I know that if
you hold a thing unjustly, there will surely be
the devil to pay at last.

Thomas Prince, who was several times the
governor of the Plymouth colony, was the

50 CAPE COD

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 excel-
lent ; and it yielded on an average fifteen bush-
els. Some appropriate lines have been ad-
dressed to it, by a Mr. Henian Doane, from
which I will quote, partly because they are the
only specimen of Cape Cod verse which I re-
member to have seen, and partly because they
are not bad.

" Two hundred years have, on the wings of Time,

Passed with their joys 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 band 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

They came from Plymouth o'er and settled here ;
Doane, Higgins, Snow, and other worthy men.
Whose names their sons remember to revere.
********

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 51

" Old Time has thinned thy boughs, Old Pilgrim Tree I
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 they were not tied to unworthy com-
panions, by the rhyme. When one ox will lie
down, the yoke bears hard on him that stands
up.

One of the first settlers of Eastham was Dea-
con John Doane, who died in 1707, aged one
hundred and ten. Tradition says that he was
rocked in a cradle several of his last years.
That, certainly, was not an Achillean life. His
mother must have let him slip when she dipped
him into the liquor which was to make him in-
vulnerable, 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 ecclesiastical history of this town inter-
ested us somewhat. It appears that "they very
early built a small meeting-house, twenty feet
square, with a thatched roof through which they
might fire their muskets," — of course, at the
Devil. "In 1662, 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

62 CAPE COD

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 accept-
able. The ministers must have sat upon the
cliffs in every storm, and watched the shore
with anxiety. And, for my part, if I were a
minister, I would rather trust to the bowels of
the billows, on the back-side of Cape Cod, 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, com-
monly, that it is "very like a whale." Never-
theless, the minister who depended on whales
cast up must have had a trying time of it. I
would rather have gone to the Falkland Isles with
a harpoon, and done with it. Think of a whale
having the 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 Bridge water for as long a time
as he could tell a cod from a haddock. Gener-
ous as it seems, this condition would empty most
country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since
the fishers of men were fishermen. Also, a duty
was put on mackerel here to support a free-
school; in other words, the mackerel-school was

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 53

taxed in order that the children's school might
be free. "In 16G5 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
whipped on a spring morning, till he was con-
strained to confess that the Scriptures were true !
"It was also voted by the town, that all persons
who should stand out of the meeting-house dur-
ing 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. This was the Eastham famous
of late years for its camp-meetings, held in a
grove near by, to which thousands flock from all
parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the
reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealth-
ful development of the religious sentiment here,
was the fact that a large portion of the popula-
tion are women whose husbands and sons are
either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and
there is nobody but they and the ministers left
behind. The old account says that "hysteric
fits are very common in Orleans, Eastham, and
the towns below, particularly on Sunday, in the
time of divine service. When one woman is
alfected, five or six others generally sympathize

54 CAPE COD

with her; and the congregation is thrown into
the utmost confusion. Several old men suppose,
unphilosophically and uncharitably, perhaj)s,
that the will is partly concerned, and that ridi-
cule and threats would have a tendency to pre-
vent the evil." How this is now we did not
learn. We saw one singularly masculine woman,
however, in a house on this very plain, who did
not look as if she was ever troubled with hyster-
ics, or sympathized Avith those that were; or,
perchance, life itself was to her a hysteric fit, —
a Nauset woman, of a hardness and coarseness
such as no man ever possesses or suggests. It
was enough to see the vertebrae 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 shout-
ing to you through a breaker; who looked as if
it made her head ache to live ; hard enough for
any enormity. I looked upon her as one who
had committed infanticide; who never had a
brother, unless it were some wee thing that died
in infancy, — for what need of him ? — and
whose father must have died before she was
born. This woman told us that the camp-meet-
ings were not held the previous summer for fear
of introducing the cholera, and that they would
have been held earlier this summer, but the rye

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 55

was so backward that straw would not have been
ready for them ; for they lie in straw. There
are sometimes one hundred and fifty ministers,
(!) and five thousand hearers, assembled. The
ground, which is called Millennium Grove, is
owned by a company in Boston, and is the 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 are, at all times, to
be seen interspersed among the oaks. They
have an oven and a pump, and keep all their
kitchen utensils and tent coverings and furni-
ture in a permanent building on the spot.
They select a time for their meetings, when the
moon is full. A man is appointed to clear out
the pump a week beforehand, while the ministers
are clearing their throats; but, probably, the
latter do not always deliver as pure a stream as
the former. I saw the heaps of clam-shells left
under the tables, where they had feasted in pre-
vious 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 singular combination
of a prayer-meeting and a picnic.

The first minister settled here was the Rev.
Samuel Treat, in 1672, a gentleman who is said
to be " entitled to a distinguished rank among
the evangelists of New England." He con-

66 CAPE COD

verted 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 Gooldn, in 1674, that
he had been to see one who was sick, " and there
came from him very savory and heavenly expres-
sions," 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
porcupine disarmed of its quills, but a consistent
Calvinist, who can dart his quills to a distance
and courageously defend himself. There exists
a volume of his sermons in manuscript "which,"
says a commentator, "appear to have been de-
signed for publication." I quote the following
sentences 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 re-
ceive thee. There is room enough for thy en-
tertainment. . . .

" 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 tor-
ments. Hell is God's house of correction; and,

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 57

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
igent in thy misery, — his breath is the bellows
which blows up the flame cf 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 pleas-
ant sins there; no eating, drinking, singing,
dancing, wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen
waters; but damned sins, bitter, hellish sins;
sins exasperated by torments, cursing God,
spite, rage, and blasphemy. — The guilt of all
thy sins shall be laid upon thy soul, and be
made so many heaps of fuel. . . .

• "Sinner, I beseech thee, realize the truth of
these things. Do not go about to dream that
this is derogatory to God's mercy, and nothing
but a vain fable to scare children out of their
wits withal. God can be merciful, though he

68 CAPE COD

make tliee miserable. He shall have monu-
ments enough of that precious attribute, shining
like stars in the place of glory, and singing-
eternal hallelujahs to the praise of Him that re-
deemed them, though, to exalt the power of his
justice, he damn sinners heaps upon heaps."

"But," continues the same writer, "with the
advantage of proclaiming the doctrine of terror,
which is naturally productive of a sublime and
impressive style of eloquence ('Triumphat ven-
toso gloriae curru orator, qui pectus angit, ir-
ritat, et implet terroribus.' Yid. 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 Nauset; but
there was no more music in it than in the dis-
cordant sounds with which it was mingled."

" The effect of his preaching," it is said,
" was that his hearers were several times, in the
course of his ministry, awakened and alarmed ; "
and on one occasion a comparatively innocent
young man was frightened nearly out of lys
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 conversation pleasant, and some-

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 69

times facetious, but always decent. He was
fond of a stroke of humor, and a practical 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 told, which doubtless many of my
readers have heard, but which, nevertheless, I
will venture to quote : —

"After his marriage with the daughter of Mr.
Willard (pastor of the South Church in Boston),
he was sometimes invited by 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 repu-
tation by his 'Body of Divinity,' which is fre-
quently sneered at, particularly by those who
have not read it, yet in his sermons are strength
of thought and energy of language. The natural
consequence was that he was generally admired.
Mr. Treat having preached one of his best dis-
courses to the congregation of his father-in-
law, in his usual unhappy manner, excited uni-
versal disgust; and several nice judges waited
on Mr. Willard, and begged that Mr. Treat,
who was a worthy, pious 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

60 CAPE COD

him, lie delivered it without alteration to his
people a few weeks after. . . . They flew to
Mr. Willard and requested a copy for the press.
'See the difference,' they cried, 'between your-
self and your son-in-law ; you have preached a
sermon on the same text as Mr. 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 Mr.
Treat, might have addressed these sage critics
in the words of Phaedrus, —

' En hie declarat, quales sitis judices.' " ^

Mr. Treat died of a stroke of the palsy, just
after the memorable storm known as the Great
Snow, which left the ground around his house
entirely bare, but heaped up the snow in the
road to an uncommon height. Through this an
arched way was dug, by which the Indians bore
his body to the grave.

The reader will imagine us, all the while,
steadily traversing that extensive plain in a di-
rection a little north of east toward Nauset
Beach, and reading under our umbrellas as we
sailed, while it blowed hard with mingled mist
and rain, as if we were approaching a fit anni-
versary of Mr. Treat's funeral. We fancied
that it was such a moor as that on which some-

1 Lib. V. Fab. 5.

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 61

body 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 vir-
tue," 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 improve-
ments 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 law of God, and that
Christ's suffering and obedience were for him-
self; both parts of which, we think, contain
dangerous error."

"Also: 'It hath been said, and doth appear
to this council, that the Rev. Mr. Osborn, both

62 CAPE COD

in public and in private, asserted that there are
no promises in the Bible but what are condi-
tional, which we think, also, to be an error, and
do say that there are promises which are abso-
lute 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 de-
clared, that obedience is a considerable cause of
a person's justification, which, we think, con-
tains 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 Worshipers of the Devil,
so-called, the Chaldaeans, and others, accord-
ing to the testimony of travelers, you may still
hear these remarkable disputations on doctri-
nal points going on. Osborn was, accordingly,
dismissed, 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 clergy-
man pronounced him "the best man and the
best minister whom he ever knew," yet the his-
torian says, that, —

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 63

"As he spent his days in the uniform dis-
charge of his duty (it reminds one of a country
nmster) and 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 se-
rene as the sky in a mild evening in June, when
the moon shines without a cloud. Name any
virtue, and that virtue he practiced; name any
vice, and that vice he shunned. But if peculiar
qualities marked his character, 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 be-
low; and though of the same religious senti-
ments as Mr. Treat, yet his attention was turned
to those glad tidings of great joy which a Sav-
iour came to publish."

We were interested to hear that such a man
had trodden the plains of Nauset.

Turning over further in our book, our eyes
fell on the name of the Rev. Jonathan Bascom
of Orleans: "Senex emunctae naris, doctus, et

64 CAPE COD

auctor elegantium verborum, facetus, et diilcis
festique sermonis." And, again, on that of the
Eev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis: "Vir humilis,
mitis, blandus, advenarum hospes; (there was
need of him there;) suis commodis in terra non
studens, reconditis 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 the bulk of his
treasures as in heaven. But probably the most
just and pertinent character of all is that which
appears to be given to the Rev. Ephraim
Briggs, of Chatham, in the language of the later
Romans, ^^ Seip, sepoese, sepoemese, wecheJcum,^*
• — which not being interpreted, we know not
what it means, though we have no doubt it oc-
curs 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 fill the pages of the town
histories. If I could but hear the "glad tid-
ings " 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 narrative.

IV

THE BEACH

At length we reached the seemingly retreat-
ing boundary 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 approached 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 sud-
denly 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 drop-
ping 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

66 CAPE COD

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
"■jhe water as we could, where the sand was the
lardest, leaving the Nauset Lights behind us,
we began to walk leisurely up the beach, in
a northwest direction, toward Provincetown,
which was about twenty-five miles distant, still
sailing under our umbrellas with a strong aft
wind, admiring in silence, as we walked, the
great force of the ocean stream, —

Tforafiolo /xeya a6ivos ^ClKiavoio.

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 Atlantic coast, before and be-
hind us), as regularly, to compare 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-

THE BEACH 67

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 har-
bors 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 destitute of wood, is a
godsend to the inhabitants. We 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
distinguished no particular feature. It was like
an old sail endowed with life, — a hanging-cliff
of weather-beaten flesh, — like one of the clay
boulders 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 variejrated 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 dis-
honorable for him to have so many scars behind,

68 CAPE COD

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 comfort; 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 cen-
turies 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 stick-
ing two sticks into the ground crosswise above
it. Some rotten trunk, which in Maine cum-
bers the ground, and is, perchance, thrown into
the water on purpose, is here thus carefully
picked up, split and dried, and husbanded. Be-
fore winter the wrecker painfully carries these
things up the bank on his shoulders by a long
diagonal slanting path made with a hoe in the
sand, if there is no hollow at hand. You may
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 dis-
pute," and he is as much identified with it as a
beach-bird.

THE BEACH 69

Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes
Dalagen's relation of the ways and usages of
the Greenlanders, and says, "Whoever finds
drift-wood, 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 possession of it, and this stone is the deed
of security, for no other Greenlander will offer
to meddle with it afterwards." Such is the in-
stinctive law of nations. We have also this ac-
count of drift-wood 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
floating thither, part without ice, but the most
part along with it, and lodges itself between the
islands. Were it not for this, we Europeans
should have no wood 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 roof their houses, to erect their tents,
as also to build their boats, and to shaft their
arrows, (yet there grew some small but crooked
alders, etc.,) by which they must procure their
maintenance, clothing and train for warmth,
light, and cooking. Among this wood are great
trees torn up by the roots, which, by driving up

70 CAPE COD

and down for many years and rubbing on the
ice, are quite bare of branches and bark, and
corroded with great wood-worms. A small part
of this drift-wood are willows, alder and birch
trees, which come out of the bays in the south
(i. e. , of Greenland) ; also large trunks of asx>en-
trees, which must come from a greater distance ;
but the greatest part is pine and fir. We find
also a good deal of a sort of wood finely 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-firs, or
zirheU that have the smell of cedar, and grow on
the high Grison hills, and the Switzers wain-
scot their rooms with them." The wrecker di-
rected us to a slight depression, 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
filled our shoes.

This sand -bank — the backbone of the Cape
— rose directly from the beach to the height of
a hundred feet or more above the ocean. 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,

THE BEACH 71

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 the bar, which runs the whole
length of the fore-arm 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 sand-
hills fifteen or twenty feet high ; between which,
however, in some places, the sand penetrated as
much farther. Next commenced the region of
vegetation, — a succession of small hills and
valleys covered with shrubbery, now glowing
with the brightest imaginable autumnal tints;
and beyond this were seen, here and there, the
waters of the bay. Here, in Wellfleet, this
pure sand plateau, known to sailors as the Table
Lands of Eastham, on account of its appearance,
as seen from the ocean, and because it once
made a part of that town, — full fifty rods in
width, and in many places much more, and
sometimes full one hundred and fifty feet above
the ocean, — stretched away northward from
the southern boundary of the town, without a
particle of vegetation, — as level almost as a
table, — for two and a half or three miles, or
as far as the eye could reach; slightly rising

72 CAPE COD

towards the ocean, then stooping to the beach,
by as steep a slope as sand could lie on, and as
regular as a military engineer could desire. It
was like the escarped rampart of a stupendous
fortress, whose glacis was the beach, and whose
champaign the ocean. From its surface we
overlooked the greater part of the Cape. In
short, we were traversing a desert, with the view
of an autumnal landscape of extraordinary bril-
liancy, a sort of Promised Land, on the one
hand, and the ocean on the other. Yet, though
the prospect was so extensive, and the country
for the most part destitute of trees, a house was
rarely visible, — we never saw one from the
beach, — and the solitude was that of the ocean
and the desert combined. A thousand men could
not have seriously interrupted it, but would have
been lost in the vastness of the scenery as their
footsteps in the sand.

The whole coast is so free from rocks, that we
saw but one or two for more than twenty miles.
The sand was soft like the beach, and trying to
the eyes, when the sun shone. A few piles of
drift-wood, which some wreckers had painfully
brought up the bank and stacked uj) there to
dry, being the only objects in the desert, looked
indefinitely large and distant, even like wigwams,
though, when we stood near them, they proved
to be insignificant little "jags " of wood.

THE BEACH 73

For sixteen miles, commencing at the Nauset
Lights, the bank hehl its height, though farther
north it was not so level as here, but interrupted
by slight hollows, and the patches of beach-
grass and bayberry frequently crept into the
sand to its edge. There are some pages entitled
"A Description of the Eastern Coast of the
County of Barnstable," printed in 1802, point-
ing out the spots on which the Trustees of the
Humane Society have erected huts called Char-
ity or Humane Houses, " and other places where
shipwrecked seamen may look for shelter."
Two thousand copies of this were dispersed,
that every vessel which frequented this coast
might be provided with one. I have read this
Shipwrecked Seaman's Manual with a melan-
choly kind of interest, — for the sound of the
surf, or, you might say, the moaning of the sea,
is heard all through it, as if its author were the
sole survivor of a shipwreck himself. Of this
part of the coast he says: "This highland ap-
proaches the ocean with steep and lofty banks,
which it is extremely difficult to climb, especially
in a storm. In violent tempests, during very
high tides, the sea breaks against the foot of
them, rendering it then unsafe to walk on the
strand which lies between them and the ocean.
Should the seaman succeed in his attempt to
ascend them, he must forbear to penetrate into

74 CAPE COD

the country, as houses are generally so remote
that they would escape his research during the
night ; he must pass on to the valleys by which
the banks are intersected. These valleys, which
the inhabitants call Hollows, 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 a lower one, — the bank and the beach ;
both stretching twenty -eight miles northwest,
from Nauset Harbor to Race Point, without a
single opening into the beach, and with hardly
a serious interruption of the desert. If you
were to ford the narrow and shallow inlet at
Nauset 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 and beach, on the east side of Nantucket,
are but a continuation 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 real. Cape Cod! as it cannot
be represented on a map, color it as you will ;
the thing itself, than which there is nothing

THE BEACH 75

more like it, no truer picture or account ; which
you cannot go farther and see. I cannot remem-
ber what I thought before that it was. They
commonly celebrate those beaches only which
have a hotel on them, not those which have a
humane house alone. But I wished to see that
seashore where man's works are wrecks; to put
up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean
is land-lord as well as sea-lord, 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 you can say of it.
We 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 birch,
which had long followed the seas, but had now
at last settled on land; or under the lee of a
sand-hill, on the bank, that we might gaze stead-
ily 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 difficult for
us 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 they never do on the land, perhaps on
account of the great distance to which we saw.
The sand was not without advantage, for,
though it was "heavy " walking in it, it was soft
to the feet; and, notwithstanding that it had

76 CAPE COD

been raining nearly two days, 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 beau-
tiful, 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 surface in the
distance, it is so white, and pure, and level,
and each slight inequality and track is so dis-
tinctly revealed; and when your eyes slide off
this, they fall on the ocean. In summer the
mackerel gulls — which here have their nests
among the neighboring sand-hills — pursue the
traveler 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 for some time I have not spoken of
the roaring of the breakers, and the ceaseless
flux and reflux of the waves, yet they did not
for a moment cease to dash and roar, with such
a tumult that, if you had been there, you could
scarcely have heard my voice the while; and
they are dashing and roaring this very moment,
though it may be with less din and violence, for
there the sea never rests. We were wholly ab-
sorbed by this spectacle and tumult, and like
Chryses, though in a different mood from him,
we walked silent along the shore of the resound-
ing sea.

THE BEACH 77

B^ 5' OLKiuv iraph diva iro\v(p\oi(rPoio 6a\d(r<T7]S.^

I put ill a little Greek now and then, partly
because it sounds so much like the ocean, —
though I doubt if Homer's Mediterranean Sea
ever sounded so loud as this.

The attention of those who frequent the
camp-meetings at Eastham is said to be divided
between the preaching of the Methodists and
the preaching of the billows on the back side of
the Cape, for they all stream over here in the
course of their stay. I trust that in this case
the loudest voice carries it. With what effect
may we suppose the ocean to say, " My hearers ! '*
to the multitude on the bank! On that side
some John N. Maffit; on this, the Keverend
Poluphloisboios Thalassa.

There was but little weed cast up here, and
that kelp chiefly, there being scarcely a rock
for rock-weed to adhere to. Who has not had
a vision from some vessel's deck, when he had
still his land legs on, of this great brown apron,
drifting half upright, and quite submerged
through the green water, clasping a stone or a
deep-sea mussel in its unearthly fingers? I
have seen it carrying a stone half as large as my

^ We have no word in English to express the sound of many
waves dashing at once, whether gently or violently iroAvcpXoia--'
fioios to the ear, and, in the ocean's gentle moods, an auapid/xop
y€\aafia to the eye.

7^ CAPE COD

head. We sometimes watched a mass of this
cal>le-like weed, as it was tossed up on the crest
of a breaker, waiting with interest to see it
come in, as if there was some treasure buoyed
up by it; but we were always surprised and dis-
appointed at the insignificance of the mass
which had attracted us. As we looked out over
the water, the smallest objects floating on it ap-
peared indefinitely large, we were so impressed
by the vastness of the ocean, and each one bore
so large a proportion to the whole ocean, which
we saw. We were so often disappointed in the
size of such things as came ashore, the ridiculous
bits of wood or weed, with which the ocean la-
bored, that we began to doubt whether the At-
lantic itself would bear a still closer inspection,
and would not turn out to be but a small pond,
if it should come ashore to us. This kelp, oar-
weed, tangle, devil's apron, sole-leather, or rib-
bon-weed, — as various species are called, —
appeared to us a singularly marine and fabulous
product, a fit invention for Neptune to adorn his
car with, or a freak of Proteus. All that is
told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an in-
habitant of the land, and all its products have a
certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to
another planet, from seaweed to a sailor's yarn,
or a fish story. In this element the animal and
vegetable kingdoms meet and are strangely min-

THE BEACH 79

gled. 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 crew spent two days to no purpose
collecting the trunks of another kind cast ashore
on the Falkland Islands, mistaking it for drift-
wood.^ This species looked almost edible; at
least, I thought that if I were starving, I would
try it. One sailor told me that the cows ate it.
It cut like cheese ; for I took the earliest oppor-
tunity 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 car-
ried 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

1 See Harvey on Algm.

80 CAPE COD

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,
In some far-off bright Azore ;
From Bahama and the dashing,

Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador :

*' From the tumbling surf that buries

The Orkneyan Skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides ;
And from wrecks of ships and drifting

Spars, uplifting
On the desolate rainy seas ;

" Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main."

But he was not thinking of this shore, when he
added, —

" Till, in sheltered coves and reaches
Of sandy beaches.
All have found repose again. "

These weeds were the symbols of those gro-
tesque and fabulous thoughts which have not
yet got into the sheltered coves of literature.

