INTRODUCTION

Of the group of notables who in the middle of the last century made the

little Massachusetts town of Concord their home, and who thus conferred

on it a literary fame both unique and enduring, Thoreau is the only one

who was Concord born. His neighbor, Emerson, had sought the place in

mature life for rural retirement, and after it became his chosen

retreat, Hawthorne, Alcott, and the others followed; but Thoreau, the

most peculiar genius of them all, was native to the soil.

In 1837, at the age of twenty, he graduated from Harvard, and for three

years taught school in his home town. Then he applied himself to the

business in which his father was engaged,—the manufacture of lead

pencils. He believed he could make a better pencil than any at that

time in use; but when he succeeded and his friends congratulated him

that he had now opened his way to fortune he responded that he would

never make another pencil. “Why should I?” said he. “I would not do

again what I have done once.”

So he turned his attention to miscellaneous studies and to nature. When

he wanted money he earned it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to

him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, or surveying. He never

married, very rarely went to church, did not vote, refused to pay a tax

to the State, ate no flesh, drank no wine, used no tobacco; and for a

long time he was simply an oddity in the estimation of his

fellow-townsmen. But when they at length came to understand him better

they recognized his genuineness and sincerity and his originality, and

they revered and admired him. He was entirely independent of the

conventional, and his courage to live as he saw fit and to defend and

uphold what he believed to be right never failed him. Indeed, so

devoted was he to principle and his own ideals that he seems never to

have allowed himself one indifferent or careless moment.

He was a man of the strongest local attachments, and seldom wandered

beyond his native township. A trip abroad did not tempt him in the

least. It would mean in his estimation just so much time lost for

enjoying his own village, and he says: “At best, Paris could only be a

school in which to learn to live here—a stepping-stone to Concord.”

He had a very pronounced antipathy to the average prosperous city man,

and in speaking of persons of this class remarks: “They do a little

business commonly each day in order to pay their board, and then they

congregate in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate and paddle in the

social slush, and go unashamed to their beds and take on a new layer of

sloth.”

The men he loved were those of a more primitive sort, unartificial,

with the daring to cut loose from the trammels of fashion and inherited

custom. Especially he liked the companionship of men who were in close

contact with nature. A half-wild Irishman, or some rude farmer, or

fisherman, or hunter, gave him real delight; and for this reason, Cape

Cod appealed to him strongly. It was then a very isolated portion of

the State, and its dwellers were just the sort of independent,

self-reliant folk to attract him. In his account of his rambles there

the human element has large place, and he lingers fondly over the

characteristics of his chance acquaintances and notes every salient

remark. They, in turn, no doubt found him interesting, too, though the

purposes of the wanderer were a good deal of a mystery to them, and

they were inclined to think he was a pedler.

His book was the result of several journeys, but the only trip of which

he tells us in detail was in October. That month, therefore, was the

one I chose for my own visit to the Cape when I went to secure the

series of pictures that illustrate this edition; for I wished to see

the region as nearly as possible in the same guise that Thoreau

describes it. From Sandwich, where his record of Cape experiences

begins, and where the inner shore first takes a decided turn eastward,

I followed much the same route he had travelled in 1849, clear to

Provincetown, at the very tip of the hook.

Thoreau has a good deal to say of the sandy roads and toilsome walking.

In that respect there has been marked improvement, for latterly a large

proportion of the main highway has been macadamed. Yet one still

encounters plenty of the old yielding sand roads that make travel a

weariness either on foot or in teams. Another feature to which the

nature lover again and again refers is the windmills. The last of these

ceased grinding a score of years ago, though several continue to stand

in fairly perfect condition. There have been changes on the Cape, but

the landscape in the main presents the same appearance it did in

Thoreau’s time. As to the people, if you see them in an unconventional

way, tramping as Thoreau did, their individuality retains much of the

interest that he discovered.

Our author’s report of his trip has a piquancy that is quite alluring.

This might be said of all his books, for no matter what he wrote about,

his comments were certain to be unusual; and it is as much or more for

the revelations of his own tastes, thoughts, and idiosyncrasies that we

read him as for the subject matter with which he deals. He had

published only two books when he died in 1862 at the age of forty-four,

and his “Cape Cod” did not appear until 1865. Nor did the public at

first show any marked interest in his books. During his life,

therefore, the circle of his admirers was very small, but his fame has

steadily increased since, and the stimulus of his lively descriptions

and observations seems certain of enduring appreciation.

Clifton Johnson.

Hadley, Mass.

I

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, another 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 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 codfish” which Captain

Bartholomew Gosnold caught there in 1602; which fish appears to have

been so called from the Saxon word _codde_, “a case in which seeds are

lodged,” either from the form of the fish, or the quantity of spawn it

contains; whence also, perhaps, _codling_ (_pomum coctile?_) and

coddle,—to cook green like peas. (V. Dic.)