THE BEACH 81

" Ever drifting, drifting-, drifting

On the shifting
Currents of the 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 un-
dertake 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 dis-
coloring 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 like 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 rising, a sort

82 CAPE COD

of cliaos 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 adapted
to their circumstances rather by their spirits
than their bodies. Theirs must be an essen-
tially wilder, that is less human, nature, than
that of larks and robins. Their note was like
the sound of some vibrating metal, and harmon-
ized 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 re-
membrance of which most perfectly revives the
impression which the beach has made, it would
be the dreary peep of the piping plover ( Cha-
radrlus 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 un-
qualified strain of eternal melody, for always
the same strain which is a dirge to one household
is a morning song of rejoicing to another.

THE BEACH 83

A remarkable method of catching gulls, de-
icived from the Indians, was practiced in Well-
fleet in 1794. "The Gull House," it is said,
" is built with crotches, fixed in the ground on
the beach," poles being stretched across for the
top, and the sides made close with stakes and 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 tahen in.
We read that one "sort of gulls is called by the
Dutch mallemuche^ 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 havJiest,
sea-horse (and the English translator 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 parting with their property [disgorging
the contents of their stomachs to the skuas],
which has given rise to the terms gull, guller,
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

84 CAPE COD

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 solidissima, which the storm had torn
up from the bottom, and cast ashore. I selected
one of the largest, about six inches in length,
and carried it along, thinking to try an experi'
ment 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
the cargo of the ship Franklin, which was
wrecked here in the spring, at which time nine
or ten lives were lost. The reader may remem-
ber this wreck, from the circumstance that a
letter was found in the captain'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, or hen, 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

THE BEACH 85

reduced some damp drift-wood, which I had
picked up on the shore, to shavings 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 excur-
sion. 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 loliole 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 before. Keep-
ing 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 lonely 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 burn in the fire-place to

86 CAPE COD

keep him alive. Perhaps this hut has never
been required to shelter a shipwrecked man,
and the benevolent person who promised to in-
spect 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 condition of the fami-
lies which alone would ever occupy or had oc-
cupied 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 memor-
able night. Houses of entertainment for ship-
wrecked men! What kind of sailor's homes
were they?

"Each hut," says the author of the "Descrip-
tion 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

THE BEACH 87

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
supplied either with straw or hay, and is further
accommodated with a bench." They have va-
ried little from this 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 seamen
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 within a mile of the shore, yet
"in a snow-storm, which rages here with exces-
sive fury, it would be almost impossible to dis-
cover them either by night or by day." You
hear their imaginary guide thus marshalling,
cheering, 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 necessary. 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,

88 CAPE COD

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, ap-
pear 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 im-
proper manner, having a chimney 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 pres-
ent 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

THE BEACH 89

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 oppor-
tunity, we put our eyes, by turns, to a knot-
hole in the door, and, after long looking, with-
out 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 look-
ing 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 may use this expression where there was no-
thing but emptiness, -— and we obtained the
long-wished-for insight. Though we thought at
first that it was a hopeless case, after several
minutes' steady exercise of the divine faculty,
our prospects began decidedly to brighten, and

90 CAPE COD

we were ready to exclaim with the blind bard of
"Paradise Lost and Regained," —

" Hail, holy Light ! ofPspring- of Heaven first bom,
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 supplied with
matches, or straw, or hay, that we could see,
nor "accommodated 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 Hu-
mane house, into the very bowels of mercy ; and
for bread we found a stone. It was literally a
great cry (of sea-mews outside), 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

THE BEACH 91

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 a seaside
box, now shut up, belonging to some of the
family of Night or Chaos, where they spent their
summers by the sea, for the sake of the sea-
breeze, and that it was not proper for us to be
prying into their concerns.

My companion had declared before this that I
had not a particle of sentiment, in rather abso-
lute 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 senti-
ment. But I did not intend this for a senti-
mental journey.

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN

Having walked about eight miles since we
struck the beach, and passed the boundary be-
tween Wellfleet and Truro, a stone post in the
sand, — for even this sand comes under the ju-
risdiction of one town or another, — we turned
inland over 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, uncom-
monly near the eastern coast. Their garrets
were apparently so full of chambers, 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 haK-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 posi-
tion, here and elsewhere on the Cape, struck us

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 93

agreeably, — as if each of the various occupants
who had their cunahida behind had punched a
hole where his necessities required it, and ac-
cording to his size and stature, without regard
to outside effect. There were windows for the
grown folks, and windows for the children, —
three or four apiece; as a certain man had a
large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat, and
another smaller one for the kitten. Sometimes
they were so low under the eaves that I thought
they must have perforated the plate beam for an-
other 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 traveler must stand a
small chance with them.

Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted
houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as
well as picturesque, 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 numer-
ous than herrings soon. We knccked at the

94 CAPE COD

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 win-
dow at us, and before we reached it an old
woman came out and fastened the door of her
bulkhead, and went in again. Nevertheless,
we did not hesitate to knock at her door, 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, and
what our business was; to which we returned
plain answers.

"How far is Concord from Boston?" he in-
quired.

"Twenty miles by railroad."

"Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated.

"Didn't you ever hear of Concord of Revo-
lutionary fame? "

"Did n't I ever hear of Concord? Why, I
heard 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.

rX

O

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 95

So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an
old 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 en-
tered, but immediately went out), and a little
boy of ten.

While my companion talked with the women,
I talked with the old man. They said that he
was old and foolish, but he was evidently too
knowing for them.

"These women," said he to me, "are both of
them poor good-for-nothing crittur s. This one
is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago.
She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an
adder, and the other is not much better."

He thought well of the Bible, or at least he
spohe well, and did not think ill, of it, for that
would not have been prudent for a man of his
age. He said that he had read it attentively for
many years, and he had much of it at his
tongue's end. He seemed deeply impressed

96 CAPE COD

with a sense of his own nothingness, and would
repeatedly exclaim, —

"I am a nothing. What I gather from my
Bible is 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 my 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
Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept
by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town
is still called Billingsgate from the oysters hav-
ing 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 harbor, and the like, but the most common
account of the matter is, — and I find that a
similar superstition with regard to the disap-
pearance of fishes exists almost everywhere, —
that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the
neighboring towns about the right to gather
them, yellow specks appeared in them, and

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 97

Providence caused them to disappear. A few
years ago sixty thousand bushels were annually
brought from the South and planted in the har-
bor of Wellfleet till they attained "the proper
relish of Billingsgate;" but now they are im-
ported commonly full-grown, and laid 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 oysters were liable
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 in-
tense indeed, and when the bays are frozen over
the oyster-beds are easily discovered by the
water above them remaining unfrozen, or as the
French residents say, degele.^^ Our host said
that they kept them in cellars all winter.

"Without anything to eat or drink?" I
asked.

"Without anything to eat or drink," he an-
swered.

"Can the oysters move? "

"Just as much as my shoe."

But when I caught him saying that they
"bedded themselves dpwn in the sand, flat side

98 CAPE COD

up, round side down," I told him that my shoe
could not do that, without the aid of my foot in
it; at which he said that they merely settled
down as they grew; if put down in a square
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 mo-
tion for five or six years at least. And Buck-
land in his Curiosities of Natural History (page
60) says: "An oyster, who has once taken up
his position and fixed himself when quite young,
can never make a change. Oysters, neverthe-
less, that have not fixed themselves, but remain
loose at the bottom of the sea, have the power
of locomotion; they open their shells to their
fullest extent, and then suddenly contracting
them, the expulsion of the water forwards gives
a motion backwards. A fisherman at Guernsey
told me that he had frequently seen oysters mov-
ing in this way."

Some still entertain the question "whether
the oyster was indigenous in Massachusetts
Bay," and whether Wellfleet harbor was a
"natural habitat" of this fish; but, to say no-

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 99

thing of the testimony of old oystermen, which,
I think, is quite conclusive, though the native
oyster may now be extinct there, I saw that
their 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 arrow-heads, and in an
hour or two could have filled my pockets with
them. The Indians lived 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
exj)lored a harbor (Barnstable Harbor?) in the
southerly part of what is now called Massachu-
setts Bay, in latitude 42°, about five leagues
south, one point west of Cap Blanc (Cape
Cod), and there they found many good oysters,
and they named it "Ze Port aux Huistres^'^
[sic] (Oyster Harbor). In one edition of his
map (1632), the "i?. aux Escailles^'' is drawn
emptying into the same part of the bay, and on
the map ''^ovi Belgii,^^ in Ogilby's America

100 CAPE COD

(1670), the words '^ Port aux Huistres^^ are
placed against the same place. Also William
Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks,
in his "New England's Prospect," published in
1634, of "a great oyster-bank" in Charles
River, and of another in the Mistick, each of
i^hich 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 are 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. ^

Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen,
was not easily obtained; it was raked up, but
never on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore
there in small quantities in storms. The fisher-
man sometimes wades in water several 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
1 Also, see Thomas Morton's New English Canaan^ p. 90.

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 101

{Salicornia) and other weeds along the river-
side at low tide that morning, at length he no-
ticed that one remained stationary, amid the
weeds, something preventing it from following
the others, and going to it he found its foot
tightly shut in a quahog's shell. He took up
both together, carried them to his home, and
his wife opening the shell with a knife 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.
"People 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
women had got a better skimmer than they
could make, in the shell of their clams ; it was
shaped just right for this purpose. — They caU
them "skim-alls " in some places. He also said
that the sun-squall 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 handled 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

102 CAPE COD

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 fatlier "took right out into the
back side before daylight, and walked to Prov-
incetown and back to dinner."

When I asked what they did with all that
barren-looking land, where I saw so few culti-
vated fields, — "Nothing," he said.

"Then why fence your fields? "

*' To keep the sand from blowing and cover-
ing up the whole."

"The yellow sand," 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

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 103

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 straight the whole length 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 dis-
tance 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 distance," 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 ordinary quadrant, and
appeared to have a painful recollection of every
degree and minute in the arc which they de-
scribed ; 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

104 CAPE COD

proper length, wliicli should be the chord of an
arc, measuring his jumping ability on horizontal
surfaces, — assuming one leg to be a perpendic-
ular to the plane of the horizon, which, how-
ever, may have been too bold an assumption in
this case. Nevertheless, 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 hand-
some 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 re-
member 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 Eng-
lish robbed their nests far in the north, where
they breed. He remembered well when gulls

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 105

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 their fire for this purpose, one
dark night, on Billingsgate Island, twenty horses
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 neighboring 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 sum-
mer 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 growing very abundantly in New-
foundland, where also the inhabitants ate them,
but he had never been able to obtain 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 preserved from perishing by eating the
seeds of this plant, which grew there in great

106 CAPE COD

abundance upon 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? Oh, he had
been about the world in his day. He once con-
sidered himself 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 Sum-
mer Sweeting, a pleasant apple which he raised,
and frequently grafted from, but had never seen
growing elsewhere, except 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.

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. Better 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 '11 do, —

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 107

your bark is worse than ypur bite." But, with-
out minding, John muttered the same gibberish
over again, and then sat down at the table
which the okl folks had left. He. ate all there
was on it, and then turned to the apples, which
his aged mother 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 sum-
mer, over the desolate hills between it and the
shore, which are worthy to have been the birth-
place 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 conversation was coarse and plain
enough to have suited Rabelais. 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 Haemonian hills the Thracian bard,
Nor awful Phoebus was on Pindus heard
With deeper silence or with more regard."

There was a strange mingling of past and
present in his conversation, for he had lived
under King George, and might have remem-
bered when Napoleon and the moderns generally

108 CAPE COD

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 Donne, 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 Col-
onies to undertake to gain their independence."
He remembered well General Washington, and
how he rode his horse along the streets of Bos-
ton, and he stood up to show us how he looked.

"He was a r — a — ther large and portly-
looking man, a manly and resolute-looking offi-
cer, with a pretty good leg as he sat on his
horse." — "There, I'll 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 ac-
count agreed with the written.

"Oh," he said, "I know, I know! I was a
young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide
open; and a fellow of that age, you know, is
pretty wide awake, and likes to know everything
that 's going on. Oh, I know I "

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 109

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 boat that was by
the shore, for there was a vessel in distress, and
he, being an old man, first ate his breakfast,
and then walked over to the top of the hill by
the shore, and sat down there, having found a
comfortable seat, to see the ship wrecked. She
was on the bar, only a quarter of a mile from
him, and still nearer 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 running. There were the
passengers all crowded together in the forward
part of the ship, and some were getting out of
the cabin windows and were drawn on deck by
the others.

"I saw the captain get out his boat, "said he;
"he had one little one; and then they jump^
into it one after another, down as straight as an
arrow. I counted them. There were nine.
One was a woman, and she jumped as straight
as any of them. Then they shoved off. The
sea took them back, one wave went over them,
and when they came up there were six still
clinging to the boat; I counted them. The
next wave turned the boat bottom upward, and
emptied them all out. None of them ever came

110 CAPE COD

ashore alive. There were the rest of them all
crowded together on the forecastle, the other
parts of the ship being under water. They had
seen all that happened 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 them,
and it saved all that were left, but one woman."

He also told us of the steamer Cambria's get-
ting aground on this shore a few months before
we were there, and of her English passengers
who roamed over his grounds, and who, he said,
thought the prospect from the high hill by the
shore, "the most delightsome they had ever
seen," and also of the pranks which the ladies
played with his scoop-net in the ponds. He
spoke of these travelers with their purses full
of guineas, just as our provincial fathers used
to speak of British bloods in the time of King
Gfeorge the Third.

Quid loquar f Why repeat what he told us ?

" Aut Seyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est,
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris,
Dulichias vexasse rates, et gnrgite in alto
Ah ! timidos nautas eanibus lacerasse marinis ? "

In the course of the evening I began to feel
the potency of the clam which 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

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 111

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,
wliile he laughed at my expense. I was pleased
to read afterward, in Mourt's Relation of the
landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Har-
bor, these words: "We found great muscles
(the old editor says that they were undoubtedly
sea-clams) and very fat and full of sea-pearl;
but we could not eat them, for they made us all
sick that did eat, as well sailors as passengers,
. . . but they were soon well again." It
brought me nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus
reminded by a similar experience that I was so
like them. Moreover, it was a valuable con-
firmation of their story, and I am prepared now
to believe every word of Mourt's Relation. I
was also pleased to find that man and the clam
lay still at the same angle to one another. But
I did not notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I
must have swallowed it. I have since dug these
clams on a flat in the Bay and observed them.
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 old man, "and I don't know as you can tell
me; but you are a learned man, and I never

112 CAPE COD

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.

"WeU, 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.

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 113

I also heard of such names as Zoheth, Beriah,
Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, here-
abouts.

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite
in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings
and shoes, warmed his feet, and having had his
sore leg freshly salved, went off to bed; then
the fool made bare his knotty -looking 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 infant's, and we thought
that he took a pride in exhibiting them. He
then proceeded to make preparations for retir-
ing, 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 commonly get none but ministers to talk
to, though sometimes 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 people ; but the old man, who had not
yet done his stories, said, "You ain't particular,
are you? "

"Oh, no," said I, "I am in no hurry. I be-
lieve I have weathered the Clam cape."

114 CAPE COD

"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 case-
ments rattle well that night. It was probably
a windy night for • any locality, but we could
not distinguish the roar which was 23roper to the
ocean from that which was due to the wind
alone.

The sounds which the ocean makes must be
very significant 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, ex-
pecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 115

far out of her course, but there was nothing un-
usual 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 ordi-
nary roar of the sea, — I immediately descended
again, to see if I lost hearing of it; but, with-
out 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 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 mur-
muring of the winds in the woods, without ap-
parent 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 sign
that the wind would work round east, and we
should have rainy weather. The ocean was
heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this
roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its
equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before

116 CAPE COD

tlie wind. Also the captain of a packet between
this country and England told me that he some-
times met with a wave on the Atlantic coming
against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which
indicated that at a distance the wind was blow-
ing from an opposite quarter, but the undula-
tion had traveled faster than it. Sailors tell of
"tide-rips" and "ground-swells," which they
suppose to have been occasioned by hurricanes
and earthquakes, and to have traveled many
hundred, and sometimes even two or three thou-
sand 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 winters was already out in the cold
morning wind, bare-headed, tripping about like
a young girl, and driving up the cow to milk.
She got the breakfast with dispatch, and with-
out noise or bustle ; and meanwhile the old man
resumed his stories, standing before us, who were
sitting, with his back to the chimney, and eject-
ing 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 better eat his breakfast, he said*. "Don't

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 117

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 detri-
ment from the old man's shots, but my compan-
ion refused the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot
cake and green beans, which had appeared to
him to occupy the safest part of the hearth.
But on comparing notes afterward, I told him
that the buttermilk cake was particularly ex-
posed, and I saw how it suffered repeatedly,
and therefore I avoided it ; but he declared that,
however that might be, he witnessed that the
apple-sauce was seriously injured, and had there-
fore 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 scarcely 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 be-
longed. He said that he had been to hear thir-
teen 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 compan-
ion to what sect he belonged, to which he an-
swered, —

118 CAPE COD

"Oh, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood."
"What 's that ? " he asked, "Sons o' Temper-
ance?"

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 out 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 parsley. 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 wild and cultivated.
It was about half an acre, which he cultivated
wholly himself. Besides the common garden
vegetables, there were yellow-dock, lemon balm,
hyssoj), Gill - go - over - 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 while, but could see nothing, "he didn'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 stooi3ed low enough to pick him out with
his talons ; but as he bore his shining prey over

THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 119

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
safe of the Provincetown Bank was broken open
and robbed by two men from the interior, and
we learned that our hospitable entertainers did
at least transiently harbor the suspicion that we
were the men.

VI

THE BEACH AGAIN

Our way to the high sand-bank, which I
have described. as extending all along the coast,
led, as usual, through patches of bayberry
bushes, which straggled into the sand. This,
next to the shrub-oak, was perhaps the most
common shrub thereabouts. I was much at-
tracted by its odoriferous leaves and small gray
berries which are clustered about the short
twigs, just below the last year's growth. I
know of but two bushes in Concord, and they,
being staminate plants, do not bear fruit. The
berries gave it a venerable appearance, and they
smelled quite spicy, like small confectionery.
Robert Beverley, in his "History of Virginia,"
published 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 wax, of a curious green
color, which by refining becomes almost trans-
parent. Of this they make candles, which are
never greasy to the touch nor melt with lying in

THE BEACH AGAIN 121

the hottest weather; neither does the snuff of
these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow
candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, if
an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleas-
ant fragrancy to all that are in the room; inso-
much that nice people often put them out on pur-
pose to have the incense of the expiring snuff.
The melting of these berries is said to have
been first found out by a surgeon in New Eng-
land, 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 generally 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
gathered 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 like 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

122 CAPE COD

about a quarter of a pound weight from my three
pints, and more yet remained within the berries.
A small portion cooled in the form of small flat-
tish hemispheres, like crystallizations, the size of
a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them as I
picked them out from amid the berries). Lou-
don says, that " cultivated trees are said to yield
more wax than those that are found wild." ^ If
you get any pitch on your hands in the pine-
woods you have only to rub some of these ber-
ries between your hands to start it off. But the
ocean was the grand fact there, which made us
forget both bayberries and men.

To-day the air was beautifully clear, and the
sea no longer dark and stormy, though the
waves still broke with foam along the beach,
but sparkling and full 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 and to
mortals."

The sun rose visibly at such a distance over
the sea, that the cloud-bank in the horizon,
which at first concealed 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

1 See Duplessy, Vig^taux B^sineuXf vol. ii., p. 60.

THE BEACH AGAIN 123

could not, without an effort, realize that he was
rising 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 lands.

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 vallies
(Newcomb'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 high wood left.

There were many vessels, like gulls, skim-
ming over the surface of the sea, now half con-
cealed in its troughs, their dolphin-strikers
ploughing the water, now tossed on the top of

124 CAPE COD

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 com-
municate with us, and perhaps we did not re-
gard 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
barques, and brigs, and schooners, which had in
the meanwhile doubled the Cape, sailed by her
in the smacking breeze, and our consciences
were relieved. Some of these vessels 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 remembering Boston and
New York and Liverpool, steering 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

THE BEACH AGAIN 125

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 flood," with its blessed isles? Is
Heaven such a harbor as the Liverpool docks?

Still held on without a break the inland bar-
rens and 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 an-
other 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 before. It seemed with every
wave to be subsiding, because such was our ex-
pectation, and yet when hours had elapsed we
could see no difference. But there it was, bal-
ancing itself, the restless ocean by our side,
lurching in its gait. Each wave left the sand
all braided or woven, as it were with a coarse
woof and warp, and a distinct raised edge to its
rapid work. We made no haste, since we
wished to see the ocean at our leisure, and in-
deed 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 fre-
quently to empty our shoes of the sand which
one took in in climbing or descending the bank.

126 CAPE COD

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 inani-
mate things, look not only exceedingly gro-
tesque, but much larger and more wonderful
than they actually are. Lately, when approach-
ing the sea-shore several degrees south of this,
I saw before me, 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 business
to go in search of the relics of a human body,
mangled by sharks, which had just been cast
up, a week after a wreck, having got the direc-

THE BEACH AGAIN 127

tion 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 sliver 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 singu-
larly inoffensive both to the senses and the im-
agination. 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 shore, and
reigned over it as no living one could, in the
name of a certain majesty which belonged to it.

128 CAPE COD

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 (/Scutellcef); 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
wdiich 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, discharg-
ing 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 cylinders, 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 ;
*uid on one occasion, the pockets in the clothing

THE BEACH AGAIN 129

of the wrecked being thus puffed up, even after
they had been ripped open by wreckers, deluded
me into the hope of identifying them by the
contents. A pair of gloves looked exactly as if
filled by a hand. The water in such clothing is
soon wrung out and evaporated, but the sand,
which works itself into every seam, is not so
easily got rid of. Sponges, which are picked
up on the shore, as is well known, retain some
of th3 sand of the beach to the latest day, in
spite of every effort to extract it.