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts: the shoulder is

at Buzzard’s Bay; the elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre; the

wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown,—behind which the

State stands on her guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, and

her feet planted on the floor of the 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 account 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 9th, 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 noticed in the streets a handbill headed,

“Death! one hundred and forty-five lives lost at Cohasset,” we decided

to go by way of Cohasset. We found many Irish in the cars, going to

identify bodies and to sympathize with the survivors, and also to

attend the funeral which was to take place in the afternoon;—and when

we arrived at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly all the passengers were

bound for the beach, which was about a mile distant, and many other

persons were flocking in from the neighboring country. There were

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 the graveyard we saw a large hole, like a cellar,

freshly dug there, and, just before reaching the shore, by a pleasantly

winding and rocky road, we met several hay-riggings and farm-wagons

coming away 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

examining the fragments 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 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 surrounded by a crowd. The bodies which

had been recovered, twenty-seven or eight in all, had been collected

there. Some were rapidly nailing down the lids, others were carting the

boxes away, and others were lifting the lids, which were yet loose, and

peeping under the cloths, for each body, with such rags as still

adhered to it, was covered loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no

signs of grief, but there was a sober dispatch of business which was

affecting. One man was seeking to identify a particular body, and one

undertaker or carpenter 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 probably had intended to go out to service in some

American family,—to which some rags still adhered, with a string, half

concealed by the flesh, about its swollen neck; the coiled-up wreck of

a human hulk, gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the bone and

muscle were exposed, but quite bloodless,—merely red and white,—with

wide-open and staring 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 superscription I have

quoted,—her child in her sister’s arms, as if the sister had meant to

be found thus; and within three days after, the mother died from the

effect of that sight.

We turned from this and walked along the rocky shore. In the first cove

were strewn what seemed the fragments of a vessel, in small pieces

mixed with sand and sea-weed, and great quantities of feathers; but it

looked so old and rusty, that I at first took it to be some old wreck

which had lain there many years. I even thought of Captain Kidd, and

that the feathers were those which sea-fowl had cast there; and perhaps

there might be some tradition about it in the neighborhood. I asked a

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 rubbish 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 sea-weed which the

storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide,

though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from

it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it.

Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable

manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the

fabric of society.

About a mile south we could see, rising above the rocks, the masts of

the British brig which the _St. John_ had endeavored to follow, which

had slipped her cables and, by good luck, run into the mouth of

Cohasset 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 together. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by fourteen

wide. I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on

this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller

fragments before. The largest timbers 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 little further on a crowd of

men was collected around the mate of the _St. John_, who was telling

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 interest in the

matter.

Another, a large man, stood near by upon a rock, gazing into the sea,

and chewing large quids of tobacco, as if that habit were forever

confirmed with him.

“Come,” says another to his companion, “let’s be off. We’ve seen the

whole of it. It’s no use to stay to the funeral.”

Further, we saw one standing upon a rock, who, we were told, was one

that was saved. He was a sober-looking man, dressed in a jacket and

gray pantaloons, with his hands in the pockets. I asked him a few

questions, which he answered; but he seemed unwilling to talk about it,

and soon walked away. By his side stood one of the life-boatmen, 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 prevented 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 recovering from the shock which

their bodies and minds had sustained. One was not expected to live.

We kept on down the shore as far as a promontory called Whitehead, that

we might see more of the Cohasset Rocks. In a little cove, within half

a mile, there were an old man and his son collecting, with their team,

the sea-weed which that fatal storm had cast up, as serenely employed

as if there had never been a wreck in the world, though they were

within sight of the Grampus Rock, on which the _St. John_ had 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 concerned him most, rock-weed,

kelp, and sea-weed, as he named them, which he carted to his barn-yard;

and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the tide cast up,

but which were of no use to him. We afterwards came to the life-boat in

its harbor, waiting for another emergency,—and in the afternoon we saw

the funeral procession at a distance, at the head of which walked the

captain with the other survivors.

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 sympathized 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 blighted prospects of

individuals. I saw that corpses might be multiplied, as on the field of

battle, till they no longer affected us in any degree, as exceptions to

the common lot of humanity. Take all the graveyards together, they are

always the majority. It is the individual and private that demands our

sympathy. A man can attend but one funeral in the course of his life,

can behold but one corpse. Yet I saw that the inhabitants of the shore

would be not a little affected by this event. They would watch there

many days and nights for the sea to give up its dead, and their

imaginations and sympathies would supply the place of mourners far

away, who as yet knew not of the wreck. Many days after this, something

white was seen floating on the water by one who was sauntering on the

beach. It was approached in a boat, and found to be the body of a

woman, which had risen in an 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.

[Illustration: Cohasset, The little cove at Whitehead promontory]

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 universal and convincing evidence—though it has not yet

been discovered by science—than Columbus had of this; not merely

mariners’ tales and some paltry drift-wood and sea-weed, but a

continual drift and instinct to all our shores. I saw their empty hulks

that came to land; but they themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some

shore yet further west, toward which we are all tending, and which we

shall reach at last, it may be through storm and darkness, as they did.