I found one stone on the top of the bank, of
a dark gray color, shaped exactly like a giant
clam (^Mactra solidisshna), and of the same size ;
and, what was more remarkable, one half of the
outside had shelled off and lay near it, of the
same form and depth with one of the valves of
this clam, while the other half was loose, leav-
ing a solid core of a darker color within it. I
afterward saw a stone resembling a razor clam,
but it was a solid one. It appeared as if the
stone, in the process of formation, had filled the
mould which a clam-shell furnished; or the
same law that shaped the clam had made a clam
of stone. Dead clams, with shells full of sand,
are called sand clams. There were many of the
large clam-shells filled with sand; and some-
times one valve was separately filled exactly
even, as if it had beeij heaped and then scraped.

130 CAPE COD

Even among the many small stones on the top
of the bank, I found one arrow-head.

Beside the giant clam and barnacles, we
found on the shore a small clam {llesodesma
arctata), which I dug with my hands in num-
bers on the bars, and which is sometimes eaten
by the inhabitants, in the absence of the My a
arenaria^ on this side. Most of their empty
shells had been perforated by some foe. Also,
the —

Astarte castanea.

The Edible Mussel {Mytilus eduUs) on the
few rocks, and washed up in curious bunches of
forty or fifty, held together by its rope-like
byssus.

The Scollop Shell (^Pecten concentricus), used
for card-racks and pin-cushions.

Cockles, or Cuckoos {JVatica heros)^ and
their remarkable nidus, called "sand-circle,"
looking like the top of a stone jug without the
stopple, and broken on one side, or like a flar-
ing dickey made of sand-paper. Also, —

Cancellaria Couthouyi (J\ and —

Periwinkles (?) (^Fusus decemco status).

We afterward saw some other kinds on the
Bay side, Gould states that this Cape "has
hitherto proved a barrier to the migrations of
many species of Mollusca." — "Of the one hun-
dred and ninety-seven species [which he de-

THE BEACH AGAIN 131

scribed in 1840 as belonging to Massachusetts],
eighty-three do not pass to the South shore, and
fifty are not found on the North shore of the
Cape."

Among Crustacea there were the shells of
Crabs and Lobsters, often bleached quite white
high up the beach; Sea or Beach Fleas (^Am-
^ihii^odd)', and the cases of the Horse-shoe
Crab, or Saucepan Fish (^Limulus Polyphe-
mus), of which we saw many alive on the Bay
side, where they feed pigs on them. Their
tails were used as arrow-heads by the Indians.

Of Kadiata, there were the Sea Chestnut or
Egg (^Echinus gra?iulatus), commonly divested
of its spines; flat circular shells (Scutella
parma ?) covered with chocolate-colored spines,
but becoming smooth and white, with five petal-
like figures; a few Star-fishes or Five-fingers
{Asterias rubens); and Sun-fishes or Sea-jellies
{Aurelice).

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
Sea Rocket {Cahile Americana)^ Saltwort
(Salsola hali\ Sea Sandwort {Honhenya pep-
loides), Sea Burdock {Xanthium echinatuni).
Sea-side Spurge {Euphorbia polygonifolia);
also, Beach Grass {Arundo, Psamma, or

132 CAPE COD

Calamagrostis arenaria\ Sea-side Golden-rod
{SoUdago sempervirens), and tlie Beach Pea
{Laihyrus maritimusi).

Sometimes we helj)ed a wrecker turn over a
larger log tlian 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 prospect in hot weather, for with all
that water before you, there is, as we were af-
terward told, no bathing on the Atlantic side,
on account of tlie undertow and the rumor of
sharks. At the light-house both in Eastham
and Truro, the only houses quite on the shore,
they declared, the next year, that they would
Tiot bathe there "for any sum," for they some-
times saw the 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.

THE BEACH AGAIN 133

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 undertow, but I
have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years
is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach
a hundred miles long. I should add, however,
that in July we walked on the bank here a
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 col-
ored 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 ex-
ploring it go slowly out again ; but we continued
to bathe there, only observing first from the
bank if the cove was preoccupied. We thought
that the water was fuller of life, more aerated
perhaps than that of the Bay, like soda-water,
for we were as particular as young salmon, and
the expectation of encountering a shark did not

134 CAPE COD

subtract anything from its life-giving quali-
ties.

Sometimes we sat on the wet beach and
watched the beach birds, sand-pipers, and oth-
ers, trotting along close to each wave, and wait-
ing fpr 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 made 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 Phalaroj)e — would alight on the tur-
bulent surface where the breakers were five or
six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a
duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting
itself a few feet through the air over the foam-
ing crest of each breaker, but sometimes outrid-
ing safely 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 perfect 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

THE BEACH AGAIN 135

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 tliat of a pond. We read the following as to
the Storm Petrel {Thalassidroma Wihonii),
which is seen in the Bay as well as on the out-
side. "The feathers on the breast of the Storm
Petrel are, like those of all swimming birds,
water-proof; but substances not susceptible of
being wetted with water are, for that very rea-
son, the best fitted for collecting oil from its
surface. That function is performed 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 ob-
tain great part of it. They dash along till they
have loaded their feathers and then they pause
upon the waves and remove the oil with their
bills."

Thus we kept on along the gently curving
shore, seeing two or three miles ahead at once,
— along this ocean sidewalk, 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 ves-
sel, probably the Franklin, a large piece fifteen
feet square, and still freshly painted. With »

136 CAPE COD

grapple and a line we could have saved 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 wrecker, 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 cap'
tain'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 labeled, and he said that
he might have got five hundred 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 inhab-
itants visit the beach to see what they have
caught as regularly as a fisherman his weir or a
lumberer his boom; the Caj^e is their boom.
I heard of. one who had recently picked up
twenty barrels 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 ad-
vertised, yet undoubtedly a great deal of value
is secretly carried off. But are we not all

THE BEACH AGAIN 137

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 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 nut-
meg-trees into the ocean, and let all nations who
stand in need of them pick them up? How-
ever, 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.

138 CAPE COD ,

" A Religious Fish. — A short time ag-o, mine host Stewart,
of the Denton Hotel, pm'chased a rock-fish, weighing about
sixty pounds. On opening it he found in it a certificate 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 aiSiction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' — 2 Cor. iv. 17.
* O what are all my sufferings here,

If, Lord, thou coimt me meet
With 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.'^

From time to time we saved a wreck ourselves,
a box or barrel, and set it on its end, and ap-
propriated it witli crossed sticks ; and it will lie
there perhaps, respected by brother wreckers,
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 valu-
able 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 person-
age 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

THE BEACH AGAIN 139

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, pre-
serving their separate characters. What if it
could tell us its adventures 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
hereabouts. Their bait was a bullfrog, or sev-
eral small frogs in a bunch, for want of squid.
They followed a retiring wave, and whirling
their lines round and round their heads with in-
creasing 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 liter-
ally (or littorally) walking down to the shore,
and throwing your line into the Atlantic. I
should not have known what might take hold of
the other end, whether Proteus or another. At
any rate, if you could not pull him in, why, you
might let him go without being pulled in your-

140 CAPE COD

self. And they knew by experience that it
would be a Striped Bass, or perhaps a Cod, for
these fishes play along near the shore.

From time to time we sat under the lee of a
sand-hill on the bank, thinly covered with coarse
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 were frequently a hundred sail in sight
at once on the Atlantic. You can commonly
count about eighty in a favorable summer day,
and pilots sometimes land and ascend the bank
to look out for those which require their ser-
vices. These had been waiting for fair weather,
and had come out of Boston Harbor together.
The same is the case when they have been as-
sembled in the Vineyard Sound, so that you may
see but few 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 and sinking into it ; here and there
a pilot-boat was towing its little boat astern to-
ward some distant foreigner who had just fired
a gun, the echo of which along the shore

THE BEACH AGAIN 141

sounded like the caving of the bank. We could
see the pilot looking through his glass toward
the distant ship which was putting back to speak
with him. He sails many a mile to meet her;
and now she puts her sails aback, and communi-
cates with him alongside, — sends some import-
ant message to the owners, and then bids fare-
well to these shores for good and all; or, per-
chance a propeller passed and made fast to some
disabled craft, or one that had been becalmed,
whose cargo of fruit might spoil. Though si-
lently, 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. There
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 contin-
ually 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 mountains ; but they are
mere coruscations compared with these marine
colors, which are continually varying and shift-
ing into each other in all the vivid splendor of

142 CAPE COD

the rainbow, through the space often of several
leagues." Commonly, in calm weather, foi 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 gen-
erally a dark blue rim, like a mountain ridge in
the horizon, as if, like that, it owed its color to
the intervening atmosphere. On another day, it
will be marked with long streaks, alternately
smooth and rippled, light-colored and dark, even
like our inland meadows in a freshet, and show-
ing which way the wind sets.

Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on
the wine-colored ocean, —

0iV e</)' aKhs TToAiTjs, dpSwp iirl oXvoira irSvrov.

Here and there was a darker spot on its surface,
the shadow of a cloud, though the sky was so
clear that no cloud would have been noticed
otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen
on the land, where a much smaller surface is
visible 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 Menhaden rippled the
surface, scarcely to be distinguished from the

THE BEACH AGAIN 143

shadows of clouds. Sometimes the sea was
spotted with them far and wide, such is its in-
exhaustible fertility. Close at hand you see
their back fin, 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 dis-
tant 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 streams of Sacramento
and San Joaquin, to Feather River and the
American Fork, where Sutter's Fort presides,
and inland stands the City de los Angeles. It
is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with
more expectation. Nothing remarkable was
ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The
heroes and discoverers have found true more
than was previously believed, only when they
were expecting and dreaming of something more
than their contemporaries 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 standard, they are al-
ways insane. Even savages have indirectly sur-
mised as much. Humboldt, speaking of Colum-
bus approaching the New World, says: "The

144 CAPE COD

grateful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal
purity of the starry firmament, the balmy fra-
grance of flowers, wafted to him by the land
breeze, all led him to suppose (as we are told by
Herrera, in the Decades) that he was approach-
ing the garden of Eden, the sacred abode of our
first parents. The Orinoco seemed to him one
of the four rivers which, according to the ven-
erable tradition of the ancient world, flowed
from Paradise, to water and divide the surface
of the earth, newly adorned with plants." So
even the expeditions for the discovery of El
Dorado, and of the Fountain of Youth, led to
real, if not compensatory discoveries.

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 favor-
able side, to see them at all, and sometimes we
doubted if we were not counting our eyelashes.
Charles Darwin states that he saw, from the base
of the Andes, " the masts of the vessels at anchor
in the bay of Valparaiso, although not less than
twenty-six geographical 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 transparency of the
air. Steamers may be detected much farther

THE BEACH AGAIN 145

than sailing vessels, for, as one says, when their
hulls and masts of wood and iron are down,
their smoky masts and streamers still betray
them; and the same writer, speaking of the
comparative advantages of bituminous and an-
thracite coal for war-steamers, states that " from
the ascent of the columns of smoke above the
horizon, the motions of the steamers in Calais
Harbor [on the coast of France] are at all times
observable at Ramsgate [on the English coast],
from the first lighting of the fires to the putting
out at sea; and that in America the steamers
burning the fat bituminous coal can be tracked
at sea at least seventy miles before the hulls be-
come visible, by the dense columns of black
smoke pouring out of their chimneys, and trail-
ing: alono^ the horizon."

Though there were numerous vessels at this
great distance in the horizon on every side, yet
the vast spaces between them, like the spaces
between the stars, — far as they were distant
from us, so were they from one another — nay,
some were twice as far from each other as from
us, — impressed us with a sense of the immensity
of the ocean, the "unfruitful ocean," as it has
been called, and we could see what proportion
man and his works bear to the globe. As we
looked off, and saw the water growing darker
and darker and deeper and deeper the farther

146 CAPE COD

we looked, till it was awful to consider, and it
appeared to have no relation to the friendly
land, either as shore or bottom, — of what use is
a bottom if it is out of sight, if it is two or
three miles from the surface, and you are to be
drowned so long before you get to it, though it
were made of the same stuff 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 land animal. The man in a balloon even
may Commonly alight on the earth in a few mo-
ments, but the sailor's only hope is that he may
reach the distant shore. I could then appre-
ciate the heroism of the old navigator. Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, of whom it is related, that
being overtaken by a storm when on his return
from America, in the year 1583, far northeast-
ward from where we were, sitting abaft with a
book in his hand, just before he was swallowed
up in the deep, he cried out to his 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 to realize.

On Cape Cod the next most eastern land you
hear of is St. George's Bank (the fishermen tell
of "Georges," "Cashus," and other sunken
lands which they frequent). Every Cape man
has a theory about George's Bank having been

THE BEACH AGAIN 147

an island once, and in their accounts they grad-
ually 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 shipwrecks 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 something monstrous, methinks,
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 continent, all livid and frothing at the
nostrils, like the body of a drowned man, which
is better sunk deep than near the surface.

I have been surprised to discover from a
steamer the shallowness of Massachusetts Bay
itself. Off Billingsgate Point I could have
touched the bottom with a pole, and I plainly
saw it variously shaded with seaweed, 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 deeper than a country
pond. We are told that the deepest water in
the English Channel between Shakespeare's
Cliff and Cape Gris-Nez, in France, is one hun-
dred and eighty feet ; and Guyot says that " the
Baltic Sea has a depth of only one hundred and
twenty feet between the coasts of Germany and

148 CAPE COD

tliose of Sweden," and "the Adriatic between
Venice and Trieste has a depth of only one hun-
dred 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 midsum-
mer 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 yester-
day, 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 'slick '."

THE BEACH AGAIN 149

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 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 seaweed, 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 un-
certain 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 fore-
tell, by certain indications, 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 know no
more, at least, than the older sailors do about
this voyage of life on which we are all embarked.
Nevertheless, we love to hear the sayings of old
sailors, and their accounts of natural phenomena
which totally ignore, and are ignored by,

150 CAPE COD

science; and possibly they have not always
looked over the gunwale so long in vain. Kalm
repeats a story which was told him in Philadel-
phia 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 had to think so ; the old man replied,
that on sounding, he saw the lead in the water
at a distance of many fathoms more than he had
seen it before ; that therefore the water was be-
come clear all of a sudden, which he looked upon
as a certain sign of an impending hurricane in
the sea." The sequel of the story is, that by
good fortune, and by dint of rowing, they man-
aged to gain a safe harbor before the hurricane
had reached its height ; but it finally raged with
so much violence, that not only many ships were
lost and houses unroofed, but even their own
vessel in harbor was washed so far on shore that
several weeks elapsed before it could be got off.
The Greeks would not have called the ocean

THE BEACH AGAIN 151

arpvycTo^^ Or unfruitful, though it does not pro-
duce wheat, if they had viewed it by the light of
modern science, for naturalists now assert that
"the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat
of life," — though not of vegetable life. Dar-
win affirms that "our most thickly inhabited
forests appear almost as deserts when we come
to compare them with the corresponding regions
of the ocean." Agassiz and Gould tell us that
"the sea teems with animals of 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 modern investigations," to quote the words
of Desor, "merely go to confirm the great idea
which was vaguely anticipated by the ancient
poets and philosophers, that the Ocean is the
origin of all things." Yet marine animals and
plants hold a lower rank in the scale of being
than land animals and plants. "There is no
instance known," says Desor, "of an animal
becoming aquatic in its perfect state, after hav-
ing lived in its lower stage on dry land," but as
in the case of the tadpole, "the progress invari-
ably points towards the dry land." In short,
the dry land itself came through and out of the
water in its way to the heavens, for, "in going
back through the geological ages, we come to

152 CAPE COD

an epoch when, according to all appearances,
the dry land did not exist, and when the surface
of our globe was entirely covered with water."
We looked on the sea, then, once more, not as
(XTpuycTo?, or unfruitful, but as it has been more
truly called, the "laboratory of continents."

Though we have indulged in some placid re-
flections of late, the reader must not forget that
the dash and roar of the waves were incessant.
Indeed, it would be well if he were to read with
a large conch-shell at his ear. But notwith-
standing that it was very cold and windy to-day,
it was such cold as we thought would not cause
one to take cold who was exposed to it, owing
to the saltness of the air and the dryness of the
soil. Yet the author of the old " Description of
Wellfleet" says, "The atmosphere is very much
impregnated with saline particles, which, per-
haps, with the great use of fish, and the neglect
of cider and spruce-beer, may be a reason why
the people are more subject to sore mouths and
throats than in other places."

vn

ACROSS THE CAPE

When we have returned from the seaside,
we sometimes ask ourselves why we did not
spend more time in gazing at the sea; but very
soon the traveler 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 exceed-
ingly 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 bear-
berries around, that you were on the top of a
mountain. The only wood in Eastham was on
the edge of Wellfleet. The pitch-pines were
not commonly more than fifteen or eighteen feet
high. The larger 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 East-

154 CAPE COD

ham, near tlie Camp Ground, we saw, the next
summer, some quite rural, and even sylvan re-
treats, for the Cape, where small rustling groves
of oaks and locusts and whispering pines, on
perfectly level ground, made a little paradise.
The locusts, both transplanted and growing nat-
urally about the houses there, appeared to flour-
ish 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 -five years old were a mere scraggy shrub-
bery nine or ten feet high, and we could fre-
quently reach to their topmost leaf. Much that
is called "woods " was about half as high as this,
— only patches of shrub-oak, bayberry, beach-
plum, and wild roses, overrun with 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 bay-
berry, that no 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 abun-
dant, and the next summer they bore a remark-
able quantity of that kind of gall called Huckle-

ACROSS THE CAPE 155

berry-apple, forming quite handsome though
monstrous blossoms. But it must be added,
that this shrubbery swarmed with wood -ticks,
sometimes very troublesome parasites, and
which it takes very horny fingers 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 gen-
eration. Their "brave old oaks," of which
they speak with so much respect, and which
they will point out to you as relics of the primi-
tive forest, one hundred or one hundred and
fifty, ay, for aught they know, two hundred
years old, have a ridiculously dwarfish appear-
ance, which excites a smile in the beholder.
The largest and most venerable which they will
show you in such a case are, perhaps, not more
than twenty or twenty -five 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 tim-

156 CAPE COD

ber 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
Bartramms\ whose quivering notes were ever
and anon prolonged into a clear, somewhat
plaintive yet hawk-like scream, which sounded
at a very indefinite distance. The bird may
have been in the next field, though it sounded a
mile off.

To-day we were walking through Truro, a
town of about eighteen hundred inhabitants.
We had already come to Pamet River, which

ACROSS THE CAPE 157

empties into the Bay. This was the limit of the
Pilgrims' journey up the Cape from Province-
town, when seeking a place for settlement. It
rises in a hollow within a few rods of the Atlan-
tic, 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 stead-
ily driven westward butt-end foremost, — foun-
tain-head, channel, and light-house, at the
mouth, all together.

Early in the afternoon we reached the High-
land Light, whose white tower we had seen ris-
ing out of the bank in front of us for the last
mile or two. It is fourteen 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. We perceived at once a differ-
ence in the soil, for there was an interruption of
the desert, and a slight appearance of a sod un-
der our feet, such as we had not seen for the last
two days.

After arranging to lodge at the light-house,
we rambled across the Cape to the Bay, over a
singularly ble^k and barren-looking country,
consisting of rounded hills and hollows, called
by geologists diluvial elevations and depressions,

158 CAPE COD

— a kind of scenery which has been compared
to a chopped sea, though this suggests too sud-
den a transition. There is a delineation of this
very landscape in Hitchcock's Report on the
Geology of Massachusetts, a work which, by its
size at least, reminds one of a diluvial elevation
itself. Looking southward from the light-
house, the Cape appeared like an elevated pla-
teau, sloping very regularly, though slightly,
downward 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 hol-
lows 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 valleys, however, are circu-
lar, a hundred feet deep, without any outlet, as
if the Cape had sunk in those places, or its
sands had run out. The few scattered houses
which we passed, being placed at the bottom 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

ACROSS THE CAPE 169

either hand. When approaching it, we had
mistaken the belfry for a summer-house on the
phiin. We began to think that we might tum-
ble 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 ob-
jects on the land were a distant windmill, or a
meeting-house standing alone, for only they
could afford to occupy an exposed place. A
great part of the township, however, is a bar-
ren, heath-like plain, and perhaps one third of
it lies in common, though the property of indi-
viduals. The author of the old "Description of
Truro," speaking of the soil, says, "The snow,
which would be of essential service to it pro-
vided it lay level and covered the ground, is
blown into drifts and into the sea." This pecu-
liar open country, with here and there a patch
of shrubbery, extends as much as seven miles,
or from Pamet River on the south to High
Head on the north, and from Ocean to Bay.
To walk over it makes on a stranger such an im-
pression as being at sea, and he finds it impos-
sible to estimate distances in any weather. A
windmill or a herd of cows may seem to be far
away in the horizon, yet, after going a few rods,
he will be close upon them. He is also deluded
by other kinds of mirage. When, in the sum-
mer, I saw a family a-blueberrying a mile off,

160 CAPE COD

walking about amid the dwarfish bushes which
did not come up higher than their ankles, they
seemed to me to be a race of giants, twenty feet
high at least.

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 consisted 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 sim-
ilar 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 Unariifolius\
mouse-ear, bearberry, etc. On a few hillsides
the savory-leaved aster and mouse-ear alone
made quite a dense sward, said to be very pretty
when the aster is in bloom. In some parts the
two species of poverty -grass {Hudsonia tomen-
tosa and ericoides), which deserve a better
name, reign for miles in little hemispherical
tufts or islets, like moss, scattered over the
waste. They linger in bloom there tiU the mid-

ACROSS THE CAPE 161

die of July. Occasionally near the beach these
rounded beds, as also those of the sea-sandwort
(Honhenya peploides)^ were filled with sand
within an inch of their tops, an^ were hard, like
large ant-hills, while the surrounding sand was
soft. In summer, if the poverty-grass grows at
the head of a Hollow looking toward the sea, in
a bleak position where the wind rushes up, the
northern or exposed half of the tuft is some-
times all black and dead like an oven-broom,
while the opposite half is yellow with blossoms,
the whole hillside thus presenting a remarkable
contrast when seen from the poverty-stricken
and the flourishing side. This plant, which in
many places would be esteemed an ornament, is
here despised by many on account of its being
associated with barrenness. It might well be
adopted for the Barnstable coat-of-arms, in a
field sableux. I should be proud of it. Here
and there were tracts of beach-grass mingled
with the seaside golden - rod and beach - pea,
which reminded us still more forcibly of the
ocean.