No doubt, we have reason to 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 Boston Harbor the better place; though perhaps invisible 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 halcyon

days, and he kisses the shore in rapture there, while his old hulk

tosses in the surf here. It is hard to part with one’s body, but, no

doubt, it is easy enough to do without it when once it is gone. All

their plans and hopes burst like a bubble! Infants by the score dashed

on the rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean! No, no! If the _St. John_

did not make her port here, she has been telegraphed there. The

strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit’s breath. A just

man’s purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but

itself 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 returned again.

“No carved wood, no broken branches,

Ever drift from that far wild;

He who on that ocean launches

Meets no corse of angel child.

“Undismayed, my noble sailors,

Spread, then 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 your 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.”

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

stramonium_, 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

innocent plant; it suggests not merely commerce, but its attend-ant

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 between the sails. It was a purely rural sound. As I looked

over the water, I saw the isles rapidly wasting away, the sea nibbling

voraciously at the continent, the springing arch of a hill suddenly

interrupted, as at Point Alderton,—what botanists might call

premorse,—showing, 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 everything seemed to be gently

lapsing, into futurity. This isle had got the very form of a

ripple,—and I thought that the inhabitants should bear a ripple 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,[1] springing from its edge. The most

interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an

unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out to me, on the side of

a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not

visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring

on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest. 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 collecting in haste, before a

thunder-shower now approaching, the Irish moss which they had spread to

dry. The shower passed on one side, and gave me a few drops only, which

did not cool the air. I merely felt a puff upon my cheek, though,

within sight, a vessel was capsized in the bay, and several others

dragged their anchors, and were near going ashore. The sea-bathing at

Cohasset Rocks was perfect. The water was purer and more transparent

than any I had ever seen. There was not a particle of mud or slime

about it. The bottom being sandy, I could see the sea-perch swimming

about. The smooth and fantastically worn rocks, and the perfectly clean

and tress-like rock-weeds falling over you, and attached so firmly to

the rocks that you could pull yourself up by them, greatly enhanced the

luxury of the bath. The stripe of barnacles just above the weeds

reminded me of some vegetable growth,—the buds, and petals, and

seed-vessels of flowers. They lay along 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 receding of the tide, was so crystalline that I could not believe

it salt, but wished to drink it; and higher up were basins of fresh

water left by the rain,—all which, being also of different depths and

temperature, were convenient for different kinds of baths. Also, the

larger hollows in the smoothed rocks formed the most convenient of

seats and dressing-rooms. In these respects it was the most perfect

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

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 dying: by thousands, and the

inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence as the water evaporated. It

had live rocky islets in it.

This Rock 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.

[1] 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. Indeed, they were not

very cleanly. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after

eleven days returned to themselves again, not remembering anything

that had passed.”—Beverly’s _History of Virginia_, p. 120.

II

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 forgotten 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.

We were now fairly on the Cape, which extends 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 stitched in time, which reveal the naked flesh

of the Cape, and its extremity is completely bare.

I at once got out my book, the eighth volume of the Collections of the

Massachusetts Historical Society, printed in 1802, which contains some

short notices of the Cape towns, and began to read up to where I was,

for in the cars I could not read as fast as I travelled. To those who

came from the side of Plymouth, it said: “After riding through a body

of woods, twelve miles in extent, interspersed with but few houses, the

settlement of Sandwich appears, with a more agreeable effect, to the

eye of the traveller.” Another writer speaks of this 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 beautiful villages, embellished,

perchance, with a “fulling-mill,” “a handsome academy,” or

meeting-house, and “a number of shops for the different mechanic arts”;

where the green and white houses of the gentry, drawn up in rows, front

on a street of which it would be difficult to tell whether it is most

like a desert or a long stable-yard. Such spots can be beautiful only

to the weary traveller, or the returning native,—or, perchance, the

repentant misanthrope; not to him who, with unprejudiced senses, has

just come out of the woods, and approaches one of them, by a bare road,

through a succession of straggling homesteads where he cannot tell

which is the alms-house. However, as for Sandwich, I cannot speak

particularly. Ours was but half a Sandwich at most, and that must have

fallen on the buttered side some time. I only saw that it was a closely

built town for a small one, with glass-works to improve its sand, and

narrow streets in which we turned round and round till we could not

tell which way we were going, and the rain came in, first on this side,

and then on that, and I saw that they in the houses were more

comfortable than we in the coach. My book also said of this town, “The

inhabitants, in general, are substantial livers.”—that is. I suppose,

they do not live like philosophers: but, as the stage did not stop long

enough for us to dine, we had no opportunity to test the truth of this

statement. It may have referred, however, to the quantity “of oil they

would yield.” It further said, “The inhabitants of Sandwich generally

manifest a fond and steady adherence to the manners, employments, and

modes of living which characterized their fathers”; which made me think

that they were, after all, very much like all the rest of the

world;—and it added that this was “a resemblance, which, at this day,

will constitute no impeachment of either their virtue or taste”: which

remark proves to me that the writer was one with the rest of them. No

people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their

fathers might have been to them. But it must be confessed that ours was

old authority, and probably they have changed all that now.

[Illustration: An old windmill]

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 appeared as if this use must

absorb the greater part of the old clothes of the Cape, leaving but few

rags for the pedlers. The wind-mills 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 road-side was partially covered with bunches of a moss-like

plant, _Hudsonia tomentosa_, which a woman in the stage told us was

called “poverty-grass,” because 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 as 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 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, respectable, 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 husbands,

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 that writing letters, and sorting them

against our arrival, must be the principal employment of the

inhabitants of the Cape this rainy day. The post-office appeared a

singularly 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 travellers, while he retailed some piece of gossip to the

driver, really as indifferent to the presence of the former as if they

were so much baggage. In one instance we understood that a woman was

the postmistress, and they said that she made the best one on the road;

but we suspected that the letters must be subjected to a very close

scrutiny there. While we were stopping for this purpose at Dennis, we

ventured 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

exceedingly barren and desolate country, of a character which I can

find no name for; such a surface, perhaps, as the bottom of the sea

made dry land 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 inside. 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 corners as square; but, if I do not mistake, every

one of them was dead. I could not help thinking that they needed a

revival here. Our book said that, in 1795, there was erected in Dennis

“an elegant meeting-house, with a steeple.” Perhaps this was the one;

though whether it had a steeple, or had died down so far from sympathy

with the poplars, I do not remember. Another meeting-house in this town

was described as a “neat building”; but of the meeting-house in

Chatham, a neighboring town, for there was then but one, nothing is

said, except that it “is in good repair,”—both which remarks, 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 Nobscusset, in my estimation, belong to the same

category 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 delight 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 unobstructed

sea-breeze answers the purpose of a fan. The historian of Chatham says

further, that “in many families there is no difference between the

breakfast and supper; cheese, cakes, and pies being as common at the

one as at the other.” But that leaves us still uncertain whether they

were really common at either.

[Illustration: A street in Sandwich]

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 summit of this hill, our guide says: “The view has not

much of the beautiful in it, but it communicates a strong emotion of

the sublime.” That is the kind of communication which we love to have

made to us. We passed through the village of Suet, in Dennis, on Suet

and 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 1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt

was scarce and dear. The Historical Collections contain an interesting

account of his experiments, 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 unable to

compete with the importers of salt and the manufacturers of it at the

West, and, accordingly, her salt-works are fast going to decay. From

making salt, they turn to fishing more than ever. The Gazetteer 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 domestic

manufactures which are nearly the same all the world over.

Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brewster, so named after Elder

Brewster, for fear he would be forgotten else. Who has not heard of

Elder Brewster? Who knows who he was? This appeared to be the

modern-built town of the Cape, the favorite residence of retired

sea-captains. It is said that “there are more masters and mates of

vessels which sail on foreign 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 removed from lumber; only Eastern stuff disguised with

white paint, the least interesting kind of drift-wood to me. Perhaps we

have reason to be proud of our naval architecture, and need not go to

the Greeks, or the Goths, or the Italians, for the models of our

vessels. Sea-captains do not employ a Cambridgeport carpenter to build

their floating houses, and for their houses on shore, if they must copy

any, it would be more agreeable to the imagination to see one of their

vessels turned bottom upward, in the 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 road.” This we were pleased to imagine,

as we had not seen the sun for twenty-four hours.

[Illustration: The old Higgins tavern at Orleans]

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 Higgins’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 its emissaries, sooner or later, to every

sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker

visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.

III

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET

The next morning, Thursday, October 11th, it rained, as hard as ever;

but we were determined to proceed on foot, nevertheless. We first made

some inquiries with regard to the practicability of walking up the

shore on the Atlantic side to Provincetown, whether we should meet with

any creeks or marshes to trouble us. Higgins said that there was no

obstruction, and that it was not much farther than by the road, but he

thought that we should find it very “heavy” walking in the sand; it was

bad enough in the road, a horse would sink in up to the fetlocks there.

But there was one man at the tavern who had walked it, and he said that

we could go very well, though it was sometimes inconvenient and even

dangerous walking under the bank, when there was a great tide, with an

easterly wind, which caused the sand to cave. For the first four or

five miles we 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 Harbor, in Orleans, on our right. We

found the travelling good enough for walkers on the sides of the roads,

though it was “heavy” for horses in the middle. We walked with our

umbrellas behind 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 between, besides being

small and rusty, though they appeared to be kept in good repair, and

their dooryards, 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 firmness of the land, without studying their postures or

habiliments. To them it was merely _terra firma_ and _cognita_, not yet

_fertilis_ and _jucunda_. 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. For birds there were gulls, and

for carts in the fields, boats turned bottom upward against the houses,

and sometimes the rib of a whale was woven into the fence by the

road-side. The trees were, if possible, rarer than the houses,

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 acquire 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 cankerworms, 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 that fall. If they

had been placed close together, 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

apples two years before. The owner of these trees invariably 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.