We read that there was not a brook in Truro.
Yet there were deer here once, which must often
have panted in vain ; but I am pretty sure that
I afterward saw a small fresh-water brook emp-
tying into the south side of Pamet River, though
I was so heedless as not to taste it. At any

162 CAPE COD

rate, a little boy near by told me that he drank
at it. There was not a tree as far as we could
see, and that was many miles each way, the
general level of the upland being about the same
everywhere. Even from the Atlantic side we
overlooked the Bay, and saw to Manomet Point
in Plymouth, and better from that side because
it was the highest. The ahnost universal bare-
ness and smoothness of the landscape were as
agreeable as novel, making it so much the more
like the deck of a vessel. We saw vessels sail-
ing south into the Bay, on the one hand, and
north along the Atlantic shore, on the other, all
with an aft wind.

The single road which runs lengthwise the
Cape, now winding over the plain, now through
the shrubbery which scrapes the wheels of the
stage, was a mere cart-track, in the sand, com-
monly without any fences to confine it, and con-
tinually changing from this side to that, to
harder ground, or sometimes to avoid the tide.
But the inhabitants travel the waste here and
there pilgrim-wise and staff in hand, by narrow
footpaths, through which the sand flows out and
reveals the nakedness of the land. We shud-
dered at the thought of living there and taking
our afternoon walks over those barren swells,
where we could overlook every step of our walk
before taking it, and would have to pray for a

ACROSS THE CAPE 163

fog or a snow-storm to conceal our destiny.
The walker there must soon eat his heart.

In the north part of the town there is no
house from shore to shore for several miles, and
it is as wild and solitary as the Western Prai-
ries— used to be. Indeed, one who has seen
every house in Truro, will be surprised to hear
of the number of the inhabitants, but perhaps
five hundred of the men and boys of this small
town were then abroad on their fishing-grounds.
Only a few men stay at home to till the sand or
watch for blackfish. The farmers are fisher-
men-farmers and understand better 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 blackfish occa-
sionally rotting on the shore. Between the
Pond and East Harbor Village there was an in-
teresting plantation of pitch - pines, twenty or
thirty acres in extent, like those which we had
already seen from the stage. One who lived
near said that the land was purchased by two
men for a shilling or twenty -five cents an acre.
Some is not considered worth writing a deed for.
This soil or sand, which was partially covered
with poverty 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

164 CAPE COD

tliree or four inches, and the second six inches
and more. Where the seed had been lately
planted the white sand was freshly exposed in
an endless furrow winding round and round the
sides of the deep hollows in a vortical, spiral
manner, which produced a very singular effect,
as if you were looking into the reverse side of a
vast banded shield. This experiment, so im-
portant to the Cape, appeared very successful,
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-for-
est, 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 pignadas, and according to Loudon "con-
stitute the principal riches of the inhabitants,
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 for the number of sheep raised
in it; but I was told that at this time only two
men kept sheep in the town, and in 1855, a
Truro boy ten years old told me that he had
never seen one. They were formerly pastured
on the unfenced lands or general fields, but now
the owners were more particular to assert their
rights, and it cost too much for fencing. The

ACROSS THE CAPE 165

rails are cedar from Maine, and two rails will
answer for ordinary purposes, but four are re-
quired for sheep. This was the reason assigned
by one who had formerly kept them for not
keeping them any longer. Fencing stuff is so
expensive that I saw fences made with only one
rail, and very often the rail when split was
carefully tied with a string. In one of the vil-
lages I saw the next summer a cow tethered by
a rope six rods long, the rope long in proportion
as the feed was short and thin. Sixty rods, ay,
all the cables of 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 which he was sell-
ing to his neighbor, holding one end of a pole
from which it swung by a steel-yard hook, and
this was just half his whole crop. In short, the
country looked so barren that I several times
refrained from asking the inhabitants for a
string or a piece of wrapping-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 for waste paper.

The objects around us, the makeshifts of fish-
ermen ashore, often made us look down to see if
we were standing on terra firma. In the wells
everywhere a block and tackle were used to raise

166 CAPE COD

the bucket, instead of a windlass, and by almost
every house was laid up a spar or a plank or two
full of auger-holes, saved from a wreck. The
windmills were partly built of these, and 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 thou-
sand 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 letters, 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 itseK is a sort of
store-ship laden with supplies, — a safer and
larger craft which carries the women and chil-
dren, 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 Doffra-
field Mountains, as if the land were a boat turned

ACROSS THE CAPE 167

bottom up. I was frequently reminded of the
Northmen here. The inhabitants 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 previous 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 oocasionally ran
down the coast a-trading as far as the Capes of
Virginia. This was his market-cart, and his
hired man 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 team-
ing on some ocean highway or other, and the
history of one of their ordinary 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

168 CAPE COD

miles of Cape Cod light, he was driven back by
nine successive gales to Key West, between
Florida 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 shorthand signs, like an algebraic
formula in the shipping news. "Wherever
over the world," said Palfrey in his oration at
Barnstable, "you see the stars and stripes float-
ing, you may have good hope that beneath them
some one will be found who can tell you the
soundings of Barnstable, or Wellfleet, or
Chatham Harbor."

I passed by the home of somebody's (or every-
body's) Uncle Bill, one day over on the Ply-
mouth shore. It was a schooner half keeled up
on the mud; we aroused the master out of a
sound sleep at noonday, by thumping on the
bottom of his vessel till he presented himself at
the hatchway, for we wanted to borrow his
clam-digger. 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 rock-
weed, lighters vessels, and saves wrecks. I still

ACROSS THE CAPE , 169

saw him lying in the mud over at "the Pines"
in i^e 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 seashore. A
frequent answer is, "Well! you can't start for
two hours yet." It is something new to a lands-
man, and at first he is not disposed to wait.
History says that "two inhabitants of Truro
were the first who adventured to the Falkland
Isles in pursuit of whales. This voyage was
undertaken in the year 1774, by the 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 smoother, and
the bottom was partially covered with the slender
grass-like seaweed {Zostera\ which we had not
seen on the Atlantic side ; there were also a few
rude sheds for trying fish on the beach there,
which made it appear less wild. In the few
marshes on this side we afterward saw Sam-
phire, Rosemary, and other plants new to us in-
landers.

In the summer and fall sometimes, hundreds

170 CAPE COD

of blackfish (the Social Whale, Glohicephalus
melas of De Kay; called also Black Whale-fish,
Howling Whale, Bottle-head, etc.), fifteen feet
or more in length, are driven ashore in a single
school here. I witnessed such a scene in July,
1855. A carpenter who was working at the
light-house arriving early in the morning re-
marked that he did not know but he had lost
fifty dollars by coming to his work; for as he
came along the Bay side he heard them driving
a school of blackfish ashore, and he had debated
with himself whether he should not go and join
them and take his share, but had concluded to
come to his work. After breakfast I came over
to this place, about two miles distant, and near
the beach met some of the 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
blackfish, and a man or two about them. As I
walked along towards them I soon came to a
large carcass whose head was gone and whose
blubber had been stripped off some weeks be-
fore; the tide was just beginning to move it,
and the stench comj^elled me to go a long way
round. When I came to Great Hollow I found
a fisherman and some boys on the watch, and
counted about thirty blackfish, just killed, with
many lance wounds, and the water was more or

ACROSS THE CAPE 111

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
blunt round snout or head, whale -like, and simple
stiif-looking flippers. The largest were about
fifteen feet long, but one or two were only five
feet long, and still without teeth. The fisher-
man slashed one with his jackknife, to show me
how thick the blubber was, — about three
inches ; and as I passed my finger through the
cut it was covered thick with oil. The blubber
looked like pork, and this man said that when
they were trying 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, preferring it to pork scraps. He also
cut into the flesh beneath, which was firm and
red like beef, and he said that for his part he
preferred it when fresh to beef. It is stated
that in 1812 blackfish 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 carry it to their
try-works in their boats, where they try it on
the beach. They get commonly a barrel of oil,

172 CAPE COD

worth fifteen 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 distributing the dinners of the fisher-
men, which their wives had put up in little pails
and jugs, and which he had collected in the
Pond Village, and for this service, I suppose,
he received a share of the oil. If one could not
tell his own pail, he took the first he came to.

As I stood there they raised the cry of "an-
other school," and we could see their black
backs and their blowing about a mile north-
ward, 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 nearest to the fishes striking on
the sides of their boats and blowing horns to drive
them on to the beach. It was an exciting race.
If they succeed in driving them ashore each boat
takes one share, and then each man, but if they
are compelled to strike them off shore each
boat's company take what they strike. I

ACROSS THE CAPE 173

walked rapidly along the shore toward the north,
while the fishermen were rowing still more
swiftly to join their companions, and a little boy
who walked by my side was congratulating him-
self that his father's boat was beating another
one. An old blind fisherman whom we met,
inquired, "Where are they, I can't see. Have
they got them?" In the mean while the fishes
had turned and were escaping northward toward
Provincetown, only occasionally the back of one
being seen. So the nearest crews were com-
pelled to strike them, and we saw several boats
soon made fast, each to its fish, which, four or
five rods ahead, was drawing it like a race-horse
straight 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 for us, though we
could see the fishermen leap out and lance them
on the sand. ^It was just like pictures of whal-
ing 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 scabbard on, but nev-
ertheless had thrust it quite through his fish.

I learned that a few days before this one hun-
dred and eighty blackfish had been driven ashore
in one school at Eastham, a little farther south,
and that the keeper of Billingsgate Point light

174 CAPE COD

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, and probably Provincetown made as
much more. Another fisherman told me that
nineteen years ago three hundred and eighty
were driven ashore in one school at Great Hol-
low. In the Naturalists' Library, it is said
that, in the winter of 1809-10, one thousand
one hundred and ten "approached the shore of
Hvalfiord, 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 gener-
ally 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 head^ cut off; the
latter lying higher up. Walking 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

ACROSS THE CAPE 175

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 produce.

After my return home, wishing to learn what
was known about the Blackfish, I had recourse to
the reports of the zoological surveys of the State,
and I found that Storer had rightfully omitted
it in his Report 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
he had had no opportunity to observe them.
Considering how this State has risen and thriven
by its fisheries, — that the legislature which au-
thorized the Zoological Survey sat under the
emblem of a codfish, — that Nantucket 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 poison-
ing the air of one county for more than thirty

176 CAPE COD

miles, — I thouglit it remarkable that neither
the j)023ular nor scientific name was to be found
in a re23ort on our mammalia, — a catalogue 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 distant mainland looms,
they can say. This is Massachusetts Bay; and
then, after an hour's sauntering walk, they may
stand on the starboard side, beyond which no
land is seen to loom, and say. This is the Atlan-
tic Ocean.

On our way back to the light-house, by whose
whitewashed tower we steered as securely as
the mariner by 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; how-

ACROSS THE CAPE 111

ever, 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
graveyard 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 quad-
rupeds). He was a large, plump, shaggy fel-
low, like a yellow dog, with, as usual, a white
tip to his tail, and looked as if he had fared 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 con-
ceal him. I saw another the next summer leap-
ing 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 calculate his whole orbit; there were too
many unknown attractions to be allowed for. I
also saw the exuviae 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 traveler 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

178 CAPE COD

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 (the foxes) live upon birds and their eggs,
and, when they can't get them, upon crow-ber-
ries, mussels, crabs, and what the sea casts up."
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 set-
ting behind our native hills, which were just be-
low 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, —

the shining torch of the sun fell into the ocean.

VIII

THE 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 approaching 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 op-
posite 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 extremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred
and thirty feet. The mixed sand and clay lay

180 CAPE COD

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 fif-
teen or twenty-five feet higher, and that ap-
peared to be the highest land in North Truro.
Even this vast clay bank is fast wearing away.
Small streams of water trickling down it at in-
tervals of two or three rods, have left the inter-
mediate 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 semi-circular crater.

According to the light-house keeper, the Cape
is wasting 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 calculated, from
his 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 surprised 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

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 181

year, I 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 con-
clusions 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 was built, in 1798, it was calculated that
it would stand forty-five years, allowing the
bank to waste one length of fence each year,
"but," said he, "there it is" (or rather another
near the same site, about twenty rods from the
edge of the bank).

The sea is not gaining on the Cape every-
where, for one man told me of a vessel wrecked
long ago on the north of Provincetown whose
''''hones'''' (this was his word) are still visible
many rods within the present line of the beach,
half buried in sand. Perchance they lie along-
side 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

182 CAPE COD

Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at Bil-
lingsgate, Long, and Race Points. James Free-
man 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 ex-
tending as fast as ever. A writer in the Massa-
chusetts Magazine, in the last century, tells us
that "when the English first settled upon the
Cape, there was an island off Chatham, at three
leagues' distance, called Webb's Island, con-
taining twenty acres, covered with red-cedar or
savin. The inhabitants of Nantucket used to
carry wood 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 en-
trance to Nauset Harbor, which was once in
Eastham, has now traveled 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 encroaching on the land. Not
only the land is undermined, and its ruins car-
ried off by currents, but the sand in blown from
the beach directly up the steep bank, where it is
one hundred and fifty feet high, and covers the

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 183

original surface there many feet deep. If you
sit on the edge you will have ocular demonstra-
tion of this by soon getting your eyes full.
Thus the bank preserves its height as fast as it
is worn away. This sand is steadily traveling
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 covered many feet deep,
and peat has been cut there. This 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
tokl 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 ex-
tremely narrow, appeared at length on the At-

184 CAPE COD

lantic 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 in many places there is occasionally
none at all. We ourselves observed the effect
of a single storm with a high tide in the night,
in July, 1855. It moved the sand on the beach
opposite the light-house to the depth of six feet,
and three rods in width as far as we could see
north and south, and carried it bodily off no one
knows exactly where, laying bare in one place a
large rock five feet high which was invisible be-
fore, and narrowing the beach to that extent.
There is usually, as I have said, no bathing on
the back side of the Cape, on account of the un-
dertow, but when we were there last, the sea
had, three months before, cast up a bar near this
light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide,
over which the tide did not flow, leaving a nar-
row cove, then a quarter of a mile long, between
it and the shore, which afforded excellent bath-
ing. This cove had from time to time been
closed up as the bar traveled northward, in one
instance imprisoning four or five hundred whit-
ing and cod, which died there, and the water as
often turned fresh and finally gave place to
sand. This bar, the inhabitants assured us,
might be wholly removed, and the water six feet
deep there in two or three days.

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 185

The light-house keeper said that when the
wind blowed strong on to the shore, the waves
ate fast 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 again into
the sea which carried with it the sand and what-
ever else was in the way, and left the beach
hard to walk on ; but in the latter case the un-
dertow set on, and carried the sand with it, so
that it was particularly difficult for shipwrecked
men to get to land when the wind blowed on to
the shore, but easier when it blowed off. This
undertow, meeting the next surface wave on the
bar which itself has made, forms part of the dam
over which the latter breaks, as over an upright
wall. The sea thus plays with the land, holding
a sand-bar in its mouth awhile before it swallows
it, as a cat plays with a mouse; but the fatal
gripe is sure to come at last. The sea sends its
rapacious east wind to rob the land, but before
the former has got far with its prey, the land
sends its honest west wind to recover some of its
own. But, according to Lieutenant Davis, the
forms, extent, and distribution of sand-bars and
banks are principally determined, not by winds
and waves, but by tides.

Our host said that you would be surprised if

186 CAPE COD

you were on the beach when the wind blew a
hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of
the drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried
directly northward and parallel with the shore
as fast as a man can walk, by the inshore cur-
rent, which sets strongly in that direction at
flood tide. The strongest swimmers also are
carried along with it, and never gain an inch
toward the beach. Even a large rock has been
moved half a mile northward along the beach.
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 you
could get off on a plank. Champlain and Pour-
trincourt could not land here in 1606, on ac-
count of the swell (la houlle), yet the savages
came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de
la Borde's "Relation des Caraibes," my edition
of which was published at Amsterdam in 1711,
at page 530 he says : —

" Couroumon, a Caraibe, also a star [i. e. a
god], makes the great lames a la mer, and over-
turns canoes. Lames a la mer are the long
vagues which are not broken (^entrecoupees)^ and
such as one sees come to land all in one piece,
from one end of a beach to another, so that.

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 187

however little wind there may be, a shallop or
a canoe could hardly land {ahorder terre) with-
out turning over, or being filled with water."

But on the Bay side the water even at its edge
is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Com-
monly 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
impossible to get a boat off, however skillfully
you steer it, for it will often be completely cov-
ered by the curving edge of the approaching
breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water,
or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned di-
rectly 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 Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in
calm weather, who, when they had laden their
boats with fish, and approached the land again,
found such a swell breaking on it, though there
was no wind, that they were afraid to enter it.
At first they thought to pull for Provincetown,
but night was coming on, and that was many
miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate

188 CAPE COD

one. As often as they approached the shore and
saw the terrible breakers that intervened, they
were deterred, in short, they were thoroughly
frightened. Finally, having thrown their fish
overboard, those in one boat chose a favorable
opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good
luck, in reaching the land, but they were unwill-
ing to take the responsibility of telling the
others when to come in, and as the other helms-
man was inexperienced, their boat was swamped
at once, yet all managed 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
three large waves, each successively 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
Antiquities, vol. iii, p. 372), on the subject of
the tenth wave being " greater or more danger-
ous than any other," after quoting Ovid, —

" Qui venit hie fluetus, fluctus supereminet omnes
Posterior nono est, undecimoque prior," —

says, " Which, notwithstanding, is evidently
false ; nor can it be made out 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

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 189

sea, or in the particular motions thereof, as we
may in its general reciprocations, whose causes
are constant, and effects therefore correspond-
ent ; whereas its fluctuations are but motions
subservient, which winds, storms, shores, shelves,
and every interjacency, irregulates."

We read that the Clay Pounds were so called,
''because vessels have had the misfortune to be
pounded against it in gales of wind," which we
regard as a doubtful derivation. There are
small ponds here, upheld by the clay, 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 sur-
face ; 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 prevent being blown into the
Atlantic. They who merely keep out on the
beach in a storm in the winter are sometimes
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.

190 CAPE COD

It was said in 1794 that more vessels were
cast away on the east shore of Truro than any-
where in Barnstable County. Notwithstanding
that this light-house has since been erected, after
almost every storm we read of one or more ves-
sels 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 commerce.

Truro was settled in the year 1700 as Danger-
field. This was a very appropriate name, for I
afterward read on a monument in the grave-
yard, near Pamet River, the following inscrip-
tion : —

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 different sides of the stone. They are said
to have been lost on George's Bank, and I was
told that only one vessel drifted ashore on the

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 191

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 inhab-
itants 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 wid-
ows," was the reply. The stranger and the in-
habitant 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 sup-
posed he liked to hear the sound of the surf, he
answered, "No, 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
tale of the shipwrecks which he had witnessed
there.

192 CAPE COD

In the year 1717, a noted pirate named Bel-
lamy was led on to the bar off Wellfleet by the
captain of a S7ioio 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 pi-
rates followed it. A storm coming on, their
whole fleet was wrecked, and more than a hun-
dred dead bodies lay along the shore. Six who
escaped shipwreck were executed. "At times
to this day," (1793), says the historian of Well-
fleet, "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, Bel-
lamy's] at low ebbs has been seen." Another
tells us that, "For many years after this ship-
wreck, a man of a very singular and frightful
aspect used every spring and autumn to be seen
traveling on the Cape, who was supposed to
have been one of Bellamy's crew. The pre-
sumption 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 constantly wore.

As I was walking on the beach here in my

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 193

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 actually
pick up a French crown piece, worth about one
dollar and six cents, near high-water mark, on
the still moist sand, just under the abrupt, cav-
ing base of tlie 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 seashore, whatever it might
be stamped on, and I also made out the date,
1741. Of course, I thought at first that it was
that same old button which I have found so
many times, but my knife soon showed the sil-
ver. Afterward, rambling on the bars at low
tide, I cheated my companion by holding up
round shells (Scutellce) 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 prisoners. My informant
said that he had never seen any mention of this
in the histories, but that at any rate he knew of

194 CAPE COD

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
dragging 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 in-
dustry, 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-
man, whose cable parted here two hundred years
ago, and now the best bower anchor of a Canton
or a California 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 shal-
lower, and alternately covered and uncovered
by the sand, perchance with a small length of
iron cable still attached, — to which where is

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 195

the other end? So many unconcluded tales to
be continued another time. So, if we had div-
ing-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 danger 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 repre-
sented it as a sea-monster with open jaws, more
terrible than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabi-
tant of Truro told me that about a fortnight af-
ter 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 cor-
pulent woman. The man had thick boots on,
though his head was off, but "it was alongside."
It took 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

196 CAPE COD

at first may they have been associated in their
drifting. Some of the bodies of those passen-
gers were picked up far out at sea, boxed up
and sunk; some brought ashore and buried.
There are more consequences 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 rid-
dles 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 be-
neath, which had tumbled out and died. Also
there were many Crow -blackbirds hopping 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 favor-
ite resort for gunners in the fall to shoot the
Golden Plover. As aroimd the shores of a

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 197

pond are seen devil' s-needles, butterflies, etc.,
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 va-
rious kinds as strewed the beach. They had
apparently flown over the bank in the night,
and could not get up again, and some had per-
haps 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 Cape, tlie
plants had little stalk or leaf, but ran remark-
ably to 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
(Anielanchier)^ Beach Plums, and Blueberries
(^Vaccinium Pennsylvaniciini)^ like the apple-
trees and oaks, were very dwarfish, spreading
over the sand, but at the same time very fruit-
ful. The blueberry was but an inch or two
high, and its fruit often rested on the ground,

198 CAPE COD

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 mois-
ture in the atmosphere, for I observed that what
little grass there was was remarkably laden with
dew in the morning, and in summer dense im-
prisoning 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 ex-
ceedingly damp at that season, and writing-
paper lost all its stiffness in it. It was impos-
sible to dry your towel after bathing, or to press
flowers without their mildewing. The air was
so moist that we rarely wished to drink, though
we could at all times taste the salt on our lips.
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
contained in the terminal bud of the seaside
golden-rod, standing in the sand early in July,

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 199

and also how turnips, beets, carrots, etc., flour-
ished even in pure sand. A man traveling 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 ap-
proaching found it to be a bed of beets flourish-
ing vigorously, probably from seed washed out
of the Franklin. Also beets and turnips came
up in the seaweed used for manure in many
parts of the Cape. This suggests how various
plants may have been dispersed over the world
to distant islands and continents. Vessels, with
seeds in their cargoes, 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 blessing to its inhabitants. Or winds
and currents might effect the same without the
intervention of man. What indeed are the
various succulent plants which grow on the
beach but such beds of beets and turnips, sprung

200 CAPE COD

originally from seeds which perhaps were cast
on the waters for this end, though we do not
know the Franklin which they came ont of ? In
ancient times some Mr. Bell ( ?) was sailing this
way in his ark with seeds of rocket, saltwort,
sandwort, beach-grass, samphire, bayberry, pov-
erty-grass, etc., all nicely labeled with directions,
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 sum-
mer the pretty Polygala polygama^ spreading
ray -wise flat on the ground, white pasture this-
tles (^Cirsium pumihwi)^ and amid the shrub-
bery the Smilax glauca, which is commonly
said not to grow so far north ; near the edge of
the banks about half a mile southward, the
broom crowberry (^Empetrum Conradii), for
which Plymouth is the only locality in Massa-
chusetts usually named, forms pretty green
mounds four or five feet in diameter by one foot
high, — soft, springy beds for the wayfarer. I
saw it afterward in Provincetown, but prettiest
of all the scarlet pimpernel, or poor-man's
weather-glass (^Anagallis ar^jensis)^ greets you
in fair weather on almost every square yard of
sand. From Yarmouth, I have received the
Chrysopsis falcata (golden aster), and Vacci-
nium stamineum (Deerberry or Squaw Huckle-

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 201

berry), with fruit not edible, sometimes as large
as a cranberry (Sept. 7).

The Highland Light-house,^ where 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 brick, and built
by government. As we were going to spend
the niorht in a lio^ht-house, we wished to. make
the most of so novel an experience, and there-
fore told our host that we would like to accom-
pany 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 bed-
room, which was placed nearest to the light-
house, and then through a long, narrow, covered
passage-way, between whitewashed walls like a
prison entry, into the lower part of the light-
house, where many great butts of oil were ar-
ranged around ; thence we ascended by a wind-
ing 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 every-
thing in apple-pie order, and no danger of any-

1 The light -house has since been rebuilt, and shows a Fres<
nel light.

202 CAPE COD

thing rusting there for want of oil. The light
consisted 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 were sur-
rounded, 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, except 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 reflectors. He filled
them every morning, and trimmed them com-
monly once in the course of the night. He com-
plained of the quality of the oil which was fur-
nished. This house consumes about eight hun-
dred gallons in a year, which cost not far from
one dollar a gallon; but perhaps a few lives
would be saved if better oil were provided.
Another light-house keeper said that the same
proportion of winter-strained oil was sent to the
southernmost light-house in the Union as to the
most northern. Formerly, when this light-

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 203

house had windows with small and thin panes,
a severe storm would sometimes break the glass,
and then they were obliged to put up a wooden
shutter in haste to save their lights and reflec-
tors, — and sometimes in tempests, when the
mariner stood most in need of their guidance,
they had thus nearly converted the light-house
into a dark lantern, which emitted only a few
feeble rays, and those commonly on the land or
lee side. He spoke of the anxiety and sense of
responsibility which he felt in cold and stormy
nights in the winter ; when he knew that many a
poor fellow was depending on him, and his
lamps burned dimly, the oil being chilled.
Sometimes he was obliged to warm the oil in a
kettle in his house at midnight, and fill his
lamps over again, — for he could not have a fire
in the light-house, it produced such a sweat on
the windows. His successor told me that he
could not keep too hot a fire in such a case.
All this because the oil was poor. A govern-
ment lighting the mariners on its wintry coast
with summer-strained oil, to save expense!
That were surely a summer-strained mercy.

This keeper's successor, who kindly enter-
tained me the next year, stated that one ex-
tremely cold night, when this and all the neigh-
boring lights were burning summer oil, but he
had been provident enough to reserve a little

204 CAPE COD

winter oil against emergencies, lie was waked up
witli anxiety, and found that Ms oil was con-
gealed, and his lights almost extinguished; and
when, after many hours' exertion, he had suc-
ceeded in replenishing his reservoirs with winter
oil at the wick end, and with difficulty had made
them burn, he looked out and found that the
other lights in the neighborhood, which were
usually visible to him, had gone out, and he
heard afterward that the Pamet River and Bil-
lingsgate Lights also had been extinguished.

Our host said that the frost, too, on the win-
dows caused him much trouble, and in sultry
summer nights the moths covered them and
dimmed his lights ; sometimes even small birds
flew against the thick plate glass, and were
found on the ground beneath in the morning
with their necks broken. In the spring of 1855
he found nineteen small yellow birds, perhaps
goldfinches or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead
around the light-house; and sometimes in the
fall he had seen where a golden plover 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
his light shining before men. Surely the light-
house keeper has a responsible, if an easy, office.
When his lamp goes out, he goes out; or, at
most, only one such accident is pardoned.

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 205

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 sometimes come up here and read
the newspaper when they are noisy down be-
low." Think of fifteen argand lamps to read
the newspaper by ! Government oil ! — light
enough, perchance, to read the Constitution by !
I thought that he should read nothing less than
his Bible by that light. I had a classmate who
fitted for college by the lamps of a light-house,
which was more light, we think, than the Uni-
versity afforded.

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 its 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 reflector 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 light
is said to be visible twenty nautical miles and
more, from an observer fifteen feet above the
level of the sea. We could see the revolving
light at Race Point, the end of the Cape, about
nine miles distant, and also the light on Long

206 CAPE COD

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 lan-
tern, 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 light-house on, the keeper said that the
light-house should have been erected half a mile
farther south, where the coast begins to bend,
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 happens that the present one is the
more useless now, so near the extremity 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

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 207

a regiment stationed here to attend to tliem,
there is one requiring the keeper to keep an ac-
count 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 morning, he rose about half an hour
before sunrise, and having a little time to spare,
for his custom was to extinguish his lights at
sunrise, walked down toward the shore to see
what he might find. When he got to the edge
of the bank he looked up, and, to his astonish-
ment, saw the sun rising, and already part way
above the horizon. Thinking that his clock was
wrong, he made haste back, and though it was
still too early by the clock, extinguished his
lamps, and when he had got through and come
down, he looked out the window, and, to his
still greater astonishment, saw the sun just
where it was before, two thirds above the hori-
zon. He showed me where its rays fell on the

208 CAPE COD

wall across the room. He proceeded to make a
fire, and when he had done, there was the sun
still at the same height. Whereupon, not trust-
ing to his own eyes any longer, he called up his
wife to look at it, and she saw it also. There
were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their
crews, too, he said, must 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
happened during that day. Though accustomed
to the coast, he had never witnessed nor heard
of such a phenomenon before. I suggested that
there might have been a cloud in the horizon in-
visible to him, which 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 Polar Sea,
the horizontal refraction 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 son of Aurora to
whom the sun 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 be-
hooves us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 209

and burning to the last, and not trust to the
sun's looming.

This keeper remarked that the centre of the
flame should be exactly opposite the centre of
the reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was
not careful to turn down his wicks in the morn-
ing, the sun falling on the reflectors on the
south side of the building would set fire to
them, like a burning-glass, in the coldest day,
and he would look up at noon and see them all
lighted! When your lamp is ready to give
light, it is readiest to receive it, and the sun
will light it. His successor said that he had
never known them to blaze in such a case, but
merely to smoke.

I saw that this was a place of wonders. In
a sea turn or shallow fog while I was there the
next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge
of the bank twenty rods distant appeared like a
mountain pasture in the horizon. I was com-
pletely deceived by it, and I could then under-
stand why mariners sometimes ran ashore in
such cases, especially in the night, supposing it
to be far away, though they could see the land.
Once since this, being in a large oyster boat two
or three hundred miles from here, in a dark
nio-ht, when there was a thin veil of mist on
land and water, we came so near to running on
to the land before our skipper was aware of it,

210 CAPE COD

that the first warning was my hearing the sound
of the surf under my elbow, I could almost
have jumped ashore, and we were obliged to go
about very suddenly to prevent striking. The
distant light for which we were steering, sup-
posing it a light-house, five or six miles off,
came through the cracks of a fisherman's bunk
not more than six rods distant.

The keeper entertained us handsomely in his
solitary little ocean house. He was a man of
singular patience and intelligence, who, when
our queries struck him, rang as clear as a bell in
response. The light-house lamp a few feet dis-
tant shone full into my chamber, and made it as
bright as day, so I knew exactly how the High-
land 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 window 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 liglit-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,
Mountuig' 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 obliged
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 coun-
terbalance this, I have remarked that the sea-
shore, even where muddy, as it is not here, is

212 CAPE COD

singularly clean ; for, notwithstanding the spat-
tering 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.

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. In-
deed, they traced us all the way down the Cape,
and concluded that we came by this unusual
route down the back side and on foot, in order
that we might discover a way to get off with our
booty when we had committed the robbery.
The Cape is so long and narrow, and so bare
withal, that it is well-nigh impossible for a
stranger to visit it without the knowledge of its
inhabitants generally, unless he is wrecked on to
it in the night. So, when this robbery oc-
curred, all their suspicions seem to have at once
centred on us two travelers 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 traveled 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

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 213

robbed it only of an old French crown piece,
some shells and pebbles, and the materials of
this story.

Again we took to the beach for another day
(October 13), walking along the shore of the re-
sounding sea, determined to get it into us.
We wished to associate with the Ocean until it
lost the pond-like look which it wears to a coun-
tryman. We still thought that we could see the
other side. Its surface was still more sparkling
than the day before, and we beheld "the count-
less smilings of the ocean waves;" though some
of them were pretty broad grins, for still the
wind blew and the billows broke in foam alons:
the beach. The nearest beach to us on the
other side, whither we looked, due east, was on
the coast of Galicia, in Spain, whose capital is
Santiago, though by old poets' reckoning it
should have been Atlantis or the Hesperides;
but heaven is found to be farther west now. At
first we were abreast of that part of Portugal
entre Douro e Jlino, and then Galicia and the
port of Pontevedra opened to us as we walked
along; but we did not enter, the breakers ran
so high. The bold headland of Cape Finisterre,
a little north of east, jutted toward us next,
with its vain brag, for we flung back, — "Here
is Cape Cod, — Cape Land's-Beginning." A
little indentation toward the north, — for the land

214 CAPE COD

loomed to our imaginations by a common mi-
rage,— we knew was tlie Bay of Biscay, and we

sang : —

" There we lay, till next day,

In the Bay of Biscay O ! "

A little south of east was Palos, where Co-
lumbus weighed anchor, and farther yet the
pillars which Hercules 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 distinctly, —
the inhabitants shouted JVe 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, ew? Trepas or end of the
tlay, the This Side Sundown, where the sun was
extinguished in the Pacific, and we advised them
to pull 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.

We could not perceive that any of their leav-
ings washed up liere, 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

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 215

we approached its wrist between Truro and
Provincetown and the shore inclined more de-
cidedly to the west. At the head of East Har-
bor 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 dis-
tance 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 in-
terrupt it. Also the sands began to invade the
land more and more, until finally they had en-
tire possession from sea to sea, at the narrowest
part. For three or four miles between Truro
and Provincetown there were no inhabitants
from shore to shore, and there were but three
or four houses for twice that distance.

As we plodded along, either by the edge of
the ocean, where the sand was rapidly drinking
up the last wave that wet it, or over the sand-
hills of the bank, the mackerel fleet continued
to pour round the Cape north of us, ten or fif-
teen miles distant, in countless numbers,
schooner after schooner, till they made a city
on the water. They were so thick that many
appeared to be afoul of one another; now all

216 CAPE COD

standing on this tack, now on that. We saw
how well the New-Englanders had followed up
Captain John Smith's suggestions with regard
to the fisheries, made in 1616, — to what a
pitch they had carried "this contemptible trade
of fish," as he significantly styles it, and were
now equal to the Hollanders whose example he
holds up for the English to emulate; notwith-
standing that "in this faculty," as he says, "the
former are so naturalized, and of their vents so
certainly acquainted, as there is no likelihood
they will ever be paralleled, having two or three
thousand busses, flat-bottoms, sword-pinks,
todes, and such like, that breeds them sailors,
mariners, soldiers, and merchants, never to be
wrought out of that trade and fit for any other."
We thought that it would take all these names
and more to describe the numerous craft which
we saw. Even then, some years before our "re-
nowned sires" with their "peerless dames"
stepped on Plymouth Rock, he wrote, "New-
foundland doth yearly fraught near eight hun-
dred sail of ships with a silly, lean, skinny
poor-john, and cor fish," though all their sup-
plies must be annually transported from Europe.
Why not plant a colony here then, and raise
those supplies on the spot? "Of all the four
parts of the world," saj^s he, "that I have yet
seen, not inhabited, could I have but means to

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 217

transport a colony, I would rather live here than
anywhere. And if it did not maintain itself,
were we but once indifferently well fitted, 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." Al-
ready he anticipates "the new towns in New
England in memory of their old," — and who
knows what may be discovered in the "heart
and entrails " of the land, "seeing even the very
edges," etc., etc.

All this has been accomplished, and more,
and where is Holland now? Verily the Dutch
have taken it. There was no long interval be-
tween 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 inter-
est. 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 ap-
peared as if every able-bodied man and helpful
boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure ex-
cursion 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

218 CAPE COD

and boys of these towns are engaged in the
whale, cod, and mackerel fishery, how many go
to the banks of Newfoundland, or the coast of
Labrador, the Straits of Belle Isle or the Bay
of Chaleurs (Shalbre, the sailors call it); as if I
were to reckon up the number of boys in Con-
cord who are engaged during the summer in
the perch, pickerel, bream, horn-pout, and
shiner fishery, of which no one keeps the statis-
tics, — though I think that it is pursued with
as much profit to the moral and intellectual man
(or boy), and certainly with less danger to the
physical one.

One of my playmates, who was apprenticed
to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked
his master one afternoon if he might go a-fish-
ing, and his master consented. He was gone
three months. When he came back, he said
that he had been to the Grand Banks, and went
to setting tyj^e again as if only an afternoon had
intervened.

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 se-
rious business men make of getting their din-
ners, and how universally shiftlessness and a
groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like
industry. Better go without your dinner, I
thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 219

Jt like a cormorant. Of course, vietoed from
the shore^ our pursuits 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 mackereling 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 man-
ner, 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

220 CAPE COD

1 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 mackerel, the real
Scomber vernalis. The crew proceeded lei-
surely to weigh anchor and raise their two sails,
there being a fair but very slight wind; — and
the sun now setting clear and shining on the
vessel after the thunder-showers, I thought that
I could not have commenced the voyage under
more favorable auspices. They had 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 remember that the compass was affected by
iron in its neighborhood and varied a few de-
grees. There was one among us just returned
from California, who was now going as pas-
senger for his health and amusement. They
expected to be gone about a week, to begin fish-
ing the next morning, and to carry their fish
fresh to Boston. They landed me at Clark's
Island, where the Pilgrims landed, for my com-

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 221

panlons wished to get some milk for the voyage.
But I had seen the whole of it. The rest was
only going to sea and catching the mackerel.
Moreover, it was as well that I did not remain
with them, considering the small quantity of
supplies they had taken.

Now I saw the mackerel fleet on its fishing-
cjrowid^ though I was not at first aware of it.
So my experience was complete.

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 ele-
ments 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
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 mo-
ment 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

222 CAPE COD

wreckers were either going or coming, and tlie
ships and the sand-pipers, and the screaming
gulls overhead; nothing stood still but the
shore. The little beach -birds trotted past close
to the water's edge, or paused but an instant to
swallow their food, keeping time with the ele-
ments. I wondered how they ever got used to
the sea, that they ventured so near the waves.
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 us 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 ineffectually
bark at a beach-bird, amid the roar of the At-
lantic ! 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 the countenance of their masters.
Still less could you think of a cat bending her
steps that way, and shaking her wet foot over
the Atlantic ; yet even this happens sometimes,
they tell me. In summer I saw the tender
young of the Piping Plover, like chickens just

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 223

hatclied, 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
marsh, a pack of half a dozen large dogs burst
forth on 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 cir-
cumstances I could not but remember the words
of the 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,

Although thy breath be rude.

" Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot ;
Though thou the waters warp.
Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not."

Sometimes, when I was approaching the car-
cass of a horse or ox which lay on the beach

224 CAPE COD

there, where there was no living creature in
sight, a dog would unexpectedly emerge from it
and slink away with a mouthful of offal.

The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a
most advantageous point from which to contem-
plate this world. It is even a trivial place.
The waves forever rolling to the land are too
far-traveled and untamable to be familiar.
Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-
squall 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 flat-
tery 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 pit-
tance 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, — inhumanly 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 carcass, having been
stripped of blubber at sea and cut adrift, had

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 225

been washed up some months before. It
chanced that this was the most conclusive evi-
dence which we met with to prove, what the
Coj)enhagen antiquaries assert, that these shores
were the Furdustrandas^ which Thorhall, the
companion of Thorfinn during his expedition to
Vinland in 1007, sailed past in disgust. It ap-
pears that after they had left the Cape and ex-
plored the country about Straum-Fiordr (Buz-
zard's Bay!), Thorhall, who was disappointed
at not getting any wine to drink there, deter-
mined to sail north again in search of Vinland.
Though the antiquaries have given us the origi-
nal Icelandic, I prefer to quote their translation,
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 nostri ! faciamus alitem,
expansi arenosi peritum,
lata navis explorare curricula :
dum procellam incitantes gladii
morje impatientes, qui terram
collaudant, Furdustrandas
inhabitant et coquunt balaenas."

In other words, "When they were ready and
their sail hoisted, Thorhall sang : Let us return
thither where our fellow-countrymen are. Let
us make a bird^ skillful to fly through the

^ I. e., a vesseL

226 CAPE COD

heaven of sand,^ to explore the broad track of
ships; while warriors who impel to the tempest
of swords,^ who praise the land, inhabit Won-
der 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 more whales cast up
here, I think that it was never more 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
was 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
seaside residences. Serpents, bears, hyenaSc
tigers, rapidly vanish 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 ti-
gers, in this respect. The Boston papers had
never told me that there were seals in the har-

^ The sea, which is arched over its sandy bottom like a
heaven.
2 Battle.

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 227

bor. I had always associated these with the
Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet
from the parlor windows all along the coast you
may see families of them sporting on the flats.
They were as strange to me as the merman
would be. Ladies who never 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 pro-
prietor of the shore. Yet a Truro man did tell
us that owners of land on the east side of that
town were regarded as owning the beach, in or-
der that they might have the control of it so far
as to defend themselves against the encroach-
ments of the sand and the beach-grass, — for
even this friend is sometimes regarded as a foe ;
but he said that this was not the case on the
Bay side. Also I have seen in sheltered parts
of the Bay, temporary fences running to low-
water mark, the posts being set in sills or sleep-
ers placed transversely.

After we had been walking many hours, the
mackerel fleet still hovered in the northern hori-
zon nearly in the same direction, but farther off,
hull down. Though their sails were set they

228 CAPE COD

never sailed away, nor yet came to anchor, but
stood on various tacks as close together as ves-
sels in a haven, and we, in our ignorance,
thought that they were contending patiently
with adverse winds, beatiug eastward; but w(
learned afterward that they were even then on
their fishing-ground, and that they caught mack-
erel without taking in their mainsails or coming
to anchor, "a smart breeze" (thence called a
mackerel breeze) "being," as one says, "con-
sidered most favorable " for this purpose. We
counted about two hundred sail of mackerel
fishers within one small arc of the horizon, and
a nearly equal number had disapj)eared south-
ward. Thus they hovered about the extremity
of the Cape, like moths round a candle; the
lights at Race Point and Long Point being
bright candles 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 wings 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

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 229

in the country the farmers' wives sometimes see
their husbands working in a distant hillside
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, for this
township is about twelve miles long on the
shore, we crossed over to the Bay side, not half
a mile distant, in order to spend the noon on
the nearest shrubby sand-hill in Provincetown,
called Mount Ararat, which rises one hundred
feet above the ocean. On our way thither we
had occasion to 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 di-
rection across the valley, they appeared inclined
at a slight but decided angle to the horizon,
though they were plainly and broadly connected
with one another, and there was not the least
ripple to suggest a current ; so that by the time
we had reached a convenient part of one we
seemed to have ascended several feet. They

230 CAPE COD

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 amounting 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 mirage which I noticed, but which an old
inhabitant of Provincetown, to whom I men-
tioned it, had never seen nor heard of, had
something to do with the name "Furdustrandas,"
i. e.. Wonder Strands, given, as I have said, in
the old Icelandic account of Thorfinn's expedi-
tion to Vinland in the year 1007, to a part of
the coast on which he landed. But these sands
are more remarkable for their length than for
their mirage, which is common to all deserts,
and the reason for the name which the North-
men themselves give — "because it took a long
time to sail by them " — is sufficient and more
applicable to these shores. However, if you
should sail all the way from Greenland to Buz-
zard'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 perchance it
was because Leif the Lucky had, in a previous
voyage, taken Thor-er and his people off the

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 231

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 commonly level, or nearly so, while the other
slopes downward to the water. As I was walk-
ing 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 de-
scended the bank, though the shaded outlines
left by the waves of a previous tide but halfway
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 gull-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 sailing along near Martha's Vine-
yard, the water about them appeared perfectly
smooth, so that they were reflected in it, and
yet their full sails proved that it must be rip-
pled, and they who were with him thought that
it was a mirage, i. e., a reflection from a haze.

232 CAPE COD

From the above-mentioned sand-liill we over-
looked Provincetown and its harbor, now emp-
tied of vessels, and also a wide expanse of
ocean. As we did not wish to enter Province-
town before night, though it was cold and windy,
we returned across the deserts to the Atlantic
side, and walked along the beach again nearly
to Race Point, being still greedy of the sea in-
fluence. 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. The shore now
trended nearly east and west.