[Illustration: A Nauset lane]

In one yard I observed a single, very healthy-looking tree, while all

the rest were dead or dying. The occupant said that his father had

manured all but that one with blackfish.

This habit of growth should, no doubt, be encouraged; and they should

not be trimmed up, as some travelling practitioners have advised. In

1802 there was not a single fruit-tree in Chatham, the next town to

Orleans, on the south; and the old account of Orleans says:

“Fruit-trees 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 parietina_.

The most foreign and picturesque structures on the Cape, to an

inlander, not excepting the salt-works, are the

wind-mills,—gray-looking octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting

to the ground in the rear, and there resting on a cart-wheel, by which

their fans are turned round to face the wind. These appeared also to

serve in some measure for props against its force. A great circular rut

was worn around the building by the wheel. The neighbors who assemble

to turn the mill to the wind are likely to know which way it blows,

without a weathercock. They looked loose and slightly locomotive, like

huge wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and re-minded one of

pictures of the Netherlands. Being on elevated ground, and high in

themselves, they serve as landmarks,—for there are no tall trees, or

other objects commonly, which can be seen at a distance in the horizon;

though the outline of the land itself is so firm and distinct that an

insignificant cone, or even precipice of sand, is visible at a great

distance from over the sea. Sailors making the land commonly steer

either by the wind-mills or the meeting-houses. In the country, we are

obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. Yet 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 inhabitants

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 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 complained 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.

[Illustration: Nauset Bay]

We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen rods long, between Orleans

and Eastham, called Jeremiah’s Gutter. The Atlantic is said sometimes

to meet the Bay here, and isolate the northern part of the Cape. The

streams of the Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale, since

there is no room for them to run, without tumbling 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, to judge from appearances, no farmer in

the interior would think of cultivating, or even fencing. 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 distinguish soil from

sand. The historian of Chatham says of a part of that town, which has

been gained from the sea: “There is a doubtful appearance of a soil

beginning to be formed. It is styled _doubtful_, because it would not

be observed by every eye, and perhaps not acknowledged by many.” We

thought that this would not be a bad description of the greater part of

the Cape. There is a “beach” on the west side of Eastham, which we

crossed the next summer, half a mile wide, and stretching across the

township, containing seventeen hundred acres, on which there is not now

a particle of vegetable mould, though it formerly produced wheat. All

sands are here called “beaches,” whether they are waves of water or of

air that dash against 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 existed. 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, notwithstanding the real and apparent barrenness.

Our landlord in Orleans had told us that he raised three or four

hundred bushels of corn annually, and also of the great number of pigs

which he fattened. In Champlain’s “Voyages,” there is a plate

representing the Indian cornfields hereabouts, with their wigwams in

the midst, as they appeared in 1605, and it was here that the Pilgrims,

to quote their own words, “bought eight or ten hogsheads of corn and

beans” of the Nauset Indians, in 1622, to keep themselves from

starving.[1]

“In 1667 the 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.

[Illustration: A scarecrow]

From which I concluded that either many men were not married, or many

blackbirds were. Yet they put but three or four kernels in a hill, and

let fewer plants remain than we do. In the account of Eastham, in the

“Historical Collections,” printed in 1802, it is said, that “more corn

is produced than the inhabitants consume, and about a thousand bushels

are annually sent to market. The soil being free from stones, a plough

passes through it speedily; and after the corn has come up, a small

Cape horse, somewhat larger than a goat, will, with the assistance of

two boys, easily hoe three or four acres in a day; several farmers are

accustomed to produce five hundred bushels of grain 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 inhabitants are contented

with small crops from a great surface easily cultivated. It is not

always the most fertile land that is the most profitable, and this sand

may repay cultivation, as well as the fertile bottoms of the West. It

is said, moreover, that the vegetables raised in 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 before 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 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 conversed 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 it, it no doubt appeared more vast and desolate

than it really is. As there were no hills, but only here and there a

dry hollow in the midst of the waste, and the distant horizon was

concealed by mist, we did not know whether it was high or low. A

solitary traveller 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 shoulders, 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 traveller. I was glad to have got out of the

towns, where I am wont to feel unspeakably mean and disgraced,—to have

left behind me for a season the bar-rooms of Massachusetts, where the

full-grown are not weaned from savage 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.

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 under 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 consist, in a great measure, of quotations, acknowledged

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 fellowship, 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 composed them. As it will take us an hour to get over this

plain, and there is no variety in the prospect, peculiar as it is, I

will read a little in the history of Eastham the while.

When the committee from Plymouth had purchased the territory of Eastham

of the Indians, “it was demanded, who laid claim to Billingsgate?”