Before sunset, having already seen the mack-
erel 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 extrem-
ity 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. Not-
withstanding the universal barrenness, and the
contiguity of the desert, I never saw an au-
tumnal 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

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 233

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 briglit and living green of small Pitch-
Pines, and also the duller green of the Bay-
berry, 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 fig-
ure, and, in the midst, the few yellow sand-
slides on the sides of the hills looked like the
white floor seen through rents in the rug. Com-
ing from the country as I did, and many au-
tumnal woods as I had seen, this was perhaps
the most novel and remarkable sight that I saw
on the Cape. Probably the brightness of the
tints was enhanced by contrast with the sand
which surrounded this tract. 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 were be-
ing 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 man-
tel-piece.

The peculiarity of this autumnal landscape
consisted in the lowness and thickness of the

234 CAPE COD

shrubbery, no less than in the brightness of the
tints. It was like a thick stuff of worsted or a
fleece, and looked as if a giant could take it up
by the hem, or rather the tasseled fringe which
trailed out on the sand, and shake it, though it
needed not to be shaken. But no doubt the
dust would Hy in that case, for not a little has
accumulated underneath it. "Was it not such
an autumnal landscape as 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 bayberries, there the maples
and the birches and the pines. What other
dyes are to be comj^ared to these? They were
warmer colors than I had associated with the
New England coast.

After threading a swamp full of boxberry,
and climbing several hills covered with shrub -
oaks, without a path, where shipwrecked men
would be in danger of perishing in the night,
we came down upon the eastern extremity of the
four planks which run the whole length of Pro-
vincetown street. This, which is the last town
on the Cape, lies mainly in one street along the
curving: beach frontino^ the southeast. The
sand-hills, covered with shrubbery and inter-

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 235

posed with swamps and ponds, rise 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 fisher-
man'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 car-
riage could pass another, if there was more than
one carriage in the town, looked much "heav-
ier " 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 occasional passage of a trav-
eler. 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 wisfely resolved thus to put

236 CAPE COD

it under foot. Yet some, it was said, were so
provoked because they did not receive their
particular share in money, that they persisted
in walking in the sand a long time after the
sidewalk was built. This is the only instance
which I happen to know in which the surplus
revenue proved a blessing to any town. A sur-
plus 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 almost forgotten their
sandy baptism.

As we passed along we observed the inhabi-
tants engaged 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 indeed
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 had
transplanted from behind the town, thinking it
an apple-tree. But every man to his trade.

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 237

Though he had little woodcraft, he was not the
less weatherwise, and gave us one piece of in-
formation, viz., he had observed that when a
thunder- cloud came up with a flood -tide it did
not rain. This was the most completely mari-
time town that we were ever in. It was merely,
a good harbor, 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, containing com-
monly half a dozen square rods only each. We
saw one which was 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 cidtivable 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 des-
ert 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, Province-
town 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.

238 CAPE COD

The mackerel fleet had nearly all got in be-
fore 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 in
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, and lowered its boat. They
belonged chiefly to Wellfleet, 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, fxiXaLvat vrjes. A
fisherman told us that there were fifteen hun-
dred vessels in the mackerel fleet, and that he
had counted three "hundred and fifty in Province-
town Harbor at one time. Being obliged 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
vessels at the wharves of a large city. As they
had been manoeuvring out there all day seem-
ingly for our entertainment, while we were walk-
ing northwestward along the Atlantic, so now
we found them flocking into Provincetown Har-
bor at night, just as we arrived, as if to meet
us, and exhibit themselves close at hand. Stand-

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 239

ing 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. According 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, " OA, how
she scoons/^^ whereat Robinson replied, "^
schooner let her 6e.^" "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." ^ 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

1 See Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix., 1st series, and vol. i., 4th

240 CAPE COD

schoon or scoot, meaning to rush, as Schoodic,
from scoot and auke, a place where water rushes.
N. B. Somebody of Gloucester was to read a
paper on this matter before a genealogical soci-
ety in Boston, March 3, 1859, according to the
Boston Journal, 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 was 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 carving 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 south-
west end of the town, west of the Shank-Painter
Swamp, whose expressive name — for we under-
stood it at first as a landsman naturally would
— gave it importance in our eyes, we crossed
the sands to the shore south of Race Point and

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 241

three miles distant, and thence roamed round
eastward through the desert to where we had
left the sea the evening before. We traveled
five or six miles after we got out there, on a curv-
ing 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 the ex-
tremity 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, notwith-
standing the cold. Our eyes magnified the
patches of beach-grass into cornfields, 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 (^Calama-
grostis arenaria)^ and also Sea-lyme grass {Ely-
mus arenarlus\ seigle de mer; and he adds, "1
have been assured that these plants grow in
great plenty in Newfoundland, and on other

242 CAPE COD

North American shores ; the j)laces covered with
them looking, at a distance, like cornfields;
which might explain the passage in our north-
ern accounts [he wrote in 1749] of the excellent
wine land [ Vinland 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, etc. ;
paper has been made of it at Dorchester 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 propagated both by
roots and seeds. To express its love for sand,
some botanists have called it Psamma arenaria,
which is the Greek for sand, qualified by the
Latin for sandy, — or sandy sand. As it is
blown about by the wind, while it is held fast
by its roots, it describes myriad circles in the
sand as accurately as if they were made by com-
passes.

It was the dreariest scenery imaginable. The
only animals which we saw on the sand at that
time were sj)iders, which are to be found almost
everywhere whether on snow or ice, water or
sand, — and a venomous-looking, long, narrow
worm, one of the myriapods, or thousand -legs.

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 243

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 terrm films who has a
"farm" on the edge of the desert, and is fami-
liar with the fame of Provincetown, that one
man had caught twenty-five snapping-turtles
there the previous spring. His own method of
catching them was to put a toad on a mackerel-
hook and cast it into a pond, tying the line to a
stump or stake on shore. Invariably the turtle
when hooked crawled up the line to the stump,
and was found waiting there by his captor, how-
ever long afterward. He also said that minks,
.muskrats, foxes, coons, and wild mice were
found there, but no squirrels. We heard of
sea-turtles as large as a barrel being found on
the beach and on East Harbor marsh, but
whether they were native there, or had been lost
out of some vessel, did not appear. Perhaps
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

244 CAPE COD

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 as in such locali-
ties. At the same season strawberries grew
there abundantly in the little hollows on the
edge of the desert, standing 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 oblig-
ing 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 on his shoulders, like Sindbad. One good
turn deserves 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 uninter-
rupted 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 ;

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 245

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 al-
ways out on the Back-side night and day in se-
vere 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 inhabi-
tants 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 behind the town.

The wind was not a Sirocco or Simoon, such
as we associate with the desert, but a New Eng-
land northeaster, — 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 like snow, and cut-
ting sand which made the face tingle, and we
saw what it must be to face it when the weather
was drier, and, if possible, windier still, — to

246 CAPE COD

face a migrating sand-bar in the air, which has
picked up its duds and is off, — to be whipped
with a cat, not o' nine-tails, but of a myriad of
tails, and each one a sting to it. A Mr. Whit-
man, a former minister of Wellfleet, used to
write to his inland friends that the blowing sand
scratched the windows so that he was obliged
to have 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 partially 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 Bis-
cay, many villages 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 harbor of Province-

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 247

town 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 sum-
mer grows about two feet and a half. If sur-
rounded 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 Arab
tents, and are continually 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
numerous 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 stubs of a previous
season were pulled up with it from still deeper
in the sand, with their own more decayed shoot

248 CAPE COD

attached, — so that the age of a sand-hill, and
its rate of increase for several years, are pretty
accurately recorded in this way.

Old Gerard, the English herbalist, says, p.
1250; "I find mention in Stowe's Chronicle, in
Anno 1555, of a certain pulse or pease, as they
term it, wherewith the poor people at that time,
there being a great dearth, were miraculously
helped; he thus mentions it. In the month of
AugTist (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 with-
out 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, ^vith 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

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 249

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 worshipful 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 for-
merly regularly warned under the authority of
law in the month of April yearly, to plant
beach-grass, as elsewhere they are warned to re-
pair the highways. They dug up the grass in
bunches, which were afterward divided into sev-
eral smaller ones, and set about three feet apart,
in rows, so arranged as to break joints and ob-
struct the passage of the wind. It spread itself
rapidly, the weight of the seeds when ripe bend-
ing the heads of the grass, and so dropping di-
rectly by its side and vegetating there. In this
way, for instance, they built up again that part
of the Cape between Truro and Provincetown
where the sea broke over in the last century.
They have now a public road near there, made

250 CAPE COD

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 appointed by Massachusetts to ex-
amine the premises. They reported in June,
1825, that, owing to "the trees and brush hav-
ing been cut down, and the beach -grass de-
stroyed on the seaward side of the Cape, oppo-
site the Harbor," the original surface of the
ground had been broken up and removed by
the wind toward the Harbor, — during the pre-
vious 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, covered with trees and bushes,"
presenting "an extensive 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

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 25l

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 inhabi-
tants from cutting the brush.

I was told that about thirty thousand dollars
in all had been appropriated to this object,
though it was complained 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 imj^orted the seed of this grass
from Holland, and distributed it over the coun-
try, but probably we have as much as the Hol-
landers.

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 erelong go to the bottom.
Formerly, the cows were permitted to go at
large, and they ate many strands of the cable
by which the Cape is moored, and well-nigh set
it adrift, as the bull did the boat which was

252 CAPE COD

moored with a grass rope ; but now they are not
permitted to wander.

A portion of Truro which has considerable
taxable property on it has lately been added to
Provincetown, and I was told by a Truro man
that his townsmen talked of petitioning the legis-
lature 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 to-
gether, 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 break-
ers 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 break-
ers, 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 di-
rectly on the land : a strong current sets along

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 253

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 ship-
wreck is inevitable. Accordingly, the strand is
everywhere covered with the fragments of ves-
sels." 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 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 i^lace, for a con-
siderable 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, hav-
ing 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

254 CAPE COD

bank, but the sea following fast at their heels,
caused the bank to cave and bury them alive.
It was the roaring sea, OdXaao-a yxfUf^cra^ —

*HT6v€S fioScocTLu, €pevyofj.€i>r]S a\hs e|a).

And the summits of the hank
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 resj)ects, the same, and
that he who waits for fair weather and a calm
sea may never see the glancing skin of a mack-
erel, and get no nearer to a cod than the wooden
emblem in the State House.

Having lingered on the shore till we were
well-nigh chilled to death by the wind, and were
ready to take shelter in a Charity-house, we
turned our weather-beaten faces toward Pro-
vincetown and the Bay again, having now more
than doubled the Cape.

PROVINCETOWN

Early the next morning I walked into a fish-
house near our hotel, where three or four men
were engaged in trundling out the pickled fish
on barrows, and spreading them to dry. They
told me that a vessel had lately come in from
the Banks with forty-four thousand cod-fish.
Timothy Dwight says that, just before he ar-
rived at Provincetown, "a schooner came in
from 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 return, eight inches under water in calm
weather." The cod in this fish -house, just out
of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and
three or four men stood on them in cowhide
boots, pitching them on to the barrows 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 I saw the older man do the same
thing. It reminded me of the figs of Smyrna.

256 CAPE COD

"How long does it take to cure these fish?" I
asked.

"Two good drying daj^s, sir," was the an-
swer.

I walked across the street again into the hotel
to breakfast, and mine host inquired if I would
take "hashed fish 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 landlord was
still ringing the changes on these two words.
In the former dish there was a remarkable pro-
portion 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, travelers 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 sur-
rounded 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

PROVINCETOWN 257

to be least like a flower-garden in a good dry-
ing day in midsummer. 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 fish-
ery 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-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 mis-
took 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

258 CAPE COD

Banks. Some were stacked in the form of huge
flower-pots, being laid in small circles with the
tails outwards, each circle successively larger
than the preceding until the pile was three or
four feet high, when the circles rapidly dimin-
ished, 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 exporta-
tion.

It is rumored that in the fall the cows here
are sometimes 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 off 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 instinct, to swell the cud
of a ruminant animal! — However, an inhabi-
tant assured me that they did not make a prac-
tice of feeding cows on cod's heads; the cows
merely would eat them sometimes, but I might
live there all my days and never see it done.
A <Jow wanting salt would also sometimes lick
out all the soft part of a cod on the flakes.

PROVINCETOWN 259

This he would have me believe was the founda-
tion of this fish-story.

It has been a constant traveler's tale and per-
haps slander, now for thousands of years, the
Latins and Greeks have repeated it, that this or
that nation feeds its cattle, or horses, or sheep,
on fish, as may be seen in ^lian and Pliny, but
in the Journal of Nearchus, who was Alexan-
der's admiral, and made a voyage from the
Indus to the Euphrates three hundred and
twenty-six years before Christ, it is said that the
inhabitants of a portion of the intermediate
coast, whom he called Ichthyophagi or Fish-
eaters, not only ate fishes raw and also dried
and pounded in a whale's vertebra for a mortar
and made into a paste, but gave them to their
cattle, there being no grass on the coast; and
several modern travelers, — 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
animals. Captain King, in his continuation of
Captain Cook's Journal in 1779, says of the
dogs of Kamtschatka, " Their food in the winter
consists entirely of the head, entrails, and back-
bones of salmon, which are put aside and dried
for that purpose ; and with this diet they are fed
but sparingly."^

1 Cook's Journal, vol. vii. p. 315.

260 CAPE COD

As we are treating of fishy matters, let me
insert what Pliny says, — that " the command-
ers of the fleets of Alexander the Great have
related that the Gedrosi, who dwell on the
banks of 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 remarks, 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 build-
ings." ^ Herodotus says the inhabitants on Lake
Prasias in Thrace (living on piles), "give fish
for fodder to their horses and beasts of burden."

Provincetown was apparently what is called a
flourishing 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. " Oh,
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 dis-
proved. You might meet a lady daintily

1 Bohn's ed. trans, of Pliny, vol. ii. p. 361.

PROVINCETOWN 261

dressed in the Sabbath morning, wading in
among the sand-hills, from church, where there
appeared 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 disap-
pointed by discovering the intelligence of rough,
and what would be considered unpromising,
specimens. Nay, I ventured to call on one citi-
zen 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 gateway a circular cobweb of the
largest kind and quite entire. This looked so
ominous that I actually turned aside and went
in the back way.

This Monday morning was beautifully mild
and calm, both on land and water, promising us
a smooth passage across the Bay, and the fisher-
men feared that it would not be so good a dry-
ing day as the cold and windy one which pre-
ceded it. There could hardly have been a
greater contrast. This was the first of the In-
dian Summer days, though at a late hour in the
morning we found the wells in the sand behind

262 CAPE COD

the town still covered with ice, which had
formed in the night. What with wind and sun
my most prominent feature fairly cast its slough.
But I assure you it will take more than two
good drying days to cure me of rambling. Af-
ter making an excursion among the hills in the
neighborhood of the Shank-Painter Swamp,
and getting a little work done in its line, we
took our seat upon the highest sand-hill over-
looking the town, in mid-air, on a long plank
stretched across between two hillocks of sand,
where some boys were endeavoring 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 Provincetown Har-
bor, and wished to know one Sunday morning
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

PROVINCETOWN 263

her come in," said he. When I expressed sur-
prise 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 ora-
tion at Barnstable, " The duck does not take to
the water with a surer instinct than the Barn-
stable 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 soliloquies. 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 dej)arture, one schooner after another,
and standing round the Cape, like fowls leav-
ing their roosts in the morning to disperse them-
selves 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 what 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
establishment. It is a sort of tropical labor,
pursued too in the sunniest season ; more inter-

264 CAPE COD

esting than gold or diamond-washing, which, I
fancy, it somewhat resembles at a distance. In
the production of the necessaries of life Nature
is ready enough to assist man. So at the pot-
ash 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 Irish
men in the laboratory. It is said, that owing
to the reflection of the sun from the sand-hills,
and there being absolutely no fresh water emp-
tying into the harbor, the same number of su-
perficial feet yields more salt here than in any
other part of the country. A little rain is con-
sidered 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 com-
pletely as if the roofs had been taken off.
They were busily covering the wicker-work
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 al-
most every yard we detected some little build-^

PROVINCETOWN 265

ing from which these treasures were being trun-
dled 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 profitably practiced. 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 dry-
ing 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 clothes-^ate. They spread brush on the
ground, and fence it round, and then lay their
clothes on it, to keep them from the sand. This
is a Cape Cod clothes-yard.

The sand is the great enemy here. The tops
of some of the hills were inclosed and a board
put up forbidding all persons entering the in-
closure, lest their feet should disturb the sand,
and set it a-blowing or a-sliding. The inhabi-
tants are obliged to get leave from the authori-
ties 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 some-
times the lower story of a house is concealed by
it, though it is kept off by a wall. The houses

266 CAPE COD

were formerly 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 hill on which we sat, filled
with sand up to the tops of the desks, and of
course the master and scholars had fled. Per-
haps they had imprudently 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 instance 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 back-
side 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 lived beyond the ex-
tremity of the planking, steering and tacking
for it in a sort of snow-shoes, but I may have
been mistaken. In some pictures of Province-
town the persons of the inhabitants are not
drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed
to be buried in the sand. Nevertheless, natives

PROVINCETOWN 267

of Provincetown assured me that they could
walk in the middle of the road without trouble
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 gen-
erally on the Cape are an inch or two wider, as
the sand is an inch or two deeper than else-
where. I saw a baby's wagon with 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 Provincetown,
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 Bar-
ber's Historical Collections, it is said, "so

268 CAPE COD

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 seeing 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 sound of their tread. No doubt there
are more horses and carts there at present. A
sleigh is never seen, or at least is a great novelty
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.

Notwithstanding all this sand, we counted
three meeting-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. Similar fences,
even within a foot of many of the houses, gave
the town a less cheerful and hospitable appear-

PROVINCETOWN 269

ance than it would otherwise have had. They
told us that, on the whole, the sand had made
no progress for the last ten years, the cows be-
ing no longer permitted to go at large, and every
means being taken to 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 a high price, though
titles to them were first obtained by possession
and improvement, and they are still transferred
by quit-claim deeds merely, the township being
the property of the State. But though lots
were so valuable on the street, you might in
many places throw 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 therefore their crews
used to land at night and steal them. I did not
hear of a rod of regular stone wall below Or-
leans. Yet I saw one man underpinning a new
house in Eastham with some "rocks," as he
called them, which he said a neighbor had col-
lected with great pains in the course of years,

270 CAPE COD

and finally made over to him. This I thought
was a gift worthy of being recorded, — equal to
a transfer of California "rocks," almost. An-
other 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 neighbor-
hood which was "forty -two paces in circumfer-
ence 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 min-
eralogy, 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 mainland, — Cohasset
or Marblehead, for instance.

The well stones at the Highland Light were
brought from Hingham, but the wells and cel-
lars 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.
The former are only from nine to twelve feet in
diameter, and are said to be very cheap, since a
single tier of brick will suffice for a cellar of
even larger dimensions. Of course, if you live
in the sand, you will not require a large cellar

PROVINCETOWN 271

to hold your roots. In Provincetown, when
formerly they suffered the sand to drive under
their houses, obliterating all rudiment of a
cellar, 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.

You need dig only a few feet almost any-
where near the shore of the Cape to find fresh
water. But that which we tasted was invariably
poor, though the inhabitants 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 Provincetown 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 appear, like
huge sponges, to hold the rain and dew which

272 CAPE COD

fall on them, and which, by capillary attraction,
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 there is no other harbor on a windward
shore within two hundred miles." J. D. Gra-
ham, who has made a very minute and thorough
survey of this harbor and the adjacent waters,
states that "its capacity, depth of water, excel-
lent anchorage, and the complete shelter it
affords from all winds, combine to render it one
of the most valuable ship harbors on our coast."
It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fisher-
men 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 Massa-
chusetts Bay that of Stuard's Bay. His High-
ness Prince Charles changed the name of Cape
Cod to Cape James ; but even princes have not

PROVINCETOWN 273

always power to change a name for the worse,
and, as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is "a
name which I suppose it will never lose till
shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its high-
est hills."

Many an early voyager was unexpectedly
caught by this hook, and found himself em-
bayed. 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 HoUant" (after Hudson); and on an-
other still, the shore between Eace Point and
Wood End appears to be called "Bevechier."
In Champlain's admirable Map of New France,
including the oldest recognizable map of what is
now the New England coast with which I am
acquainted. Cape Cod is called C Blan (i. e..
Cape White), from the color of its sands, and
Massachusetts Bay is Baye Blanche. It was
visited by De Monts and Champlain in 1605,

274 CAPE COD

and the next year was further explored by Poi-
trincourt and Champlain. 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 off some
and make them grind in their hand-mill at Port
Eoyal.

It is remarkable that there is not in English
any adequate 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 perma-
nent 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 ac-
counted for partly by the fact that the early
edition of Champlain's "Voyages " had not been

PROVINCETOWN 275

consulted for this purpose. This contains by
far the most particular, and, I think, the most
interesting chapter of what we may call the
Ante -Pilgrim history of New England, extend-
ing to one hundred and sixty pages quarto ; but
appears to be unknown equally to the historian
and the orator on Plymouth Kock. Bancroft
does not mention Champlain 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 another sense^ the lead-
ing spirit, as well as the historian of the expe-
dition. Holmes, Hildreth, and Barry, and
apparently all our historians who mention Cham-
plain, refer to the edition of 1632, in which all
the separate charts of our harbors, etc., and
about one half the narrative, 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'
expedition, says that "he looked into the Penob-
scot [in 1605], which Pring had discovered two
years before," saying nothing about Cham-
plain's extensive exploration of it for De Monts
in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to Pur-
chas); also that he followed in the track of
Pring along the coast "to Cape Cod, which he
called Malabarre." (Haliburton had made the

276 CAPE COD

same statement before liira in 1829. He called
it C^-p 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 discov-
ered it in 1605. Sir F. Gorges says, in his
narration,^ 1658, that Pring in 1606 "made a
perfect discovery of all the rivers and harbors."
This is the most I can find. Bancroft makes
Champlain to have discovered more western riv-
ers in Maine, not naming the Penobscot; he,
however, must have been the discoverer of dis-
tances on this river.2 Pring was absent from
England only about six months, and sailed by
this part of Cape Cod (Malebarre) 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 settlement, sounding and surveying its har-
bors.

John Smith's map, published in 1616, from
observations 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 Cham •
plain's "Voyages," edition 1613 (and Lescarbot,
in 1612, quotes a still earlier account of his

1 Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii. p. 19.

2 See Belknap, p. 1-17.

PROVINCETOWN 277

voyage), there is a map of it made when it was
known to Christendom as New France, called
Carte GeograpUque de la JVouvelle Franse
faictte par U Sleur de Champlain Saint
Tongois Capintalne ordinaire pour le Roy en
la Marine,— faict ten 1612, from his observa-
tions between 1604 and 1607 ; a map extending
from Labrador to Cape Cod and westward to
the Great Lakes, and crowded with informa-
tion, geographical, ethnographical, zoological,
and botanical. He even gives the variation of
the compass as observed by himself at that date
on many parts of the coast. This, taken to-
gether with the many separate charts of harbirs
and their soundings on a large scale, which this
volume contains, — among the rest, Qui ni he
quy (Kennebec), Choitacoit R. (Saco R.), Le
Beau j)ort. Port St, Louis (near Cape Ann),
and others on our coast, — but ivhich are not in
the edition o/1632, makes this a completer map
of the New England and adjacent northern coast
than was made for half a century afterward ; al-
most, we might be allowed to say, till another
Frenchman, Des Barres, made another for us,
which only our late Coast Survey has super-
seded. Most of the maps of this coast made for
a long time after betray their indebtedness to
Champlain. He was a skillful navigator, a
man of science, and geographer to the King of

278 CAPE COD

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 da^^s.
He was in this neighborhood, that is, between
Annapolis, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod, observ-
ing the land and its inhabitants, and making a
map of the coast, from May, 1604, to Septem-
ber, 1607, or about three and a half years, and
he has described minutely his method of survey-
ing harbors. By his own account, a part of his
map was engraved in 1604 (?). When Pont-
Grave and others returned to France in 1606,
he remained at Port Royal with Poitrincourt,
"in order," says he, "by the aid of God, to fin-
ish 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 discov-
ered within the last ten years."

It is not generally remembered, if known, by

PROVINCETOWN 279

the descendants of the Pilgrims, that when their
forefathers were spending their first memorable
winter in the New World, they had for neigh-
bors a colony of French no 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 seventy) — died the
first winter at St. Croix, 1604-5, sixteen years
earlier, no orator, to my knowledge, has ever
celebrated their enterprise (Williamson's His-
tory of Maine does considerably), while the
trials which their successors and descendants
endured at the hands of the English have fur-
nished a theme for both the historian and poet.^
The remains of their fort at St. Croix were dis-
covered at the end of the last century, and
helped decide where the true St. Croix, our
boundary, was.

1 See Bancroft's History and Longfellow's Evangeline.

280 CAPE COD

The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are
probably older than the oldest English monu-
ment in New England north of the Elizabeth
Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England,
for if there are any traces of Gosnold's store-
house 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 in 1837. Dr.
Charles T. Jackson tells me that, in the course
of a geological survey in 1827, he discovered a
gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat Island,
opposite Annapolis (Port Eoyal), in Nova
Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat-of-arms and the
date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier than
the landing of the Pilgrims. 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 sav-
ages at Mount Desert, then St. Savior, in 1613,
— having come over to Port Eoyal in 1611,
though they were almost immediately interrupted
by the English, years before the Pilgrims came
hither to enjoy their own religion. This ac-
cording to Champlain. Charlevoix says the
same; and after coming from France in 1611,
went west from Port Eoyal along the coast as
far as the Kennebec in 1612, and was often
carried from Port Eoyal to Mount Desert.

PROVINCETOWN 281

lucleed, the Englishman's history of New
England commences only when it ceases to be
New France. Though Cabot was the first to
discover the continent of North America, Cham-
plain, 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 ex-
tending at least to the thirty-fifth and thirty-
sixth degrees of latitude, as appears by the
maps of the world printed in Spain, Italy, Hol-
land, Flanders, Germany, and England, until
they possessed themselves of the coasts of New
France, where are Acadie, the Etechemains
(Maine and New Brunswick), the Almouchicois
(Massachusetts ?), and the Great River St. Law-
rence, where they have imposed, according to
their fancy, such names as New England, Scot-
land, and others ; but it is not easy to efface the
memory of a thing which is known to all Chris-
tendom."

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabita-
ble 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

282 CAPE COD

he saw. Miller (in tlie New York Hist. Coll.,
vol. i. p. 28), says he does not appear to have
landed anywhere. Contrast with this Verraz-
zani's tarrying fifteen days at one place on the
New England coast, and making frequent ex-
cursions 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 be-
gan to be called La Terra Franceses or French
Land. A part of it was called New Holland be-
fore it was called New England. 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 (Caro-
lina and Florida, 1562-64), and in their first
permanent settlement (Port Royal, 1605) ; 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-

PROVINCETOWN 283

niarkably accurate charts of that river as far up
as Montreal. It is almost all of the continent
north of Florida that you recognize on charts
for more than a generation afterward, — though
Verrazzani's rude plot (made under French aus-
pices) 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 explo-
rations. There was no danger of their charts
beins: lost, as Cabot's have been.

The most distinguished navigators of that day
were Italians, or of Italian descent, and Portu-
guese. The French and Spaniards, though less
advanced in the science of navigation than the
former, possessed more imagination and spirit
of adventure than the English, and were better
fitted to be the explorers of a new continent
-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 coureur de hois is still our
conductor there. Prairie is a French word, as
Sierra is a Spanish one. Augustine in Florida

284 CAPE COD

and Santa Fe in New Mexico (1582), both built
by tlie Spaniards, are considered tlie oldest
towns in the United States. Within the mem-
ory of the oldest man, the Anglo-Americans
were confined between the Appalachian Moun-
tains and the sea, "a space not two hundred
miles broad," while the Mississippi was by
treaty the eastern boundary of New France.^
So far as inland discovery was concerned, the
adventurous spirit of the English was that of
sailors who land but for a day, and their enter-
prise 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 disappoint-
ment 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,
1726), p. 51, speaking of "Port Eoyal 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 William Alexander got a pat-
ent of it, and possessed it some years; and

1 See the pamphlet on settling the Ohio, London, 1763,
bound up with the travels of Sir John Bartrara.

PROVINCETOWN 285

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 hav-
ing discovered Wachusett Mountain (discerned
it forty miles inland), talking about the " Great
Lake" and the "hideous swamps about it,"
near which the Connecticut and • the " Poto-
mack" took their rise; and among the memora-
ble events of the year 1642 he chronicles Darby
Field, an Irishman's expedition to the "White
hill," from whose top he saw eastward what he
"judged to be the Gulf of Canada," and west-
ward 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 coun-
try a hundred miles inland, which was a terra
incognita to them, — or rather many years be-
fore the earliest date referred to, — Champlain,
the^rs^ Governor of Canada^ not to mention
the inland discoveries of Cartier,^ Roberval,

^ 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

286 CAPE COD

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 and wintered
there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New
England. In Champlain's Voyages, printed in
1613, there is a plate representing a fight in
which he aided the Canada Indians against the
Iroquois, near the south end of Lake Cham-
plain, in July, 1609, eleven years before the
settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft 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."^
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

1535, sixty-seven years before Gosnold saw Cape Cod. If see-
ing 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 discoverer of New Eng-
land rather than Gosnold, who is commonly so styled.

^ Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii. p. 68.

PROVINCETOWN 28T

ctiivre,^^ — "Island where there is a mine of
copper." This will do for an offset to our Gov-
ernor's "Muscovy glass." Of all these adven-
tures and discoveries we have a minute and
faithful account, giving facts and dates as well
as charts and soundings, all scientific and
Frenchman -like, with scarcely one fable or
traveler's story.

Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans
long before the seventeenth century. It may
be that Cabot himself beheld it. Yerrazzani,
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 sight of the coast. There is a chart
in Hackluyt's "Divers Voyages," made accord-
ing to Verrazzani's plot, which last is praised
for its accuracy by Hackluyt, but I cannot dis-
tinguish Cape Cod on it, unless it is the "C.
Arenas," which is in the right latitude, though
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 Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmogra-
pher, has preserved the memory of the voyage

288 CAPE COD

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 d' JEtienne
Gomez^ quHl decouvrit en 1525 (Land of Etienne
Gomez, which he discovered in 1525)." This
chart, with a memoir, was published at Weimar
in the last century.

Jean Alphonse, Roberval's pilot in Canada
in 1542, one of the most skillful navigators of
his time, and who has given remarkably minute
and accurate direction for sailing up the St.
Lawrence, showing that he knows what he is
talking about, says in his "Routier" (it is in
Hackkiyt), "I have been at a bay as far as the
forty-second degree, between Norimbegue [the
Penobscot?] and Florida, but I have not ex-
plored 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
])ar 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

PROVINCETOWN 289

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 "Norum-
bega " and its great city from many quarters.
In a discourse by a great French sea-captain in
Ramusio's third volume (155G-65), this is said
to be the name given to the land by its inhabi-
tants, 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 fre-
quently spoken of by old writers as a country of
indefinite extent, between Canada and Florida,
and it appears as a large island with Cape Bre-
ton at its eastern extremity, on the map made
according to Verrazzani 's plot in Hackluyt's
"Divers Voyages." These maps and rumors
may have been the origin of the notion, common
among the early settlers, that New England
was an island. The country and city of Norum-
bega appear about where Maine now is on a
map in Ortelius ("Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,"
Antwerp, 1570), and the "R. Grande " is drawn
where the Penobscot or St. John might be.

In 1604, Champlain being sent by the Sieur
de Monts to explore the coast of Norembegue,
sailed up the Penobscot twenty -two or twenty-
three leagues from "Isle Haute," or till he was

290 CAPE COD

stopped by the falls. He says: "I think that
this river is that which many pilots and histo-
rians call Norembegue, and which the greater
part have described as great and spacious, with
numerous 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 tliat "the
greater part " of those who speak of a great city
there 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 de-
scription.

Under date of 1607 Champlain writes:
"Three or four 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 with moss and almost all de-
cayed, which was an evident sign that there had
formerly been Christians there."

Also the following passage from Lescarbot
will show how much the neighboring coasts were
frequented by Europeans in the sixteenth cen-
tury. Speaking of his return from Port Royal
to France in 1607, 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 re*

PROVINCETOWN 291

ceived 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
chart the name of Savalet. [It is on Cham-
plain'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 Newfound-
landers [^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 hundred thousand dry
cod."^ They dried their fish on the rocks on
shore.

The ''Isola della Kena " (Sable Tsland?) ap-
pears on the chart of "Nuova Francia" and
Norumbega, accompanying the "Discourse"
above referred to in Kamusio's third volume,
edition 1556-65. Champlain speaks of there
being at the Isle of Sable, in 1604, "grass pas-
tured by oxen (boeufs) and cows which the Por-
tuguese 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
} Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612.

292 CAPE COD

men, who were left on tliis island seven years
from 1598, lived on the flesh of these cattle
which they found "e?z quantie^^^ and built houses
out of the wrecks of vessels which came to the
island ("perhaps Gilbert's"), there being no
wood or stone. Lescarbot says that they lived
"on fish and the milk of cows left there about
eighty years before by Baron de Leri and Saint
Just." Charlevoix says they ate up the cattle
and then lived on fish. Haliburton 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 Bancroft, referring to Charlevoix. These
are but a few of the instances which I might
^uote.

Cape Cod is commonly said to have been dis-
covered in 1602. We will consider at length
under what circumstances, and with what obser-
vation and expectations, the first Englishmen
whom history clearly discerns approached the
coast of New England. According to the ac-
counts 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

PROVINCETOWN 293

and sailors, twelve purposing upon the discovery
to return with 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 un-
known 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 taking 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 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.

294 CAPE COD

which seemed to have their movable course
towards the northeast." On the 13th they ob-
served "great beds of weeds, much wood, and
divers things else floating by," and "had smell-
ing of the shore much as from the southern
Cape and Andalusia in Spain." On Friday,
the 14th, early in the morning they descried
land on the north, in the latitude of forty -three
degrees, apparently some part of the coast of
Maine. Williamson ^ says it certainly could not
have been south of the central Isle of Shoals.
Belknap 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 ket-
tle of copper." These they at first mistook for
"Christians distressed." One of them was
"apparelled with a waistcoat and breeches of
black serge, made after our sea-fashion, hoes
and shoes on his feet; all the rest (saving one
that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were
naked." They appeared to have had dealings
with "some Basques of St. John de Luz, and
to understand much more than we," say the
English, "for want of language, could compre-
hend." But they soon "set sail westward, leav-
^ History of Maine.

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^ '""^^

^ ^ -^

M^< '^Hh

#'■- ■■•1^

1 ^;3

il * ' .^^tS^K - IT

•l^^

PROVINCETOWN 295

ing them and their coast." (This was a remark-
able discovery for discoverers.)

"The 15th day," writes Gabriel Archer,
"we had again sight of the land, which made
ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason
of a large sound that appeared westward be-
tween it and the main, for coming to the west
end thereof, we did perceive a large opening,
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 an-
chor again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the land
in the latitude of forty -two degrees. 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, strawberries,
whortleberries, etc., as then unripe, the sand
also by the shore somewhat deep ; the firewood
there by us taken in was of cypress, birch,
witch-hazel, and beach. A young Indian came
here to the captain, armed with his bow and ar-
rows, 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,

296 CAPE COD

which was all champaign and full of grass, but
the islands somewhat woody."

Or, according to the account of John Brere-
ton, "riding 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 af-
ternoon we weighed, and standing southerly off
into sea the rest of that day and the night fol-
lowing, with a fresh gale of wind, in the morn-
ing 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 shallop,
and Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and
three others, went ashore, being a white sandy
and very bold shore ; and marching all that af-
ternoon with our muskets on our necks, 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
evening 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 stat-
ure, and of a pleasing countenance, 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

PROVINCETOWN 297

so with codfish, that we threw numbers of them
overboiircl again; and surely I am persuaded
that in the months of March, April, and May,
there is upon this coast better fishing, and in as
great plenty, as in Newfoundland ; for the skulls
of mackerel, herrings, cod, and other fish, that
we daily saw as we went and came from the
shore, were wonderful," etc.

"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 land somewhat low, full of goodly
woods, but in some places plain."

It is not quite clear on which side of the Cape
they landed. If it was inside, as would appear
from Brereton's words, "From this place we
sailed round about this headland almost all the
points of the compass," it must have been on
the western shore either of Truro or Wellfleet.
To one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along
the Cape, the only "white, sandy, and very bold
shore" that appears is in these towns, though
the bank 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, espe-
cially in Wellfleet, — the fort of the land de-
fending itself against the encroachments of the

298 CAPE COD

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 ab-
ruptly 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 Rock] we bare into that great
gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year
before."!

So they sailed round the Cape, calling the
southeasterly extremity "Point Cave," till they
came to an island which they named Martha's
Vineyard (now called No Man's Land), and an-
other on which they dwelt awhile, which they
named Elizabeth's Island, in honor of the
queen, one of the grouj) 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

^ " Savage Rock," which, some have supposed to be, from
the name, the Salvages^ a ledge about two miles off Rockport,
Cape 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 Gosnold is presumed by experienced navigators
to be Cape Elizabeth on the same coast. (See Babson's His'
lory of Gloucester, Massachusetts.)

PROVINCETOWN 299

of stones taken from the beach. Bancroft says
(edition of 1837) the ruins of the fort can no
longer be discerned. Tliey who were to have
remained becoming discontented, all together
set sail for England, with a load of sassafras
and other commodities, on the 18th of June fol-
lowing.

The next year came Martin Pring, looking
for sassafras, and thereafter they began to come
thick and fast, 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 trustworthy 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, Biarne Grinolf-
son, and Thorhall Garnlason, distinguished
Norsemen, in three ships containing "one hun-
dred and sixty men and all sorts of live stock"

300 CAPE COD

(probably the first Norway rats among the rest),
having the land "on the right side "of them,
"roved ashore," and found " Or-cefi (trackless
deserts)," and ^' Strand-ir lang-ar oh 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 Heriulf son {%. e. , son of Heriulf ) who
had been seized with a great 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 following winter, like all the preced-
ing ones, with his father," — being driven far
to the southwest by 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 northward 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
continent.

These Northmen were a hardy race, whose
younger sons inherited the ocean, and traversed
it without chart or compass, and they are said

PROVINCETOWN 301

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 they went ashore. But as
Biarne, and Thorwald, and Thorfiini have not
mentioned the latitude and longitude distinctly
enough, though we have great respect for them
as skillful and adventurous navigators, we must
for the present remain in doubt as to what capes
they did see. We think that they were consid-
erably further north.

If time and space permitted, I could present
the claims of several other worthy persons.
Lescarbot, in 1609, asserts that the French sail-
ors had been accustomed to frequent the New-
foundland Banks from time immemorial, "for
the codfish with which they feed almost 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 extravagant 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
Charte Geogra'phiqiie^ which we have not seen :
"Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utili-
tatem summa litterarum memoria a Gallis adiri
solita, et ante mille sexcentos annos frequentari
solita est; sed eo quod sit urbibus inculta et

302 CAPE COD

vasta, spreta est." "This land, on account of
its very lucrative fishery, was accustomed to be
visited by the Gauls from the very dawn of his-
tory, and more than sixteen hundred years ago
was accustomed to be frequented; but because
it was unadorned with cities, and waste, it was
despised."

It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered
the mine, but I discovered it to the world. And
now Bob Smith is putting in his claim.

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. Con-
sider 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 many
Russians were engaged in the battle of the
Chernaya, the other day? Yet, no doubt, Mr.
Scriblerus, the historian, will fix on a definite
number for the schoolboys to commit to their
excellent memories. What, then, of the num-
ber of Persians at Salamis? The historian
whom I read knew as much about the position
of the parties and their tactics in the last-men-

PROVINCETOWN 303

tioned affair, as they who describe a recent bat-
tle in an article for the pres'. nowadays, before
the particulars have arrived. I believe that, if
I were to live the life of mankind over again
myself, (which I would not be hired to do,) with
the Universal 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 civ-
ilized 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 Massa-
chusetts^ perchance.

Quite recently, on the 11th of November^
1620, old style, as is well known, the Pilgrims
in the Mayflower came to anchor in Cape Cod
Harbor. They had loosed from Plymouth,
England, the 6th of September, and, in the
words of "Mourt's Kelation," "after many
difficulties in boisterous storms, at length, by
God's providence, upon the 9th of November,
we espied land, which we deemed to be Cape
Cod, and so afterward it proved. Upon the
11th of November we came to anchor in the
bay, which is a good harbor and pleasant bay,
circled round except in the entrance, which is
about four miles over from land to land, com-

804 CAPE COD

passed 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, and refreshed our people,
while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to
search for an habitation." There we put up at
Puller's Hotel, passing by the Pilgrim House as
too high for us (we learned afterward that we
need not have been so particular), and we re-
freshed ourselves with hashed fish and beans,
beside taking in a supply of liquids (which were
not intoxicating), while our legs were refitted to
coast the back-side. Further say the Pilgrims :
"We could not come 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 Ply-
mouth.

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

PROVINCETOWN 305

boat in a cart as much as thirty rods in shallow
water, while a troop of little boys kept us com-
pany, wading around, and thence we pulled to
the steamer by a rope. The harbor being thus
shallow and sandy about the 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 j)arty of men who
were smoking and lolling over a pile of boards
on one of the wharves, (nihil humtmum a me,
etc.,) 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 eyes as if they
had just got out of bed; and one old man re-
marked 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 devo-
tions. But a young man in the company, tak-
ing his pipe out of his mouth, said that 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 Sab-

306 CAPE COD

bath at all. This was a 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
windows being open, my meditations were inter-
rupted by the noise of a preacher who shouted
like a boatswain, profaning the quiet atmo-
sphere, and who, I fancied, must have taken
off his coat. Few things could have been more
disgusting or disheartening. I wished the tith-
ing-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 ob-
served a man who had landed there from a boat
creeping along the shore in order to get a shot
at them, but they all rose and flew away in a
great scattering flock, too soon for him, having
apparently 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 mention the word
sand. Now what strikes the voyager is the bar-
renness and desolation of the land. They found

PROVINCETOWN 307

"the ground or earth sand-hills, much like the
downs in Holland, but much better ; the crust of
the earth, a spit's depth, excellent black 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 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 wood
for the most part open and without 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.
The greater part of the land was a perfect des-
ert 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 pass-
ing the head of East Harbor Creek, the boughs
and bushes "tore " their "very armor in pieces "
(the same thing happened to such armor as we
wore, when out of curiosity we took to the
bushes); or they came to deep valleys, "full of
brush, wood-gaile, and long grass," and "found
springs of fresh water."

308 CAPE COD

For the most part we saw neither bough nor
bush, not so 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 sor-
rel enough to color the surface. I suppose,
then, by 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 re-
spects, 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 do not believe that the trees were
large or the soil was deep here. Their account
may be true particularly, but it is generally
false. They saw literally, as well as figura-
tively, but one side of the Cape. They natu-
rally exaggerated the fairness and attractiveness
of the land, for they were glad to get to any
land at all after that anxious voyage. Every-
thing appeared to them of the color of the rose,
and had the scent of juniper and sassafras.
Very different is the general and off-hand ac-
count given by Captain John Smith, who was
on this coast six years earlier, and speaks like
an old traveler, voyager, and soldier, who had

PROVINCETOWN 309

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 pre-
sents 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 excellent harbor for all weathers.
This Cape is made by the main sea on the one
side, and a great bay on the other, in form of
a sickle." Champlain had already written,
"Which we named Cap Blanc (Cape White),
because they were sands and downs (pahles et
dunes') which appeared thus."

When the Pilgi'ims 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, — "ex-
cellent 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
place." They soon found out their mistake
with respect to the goodness of Plymouth soil.
Yet when at length, some years later, when they

310 CAPE COD

were fully satisfied of the poorness of the place
which they had chosen, "the greater part," says
Bradford, "consented to a removal to a place
called Nausett," they agreed to remove all to-
gether to Nauset, now Eastham, which was
jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire; and
some of the most respectable of the inhabitants
of Plymouth did actually remove thither accord-
ingly.