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 themselves 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 practised, and are still practising so

extensively. Not Any seems to have been the sole proprietor of all

America before 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 leader of the settlement of Eastham. There was recently

standing, on what was once his farm, in this town, a pear-tree which is

said to have been brought from England, and planted there by him, about

two hundred years ago. It was blown down a few months before we were

there. A late account says that it was recently in a vigorous state;

the fruit small, but excellent; and it yielded on an average fifteen

bushels. Some appropriate lines have been addressed to it, by a Mr.

Heman Doane, from which I will quote, partly because they are the only

specimen of Cape Cod verse which I remember to have seen, and partly

because they are not bad.

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

Passed with their 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 I 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.

* * * * *

“Old Time has thinned thy boughs. Old Pilgrim Tree!

And bowed thee with the weight of many years;

Yet ’mid the frosts of age, thy bloom we see,

And yearly still thy mellow fruit appears.”

There are some other lines which I might quote, if they were not tied

to unworthy companions 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 Deacon 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 invulnerable, 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 interested 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 support of the ministers to Providence, whose servants they

are, and who alone rules the storms; for, when few whales were cast up,

they might suspect that their worship was not acceptable. The ministers

must have sat upon the 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, commonly,

that it is “very like a whale.” Nevertheless, 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 Bridgewater for as

long a time as he could tell a cod from a haddock. Generous 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 taxed in order that the children’s school might be

free. “In 1665 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 constrained 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 during the time of divine service should be set in the

stocks.” It behooved such a town to see that sitting in the

meeting-house was nothing akin to sitting in the stocks, lest the

penalty of obedience to the law might be greater than that of

disobedience. 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 unhealthful, development of the religious sentiment

here was the fact that a large portion of the population 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 times of divine

service. When one woman is affected, five or six others generally

sympathize with her; and the congregation is thrown into the utmost

confusion. Several old men suppose, unphilosophically and uncharitably,

perhaps, that the will is partly concerned, and that ridicule and

threats would have a tendency to prevent 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 hysterics, or sympathized with 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 shouting 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-meetings 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 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 furniture 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 previous summers, and

supposed, of course, that that was the work of the unconverted, or the

backsliders and scoffers. It looked as if a camp-meeting must be a

singular combination of a prayer-meeting and a picnic.

[Illustration: Millennium Grove camp-meeting grounds]

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 converted many Indians, as well as

white men, in his day, and translated the Confession of Faith into the

Nauset language. These were the Indians concerning whom their first

teacher, Richard Bourne, wrote to Gookin, in 1674, that he had been to

see one who was sick, “and there came from him very savory and heavenly

expressions,” but, with regard to the mass of them, he says, “the truth

is, that many of them are very loose in their course, to my

heartbreaking 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 designed 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 receive thee. There is room enough for thy

entertainment....

“Consider, thou art going to a place prepared by God on purpose to

exalt his justice in,—a place made for no other employment but

torments. Hell is God’s house of correction; and, remember, God doth

all things like himself. When God would show his justice, and what is

the weight of his wrath, he makes a hell where it shall, indeed, appear

to purpose.... Woe to thy soul when thou shalt be set up as a butt for

the arrows of the Almighty....

“Consider, God himself shall be the principal agent in thy misery,—his

breath is the bellows which blows up the flame of hell forever;—and if

he punish thee, if he meet thee in his fury, he will not meet thee as a

man; he will give thee an omnipotent blow.”

“Some think sinning ends with this life; but it is a mistake. The

creature is held under an everlasting law; the damned increase in sin

in hell. Possibly, the mention of this may please thee. But, remember,

there shall be no pleasant sins there; no eating, drinking, singing,

dancing, wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen waters, but damned sins,

bitter, hellish sins; sins 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 make thee miserable. He shall have monuments enough

of that precious attribute, shining like stars in the place of glory,

and singing eternal hallelujahs to the praise of Him that redeemed

them, though, to exalt the power of his justice, he damn 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 ventoso gloriæ curru orator,

qui pectus angit, irritat, et implet terroribus.’ Vid. Burnet, De Stat.

Mort., p. 309), he could not attain the character of a popular

preacher. His voice was so loud that it could be heard at a great

distance from the meeting-house, even amidst the shrieks of hysterical

women, and the winds that howled over the plains of Nauset; but there

was no more music in it than in the discordant sounds with which it was

mingled.”

“The effect of such preaching,” it is said, “was that his hearers were

several times, in the course of his ministry, awakened and alarmed; and

on one occasion a comparatively innocent young man was frightened

nearly out of his wits, and Mr. Treat had to exert himself to make hell

seem somewhat cooler to him”; yet we are assured that “Treat’s manners

were cheerful, his conversation pleasant, and sometimes 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

reputation by his ‘Body of Divinity,’ which is frequently sneered at,

particularly by those who have read it, yet in his sermons are strength

of thought and energy of language. The natural consequence was that he

was generally admired. Mr. Treat having preached one of his best

discourses to the congregation of his father-in-law, in his usual

unhappy manner, excited universal 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 him, he delivered it without alteration to his people a few weeks

after. They ran to Mr. Willard and requested a copy for the press. ‘See

the difference,’ they cried, ‘between yourself and your son-in-law; you

have preached a sermon on the same text as 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 hic declarat, quales sitis judices.’”[2]

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 bod to the grave.