It must be confessed that the Pilgrims pos-
sessed 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 explore and colonize a New World. When
the above-mentioned company removed to East-
ham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use
Bradford's expression, "like an ancient mother
grown old, and forsaken of her children."
Though they landed on Clark's Island in Ply-
mouth harbor, the 9th of December (O. 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 magnifi-
cent pond or lake now called "Billington Sea,'*

PROVINCETOWN 311

about two miles distant, which he had discov-
ered 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 coun-
try. It is true they were busy at first about
their building, and were hindered in that by
much foul weather ; but a party of emigrants to
California or Oregon, with no less work on their
hands, — and more hostile Indians, — would do
as much exploring the first afternoon, and the
Sieur de Champlain would have sought an in-
terview with the savages, and examined the
country as far as the Connecticut, and made a
map of it, before Billing-ton had climbed his
tree. Or contrast them only with the French
searching for copper about the Bay of Fundy
in 1603, tracing up small streams with Indian
guides. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pio-
neers, and the ancestors of pioneers, in a far
grander enterprise.

By this time we saw the little steamer Nau-
shon entering the harbor, and heard the sound
of her whistle, and came down from the hills to
meet her at the wharf. So we took leave or
Cape Cod and its inhabitants. We liked the
manners of the last, what little we saw of them.

312 CAPE COD

very much. They were particularly downright
and good-humored. The old people appeared
remarkably well preserved, as if by the saltness
of the atmosphere, and after having once mis-
taken, we could never be certain whether we
were talking to a coeval of our grandparents, or
to one of our own age. They are said to be
more purely the descendants of the Pilgrims
than the inhabitants of any other part of the
State. We were told that "sometimes, when
the court comes together at Barnstable, they
have not a single criminal to try, and the jail is
shut up." It was "to let" when we were there.
Until quite recently there was no regular lawyer
below Orleans. Who then will complain of a
few regular man-eating sharks along the back-
side?

One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked
what 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 Alplia
p7'ivative, negativing all the efforts which Nature

PROVINCETOWN 813

would fain make 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 haK-seas-over in a figura-
tive sense, now. He 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 inferior
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 acquain-
tance of a passenger whom we had seen at the
hotel. When we asked him which way he came
to Provincetown, he answered that he was cast
ashore at Wood End, Saturday night, in the
same storm in which the St. John was wrecked.

314 CAPE COD

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 mar-
iner always casts the blame on his compass], — •
but there being a mist on shore, we 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 Cap-
tain, '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 well-nigh 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 mid-
night, wet to our skins, and haK 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 adver-

PROVINCETOWN 315

tised 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 wood-
chuck'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-
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 "comber" — 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 com-
monly 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 midnight, and as we

316 CAPE COD

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 sail-
ors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in wel-
come or derision. In one a large Newfoundland
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 jus-
tice! I thought I could hear him making an
effective appeal down there from human to di-
vine justice. He must have had much the clean-
est breast of the two.

Still, many a mile behind us across the Bay,
we saw the white sails of the mackerel fishers
hovering round Cape Cod, and when they were
all hull down, and the low extremity of the
Cape was also down, their white sails still ap-
peared on both sides of it, around where it had
sunk, like a city on the ocean, proclaiming the
rare qualities of Cape Cod Harbor. But before
the extremity of the Cape had completely sunk,
it appeared like a filmy sliver of land lying flat
on the ocean, and later still a mere reflection of
a sand-bar on the haze above. Its name sug-

PROVINCETOWN ^^'^

gests a homely truth, but it would be more
poetic if it described the impression which it
makes on the beholder. Some capes have pe-
culiarly suggestive names. There is Cape
Wrath, the northwest point of Scotland, for m-
stance; 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 hottest 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 on the 25th of
June the next year, it was a quite warm day on
shore. The passengers were dressed in their
thinnest clothes, and at first sat under their um-
brellas, but when we were fairly out on the Bay,
such as had only thin coats were suffering with
the cold, and sought the shelter of the pilot's
house and the warmth of the chimney. But
when we approached the harbor of Province-
town, I was surprised to perceive what an influ-
ence that low and narrow strip of sand, only a
mile or two in width, had over the temperature
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.

318 CAPE COD

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 surrounding forest, and is conspicuous for
many miles over land and water. Here was the
new iron light-house, then unfinished, in the
shape of an egg-shell painted red, and placed
high on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea-
monster floating on the waves, — destined to be
phosphorescent. 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 had 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
jou, almost sure to have you at last. And not
one of all those voyagers can come to your re-
lief, — but when yon light goes out, it will be a
sign that the light of your life has gone out

PROVINCETOWN 819

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 least ; yet a colored cook belonging
to the boat, whom I had 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 gaz-
ing at it, as he drew back his arm, caught sight
of it, and with surprise 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 world could man-
age to see. You would almost as easil}^ 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 weU be under a
bushel. This light-house, as is well known,
was swept away in a storm in April, 1851, and
the two men in it, and the next morning not a
vestige of it was to be seen from the shore.
A Hull man told me that he helped set up a

320 CAPE COD

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 the Melrose in
July, we hugged the Scituate shore as long as
possible, in order to take advantage of the
wind. 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 original-
ity as was possible for one who used a borrowed
expression, "This is a great country." He had
been a timber merchant, and I afterward saw
him taking the diameter of the main mast with
his stick, and estimating its height. I returned
from the same excursion in the Olata, a very
handsome and swift-sailing 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 com-

PROVINCETOWN 821

pany, — with our heads over the rail watching
the great sand-circles and the fishes at the bot-
tom 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 miles over the sea,
and by a sudden change in its direction, 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 distance apart for so
many hours. At which the Captain dryly re-
marked, 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 echmidce, yet the police will not let a
couple of Irishmen have a private sparring-
match on one of them, as it is a government

322 CAPE COD

monopoly ; all the great seaports are in a boxing
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 discov-
ered by a Spanish ship of that name which was
wrecked on them, " which till then," says Capt.
eJohn Smith, " for six thousand 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 j^lanting of them
with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first Gov-
ernor, 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 com-
pany that should be Jiext shipwrecked on to
them. It would have been more sensible to
have built as many "Charity -houses." These
are the vexed Bermoothes.

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
j^oung men returning from a fishing excursion
came to the side of their smack, while we were
thus steadily drawing by them, and, bowing,

PROVINCETOWN 323

observed, 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 even-
ing of a holiday. The Eastern steamboat passed
us with music and a cheer, as if they were going
to a ball, when they might be going to — Davy's
locker.

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix's mate
to some 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 our fortes^
but onr 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 distinguish the wharves
jutting out toward us, but it appeared like an
even line of shore densely crowded with ship-
ping. You could not have guessed within a
quarter of a mile of Long Wharf. Neverthe-
less, we were to be blown to a crevice amid
them, — steering right into the maze. Down

324 CAPE COD

goes tlie mainsail, and only the jib draws us
along. Now we are within four rods of the
shipping, having already dodged several outsid-
ers; 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
passengers feel their hearts half-way to their
mouths, expecting 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 bowsprit, 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 Quincy Market, has seen Bos-
ton.

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston,
New Orleans, and the rest, are the names of
wharves projecting into the sea (surrounded by
the shops and dwellings of the merchants), good
places to take in and to discharge a cargo (to
land the products of other climes and load the
exports of our own). I see a great many bar-
rels and fig-drums, — piles of wood for um-

PROVINCETOWN 325

brella-sticks, — blocks of ^anite 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 bar-
rels, the more Boston. The museums and
scientific societies and libraries are accidental.
They gather around the sands to save carting.
The wharf -rats and custom-house officers, and
broken-do^vn poets, seeking a fortune amid the
barrels. Their better or worse lyceums, and
preachings, and doctorings, these, too, are acci-
dental, and the malls of commons are always
small potatoes. When I go to Boston, I n.:tu-
rally go straight through the city (taking tlio
Market in my way), down to the end of Long
Wharf, and look oif, 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.

When 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.

326 CAPE COD

The places which I have described may seem
strange and remote to my townsmen, — indeed,
from Boston to Provincetown is twice as far as
from England to France ; yet step into the cars,
and in six hours you may stand on those four
planks, and see the Cape which Gosnold is said
to have discovered, and which I have so poorly
described. If you had started when I first ad-
vised you, you might have seen our tracks in
the sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way
from the Nauset lights to Race Point, some
thirty miles, — for at every step we made an
impression on the Cape, though we were not
aware of it, and though our account may have
made no impression on your minds. But what
is our account? In it there is no roar, 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 prob-
ably 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, OaXaa-a-oSpojxa,

PROVINCETOWN 327

running over the sea, and if tlie 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 trav-
eler 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 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
inlet, but it is literally a mere sand-bar, ex-
posed, several miles from the island, and not
the edge of a continent wasting before the as-
saults 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 southern
aspect. The only other beaches of great length
on our Atlantic coast, which I have heard sail-
ors speak of, are those of Barnegat on the Jer-
sey shore, and Currituck between Virginia and
North Carolina ; but these, like the last, are low
and narrow sand-bars, lying off the coast, and

328 CAPE COD

separated from the mainland by lagoons. Be-
sides, as you go farther south the tides are fee-
bler, 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
Columbia River) to Cape Flattery (at the Strait
of Juan de Fuca) is nearly north and south, and
can be traveled 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, is 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 present no name any
more than fame. That portion south of Nauset
Harbor is commonly called Chatham Beach.
The part in Eastham is called Nauset Beach,
and off Wellfleet and Truro the Backside, or
sometimes, perhaps. Cape Cod Beach. I think
that part which extends without interruption
from Nauset Harbor to Race Point should be
called Cape Cod Beach, and do so speak of it.
One of the most attractive points for visitors

PROVINCETOWN 329

is in the northeast part of Wellfleet, where ac-
commodations (I mean for men and women of
tolerable health and habits) could probably be
had within half a mile of the seashore. It best
combines the country and the seaside. Though
the Ocean is out of sight, its faintest murmur
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 one or more of his family, walks
out to the edge of the bank 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 picture 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 seaside in warm
weather, when fogs are frequent, and the atmo-
sphere is wont to be thick, and the charm of the
sea is to some extent lost. But I suspect that

330 CAPE COD

the fall is the best season, for then the atmo-
sphere is more transparent, and it is a greater
pleasure to look out over the sea. The clear
and bracing air, and the storms of autumn and
winter even, are necessary in order that we
may get the impression which the sea is calcu-
lated 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 prGiit.
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 of resort for those New-Englanders who
really wish to visit the seaside. 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 rail-
way, 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 New-
port, — 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

PROVINCETOWN 331

as are fashionable are here made and unmade 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 wa-
terfalls? 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.

INDEX

Across the Cape, 153-178.

Alphonse, Jean, " Routier," quoted,
288.

Anchors, dragging for, 194.

Apple-trees, Cape Cod, 36-38.

Archer, Gabriel, quoted, 295.

Architecture, American, 32.

Autumn landscape near Province-
town, 232-234.

Azy, a Bible name, 112.

Bank swallow, the, 196.

Barber's Historical Collections,
quoted, 267.

Barnstable (Mass.), 24.

Bascom, the Rev. Jonathan, 63.

Bayberry, the, 120-122.

Beach, The, 65-91.

Beach Again, The, 120-152.

Beaches, Cape Cod the best of At-
lantic, 326-328.

Beach-grass, 241, 242, 246-251.

Beach-pea, the, 105, 248, 249.

Bellamy, the pirate wrecked off
Wellfleet, 192.

Beverly, Robert, "History of Vir-
ginia," quoted, 16, 120, 121.

Billingsgate, part of Wellfleet called,
96.

Billingsgate Island, 105.

Birds on Cape Cod, 134, 135, 156,
196.

Blackfish driven ashore in storm,
170-176.

Borde, Sieur de la, Relatio'i des
Caraibes, quoted, 186.

Boston, a big wharf, 325.

Boys, Provincetown, 262.

Breakers, 66, 252.

Brereton, John, quoted, 296.

Brewster (Mass.), 24, 31, 32.

Bridgewater (Mass.), 20.

Brook Island in Cohasset, 4.

Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted, 188.

Buckland, Curiositiea of Natural
History, 98.

Cabot, the discoveries of, 281.

Cambria, the steamer, aground, 110.

Camp-meetings, Eastham, 53-55,
versus Ocea.li, 77.

Cape Cod, T.'s various visits to, 1 ;
derivation of name of, 2 ; forma-
tion of, 2, 3, 21 ; barrenness of,
40-42; the real, 74; houses, 93;
landscape, a, 157-163 ; men, the
Norse quality of, 166, 167 ; west-
ern shore of, 169 ; changes in the
coast-line of, 180-185 ; clothes-
yard, a, 265 ; and its harbors, va-
rious names for, 273, 276 ; Gos-
nold's discovery of, 292-299 ;
people, 311, 312.

" Cape Cod Railroad," the, 20.

Champlaiu, " Voyages," quoted, 99 ;
records and maps of, 274-282.

Charity, cold, 90.

Chatham (Mass.), described, 29.

Cigar-smoke, the gods not to be
appeased with, 47.

Cities as wharves, 324.

Clams, Cape Cod, 39, 40 ; large, 84 ;
or quahogs, catching birds, 100,
101 ; stones shaped like, 129.

Clay Pounds, the, 157 ; why so
called, 189 ; the Somerset wrecked
on, 193.

Cohasset (Mass.), the wreck at, 3-
14 ; Rocks, sea-bathing at, 17, 18.

Corn, great crops of, 42-45.

Cows fed on fishes' heads, 258.

Crantz, account of Greenland,
quoted, 69, 178.

Darwin, Charles, quoted, 144, 145.
Dead body on the shore, a, 126,

127.
De Monts, Champlain and, 275.
Dennis (Mass.), 24 ; described, 27-

29.
Doane, Heman, verses by, on

Thomas Prince's pear-tree, 50, 51.
Doane, John, 51.

334

INDEX

Dogs on the Beashore, 222-224. I

Driftwood, Cape Cod and Green-
land, 68-70.
Dwight, Timothy, quoted, 255, 272.

East Harbor Village, in Truro, 163.

Eastham (Mass.), the history of, 48-
64; ministers of, 51-64; Table
Lands of, 71 ; the Pilgrims, 310.

Fences in Truro, 164, 165.

" Fish, A Religious," newspaper

clipping, 138; uses of, in Prov-

incetown, 255-259.
Fish stories, ancient, 259, 260.
Fishes driven ashore by storm, 170-

176.
Fishing for bass, 139 ; mackerel,

215-221, 227-229.
Fox, starting up a, 177.
Franklin, wreck of the ship, 84,

109; wreckage from the, 135,

136.
French, coin found on beach at
WeUfleet, 193 ; explorers in and
about New England, 274-292.
Fruit-trees, paucity of, in Cape

towns, 38.
" Furdustrandas,'^ 225, 230.

Galway, Ireland, the wrecked brig

from, 5.
Gazetteer, the, 28, 31.
Gerard, the English herbalist,

quoted, 248.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 146.
Gilpin, William, quoted, 141.
Gosnold, Captain Bartholomew, 2 ;

discovery of Cape Cod by, 292-

299.
Grampus Rock, in Cohasset, 7, 9.
Graveyard, a Cape Cod, 176.
Greenland, driftwood in, 69.
Gulls, methods of catching, 83.

Herring River, 93.

Highland Light, The, 179-210.

Highland Light, 157, 179 ; descrip-
tion and stories of, 201-210.

Hog Island, inside of Hull, 15.

HuU (Mass.), 15.

Humane Society, huts of the, 73,
85-91.

Humboldt, Alex, von, quoted, 143.

Huts for shipwrecked sailors, 73,
85-91.

Indian habitation, signs of previous,

99.
Italian discoverers, 283.

Jeremiah's Gutter, 40.
Jerusalem Village (Mass.), 17.
Jesuits, early, in New England,

280.
Josselyn, John, quoted, 115.

Kalm, Travels in North America,

quoted, 150, 241.
Kelp, 77-80.

Legs, the, as compasses, 103.
Lescarbot, quoted, 290, 301.
Long Wharf, taking a place at, 323.

Mackerel, fishing for, 215-221, 227-

229 ; fleet, the, 238, 315, 316.
Maps of Cape Cod and New England,

274-278, 282, 283.
Massachusetts Bay, shallowness of,

147.
Massachusetts Historical Society,

Collections of the, 22.
Menhaden, schools of, 142.
Ministers, salaries of country, 52 ;

some old Cape Cod, 55-64.
Minot's Ledge, the light on, 318,

319.
Mirages on sand and sea, 229-231.
Moisture in Cape Cod air, 198.
Mount Ararat in Provincetown, 229.
Mourt's Relation, quoted, 42, 111,

303.

Nantasket (Mass.), 17.

Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, 34, 74.

Nauset Lights, 46.

Nix's mate, story of, 323.

Northeaster, a, 245, 252-254.

Norumbega, 289.

Ocean, calm, rough, and fruitful,
148-152 ; beaches across the, 213,
214.

October, the best season for visiting
the Cape, 330.

Olata, the swift-sailing yacht, 320.

Organ-grinders on the Cape, 33.

Orleans (Mass.), 24; Higgins's tav-
ern at, 33.

Osborn, the Rev. Samuel, 61, 62.

Pamet River, 156.

Pear-tree, the, planted by Thomas

Prince, 50.
Penliallow, Samuel, History, quoted,

284.
Petrel, the storm, 135.
Pilgrims, arrival of the, 303-311.
Pitch-pine, tracts of, 24.
Plains of Nacset, The, 34-64.

INDEX

335

Plants, on Cape Cod beach, 131 ;
about Highland Light, IGO, 200 ;
about the Clay Pounds, 197.

Pleasant Cove, in Cohasset, 19.

Plover, the piping of, 82.

Point Allerton, 15.

Pohiphloisboios Thalassa, the Rev.,
77.

Pond Village, 1G9.

Ponds in Welltieet, 105.

Post-office, the domestic, 27.

Postel, Charte Geographique,
quoted, 301.

Poverty-grass, 25 ; as the Barnsta,-
ble coat-of-anns, IGO, 101.

Prince, Thomas, 49.

Pring, Martin, New England dis-
coveries of, 275, 27fi, 298, 299.

Provincetown, 255-331.

Provincetown (Mass.), walking to,
34, 6G ; Bank, suspected of rob-
bing, 212 ; approach to, 232 ; de-
scribed, 234-237; fish, 256-259;
boys, 262 ; Harbor, 272.

Purple Sea, the, 141.

Race Point, 74, 232, 240.
'• Rut," the, a sound before a change
of wind, 114, 115.

St. George's Bank, 146, 147.

St. John, the wrecked brig, 5.

Salt, as manufactured by Capt. John
Sears, 30, 31 ; works, 2G3, 264.

Sand, blowing, 245 ; inroads of the,
250, 251 ; Provincetown, 265-268.

Sandwich (Mass.), 20 ; described,
22-24.

Schooner, origin of word, 239.

Sea and the Desert, The, 211-
254.

Sea, the roar of the, 45, 76 ; re-
moteness of the bottom of the,
146.

Sea-bathing, 17, 18.

Sea fleas, 134.

Sears, Capt. John, and salt manu-
facture, 30, 31.

Shank-Painter Swamp, 240, 262.

Sharks, 132-134.

Shell-fish on Cape Cod beach, 130,
131.

Shipwreck, The, 1-19.

Signals, old clothes as, 24.

Simpkins, the Rev. John, quoted,
33.

Smith, Capt. John, quoted, 216,
309; map of New England by,
276.

Smoothness of ocean, 148.

Snow's Hollow, 70.

Somerset, British ship of war,

wrecked on Clay Pounds, 193.
Spanisli discoverei-s, 283.
Stage-Coach Views, 20-33.
Stone, the Rev. Nathan, G4.
Stones, rarity of, on Cape Cod, 260-

271.
Suet, in Dennis (Mass.), 30.
Sunday in Provincetown, 305.
Sun-squall, sea-jellies called, 81.

Table Lands of Eastham, 71.

Thor-finn andThor-eau, 230 ; voyage
of, 299.

Tlioreau, Henry David, various vis-
its to Cape Cod, 1 ; starts for Cape
Cod, Oct. 9, 1849, 3 ; goes on a
mackerel cruise, 219 ; takes leave
of Cape Cod, 311.

Thorhall, the disappointment of,
225.

Thorn-apple, the, 15, 16.

Thorwald, voyage of, 299, 300.

Travelers, good humor of, 25.

Treat, the Rev. Samuel, 55-60.

Trees on Cape Cod, 153-156 ; disap-
pearance of, 308.

Truro (Mass.), 123, 163-165; the
wreck of, 190.

Turtles, land and sea, 243.

" Uncle Bill," somebody's (or every-
body's), 168.

Vegetables in the oysterman's gar-
den, 118.

Vessels seen from Cape Cod, 123-
125, 140, 143-146.

"Water, Cape Cod, 271.

Waves on the shore, 186-189.

Webb, the Rev. Benjamin, 62, 63.

Webb's Island, the lost, 182.

Webster, Daniel, quoted, 148.

Wellfleet Oysterman, The, 92-
119.

Wellfleet (Mass.), oysters, 96; Bel-
lamy wrecked off, 192 ; a good
headquarters for visitors to the
Cape, 329.

" When descends on the Atlantic,"
Longfellow, quoted, 80.

Whitehead, near Cohasset, 10.

Wind-mills, Cape Cod, 38, 39.

Windows in Cape Cod houses, 93.

Winthrop, Gov., quoted, 285.

Women, pinched-up, 26.

Wood, William, quoted, 100.

Wood End, wreck at, 313-315.

336

INDEX

Wreck of the Franklin, 84 ; of Bel-
lamy the pirate, 192 ; of the Brit-
ish ship of war Somerset, 193 ;
story of a man from a, 313-315.

Wreckage, 137-139.

Wrecker, a Cape Cod, 67, 68.
Wrecks, Truro, 190 ; the
quences of, 195, 196.

Yarmouth (Mass.), 24.