The reader will imagine us, all the while, steadily traversing that

extensive plain in a direction 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

anniversary of Mr. Treat’s funeral. We fancied that it was such a moor

as that on which somebody perished in the snow, as is related in the

“Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.”

The next minister settled here was the “Rev. Samuel Osborn, who was

born in Ireland, and educated at the University of Dublin.” He is said

to have been “A man of wisdom and virtue,” and taught his people the

use of peat, and the art of drying and preparing it, which as they had

scarcely any other fuel, was a great blessing to them. He also

introduced improvements in agriculture. But, notwithstanding his many

services, as he embraced the religion of Arminius, some of his flock

became dissatisfied. At length, an ecclesiastical council, consisting

of ten ministers, with their churches, sat upon him, and they,

naturally enough, spoiled his usefulness. The council convened at the

desire of two divine philosophers,—Joseph Doane and Nathaniel Freeman.

In their report they say, “It appears to the council that the Rev. Mr.

Osborn hath, in his preaching to this people, said, that what Christ

did and suffered doth nothing abate or diminish our obligation to obey

the law of God, and that Christ’s suffering and obedience were for

himself; 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 in public and in private, asserted that there are

no promises in the Bible but what are conditional, which we think,

also, to be an error, and do say that there are promises which are

absolute and without any condition,—such as the promise of a new heart,

and that he will write his law in our hearts.’”

“Also, they say, ‘it hath been alleged, and doth appear to us, that Mr.

Osborn hath declared, that _obedience_ is a considerable _cause_ of a

person’s justification, which, we think, contains very dangerous

error.’”

And many the like distinctions they made, such as some of my readers,

probably, are more familiar with than I am. So, far in the East, among

the Yezidis, or Worshippers of the Devil, so-called, the Chaldaeans,

and others, according to the testimony of travellers, you may still

hear these remarkable disputations on doctrinal 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 historian says that,

“As he spent his days in the uniform discharge of his duty (it reminds

one of a country muster) 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 serene as the sky in a mild evening in June, when the

moon shines without a cloud. Name any virtue, and that virtue he

practised; name any vice, and that vice he shunned. But if peculiar

qualities marked his 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 instructed by a son of

consolation, who sweetly allured them to virtue by soft persuasion, and

by exhibiting the mercy of the Supreme Being; for his thoughts were so

much in heaven that they seldom descended to the dismal regions below;

and though of the same religious sentiments as Mr. Treat, yet his

attention was turned to those glad tidings of great joy which a Saviour

came to publish.”

We were interested to hear that such a man had 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 emunctæ naris, doctus, et auctor

elegantium verborum, facetus, et dulcis festique sermonis.” And, again,

on that of the Rev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis: “Vir humilis, mitis,

blandus, advenarum hospes; (there was need of him there;) suis commodis

in terrâ non studens, reconditis thesauris in cœlo.” 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, wechekum_,”—which not being interpreted, we know

not what it means, though we have no doubt it occurs somewhere in the

Scriptures, probably in the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks.

Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were,

probably, the best men of their generation, and they deserve that their

biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but

hear the “glad tidings” of which they tell, and which, perchance, they

heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

There was no better way to make the reader realize how wide and

peculiar that plain was, and how long it took to traverse it, than by

inserting these extracts in the midst of my narrative.

[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 Relation, “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. Dic. Not “from _acerbatus_, embittered or aggrieved,” as one

commentator on this passage supposes.) This word is of very rare

occurrence, being applied only to governors and persons of like

description, who are in that predicament; though such generally have

considerable mileage allowed them, and might save their soles if they

cared.

[2] Lib. v. Fab. 5.

IV

THE BEACH

At length we reached the seemingly retreating 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 suddenly stood on the edge of a

bluff overlooking the Atlantic. Far below us was the beach, from half a

dozen to a dozen rods in width, with a long line of breakers rushing to

the strand. The sea was exceedingly dark and stormy, the sky completely

overcast, the clouds still dropping rain, and the wind seemed to blow

not so much as the exciting cause, as from sympathy with the already

agitated ocean. The waves broke on the bars at some distance from the

shore, and curving green or yellow as if over so many unseen dams, ten

or twelve feet high, like a thousand waterfalls, rolled in foam to the

sand. There was nothing but that savage ocean between us and Europe.

Having got down the bank, and as close to the water as we could, where

the sand was the hardest, leaving the Nauset Lights behind us, we began

to walk leisurely up the beach, in a northwest direction, towards

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,—

ποταμοῖο μέγα σθένος Ὠκεανοῖο.

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 behind 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-weed was tossed up

from time to time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in the brine.

[Illustration: A Cape Cod citizen]

There was not a sail in sight, and we saw none that day,—for they had

all sought harbors in the late storm, and had not been able to get out

again; and the only human beings whom we saw on the beach for several

days were one or two wreckers looking for drift-wood, and fragments of

wrecked vessels. After an easterly storm in the spring, this beach is

sometimes strewn with eastern wood from one end to the other, which, as

it belongs to him who saves it, and the Cape is nearly 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 variegated back—for

his coat had many patches, even between the shoulders—was a rich study

to us, when we had passed him and looked round. It might have been

dishonorable for him to have so many scars behind, it is true, if he

had not had many more and more serious ones in front. He looked as if

he sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to 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 centuries go by. He was looking for

wrecks, old logs, water-logged and covered with barnacles, or bits of

boards and joists, even chips, which he drew out of the reach of the

tide, and stacked up to dry. When the log was too large to carry far,

he cut it up where the last wave had left it, or rolling it a few feet

appropriated it by sticking two sticks into the ground crosswise above

it. Some rotten trunk, which in Maine cumbers the ground, and is,

perchance, thrown into the water on purpose, is here thus carefully

picked up, split and dried, and husbanded. Before 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 dispute,” and he is as much identified with it as a

beach-bird.

Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes Dalagen’s relation of the

ways and usages of the Greenlanders, and says, “Whoever finds

driftwood, 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 instinctive law of

nations. We have also this account 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,

&c.), 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 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 of (_i.e._

Greenland); also large trunks of aspen-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 _zirbel_, that

have the smell of cedar, and grow on the high Grison hills, and the

Switzers wainscot their rooms with them.” The wrecker directed us to a

slight 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, 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 forearm of the Cape,

and beyond this stretched the unwearied and illimitable ocean. On our

left, extending back from the very edge of the bank, was a perfect

desert of shining sand, from thirty to eighty rods in width, skirted in

the distance by small 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

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

brilliancy, 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 up 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.

For sixteen miles, commencing at the Nauset Lights, the bank held 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, pointing out the spots on which the

Trustees of the Humane Society have erected huts called Charity 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 melancholy 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 approaches 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 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 comparatively 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 stagecoach; 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 more like it, no truer picture or account; which you cannot go

farther and see. I cannot remember 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 sandhill, on the bank, that we might gaze

steadily on the ocean. The bank was so steep that, where there was no

danger of its caving, we sat on its edge, as on a bench. It was

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 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

beautiful, whether you behold it in fair weather or foul, or when the

sun is just breaking out after a storm, and shining on its moist

surface in the distance, it is so white, and pure, and level, and each

slight inequality and track is so distinctly 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 traveller anxiously, now and then diving close to

his head with a squeak, and he may see them, like swallows, chase some

crow which has been feeding on the beach, almost across the Cape.

Though 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 absorbed by

this spectacle and tumult, and like Chryses, though in a different mood

from him, we walked silent along the shore of the resounding sea,

Βῆ δ’ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης.[1]

I put in 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 Reverend Poluphloisboios Thalassa.

There was but little weed cast up here, and that kelp chiefly, there

being scarcely a rock for rockweed 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

head. We sometimes watched a mass of this cable-like weed, as it was

tossed up on the crest of a breaker, waiting with interest to see it

come in, as if there were some treasure buoyed up by it; but we were

always surprised and disappointed at the insignificance of the mass

which had attracted us. As we looked out over the water, the smallest

objects floating on it appeared 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 labored, that we began to

doubt whether the Atlantic itself would bear a still closer inspection,

and wold not turn out to be a but small pond, if it should come ashore

to us. This kelp, oar-weed, tangle, devils-apron, sole-leather, or

ribbon-weed,—as various species are called,—appeared to us a singularly

marine and fabulous product, a lit 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 inhabitant of the land, and all its products have

a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet, from

sea-weed to a sailor’s yarn, or a fish-story. In this element the

animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are strangely mingled. One

species of kelp, according to Bory St. Vincent, has a stem fifteen

hundred feet long, and hence is the longest vegetable known, and a

brig’s crew spent two days to no purpose collecting the trunks of

another kind cast ashore on the Falkland Islands, mistaking it for

drift-wood. (See Harvey on _Algæ_) 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 opportunity to sit down and deliberately whittle up a fathom

or two of it, that I might become more intimately acquainted with it,

see how it cut, and if it were hollow all the way through. The blade

looked like a broad belt, whose edges had been quilled, or as if

stretched by hammering, and it was also twisted spirally. The extremity

was generally worn and ragged from the lashing of the waves. A piece of

the stem which I carried home shrunk to one quarter of its size a week

afterward, and was completely covered with crystals of salt like frost.

The reader will excuse my greenness,—though it is not sea-greenness,

like his, perchance,—for I live by a river-shore, where this weed does

not wash up. When we consider in what meadows it grew. and how it was

raked, and in what kind of hay weather got in or out, we may well be

curious about it. One who is weatherwise has given the following

account of the matter.

“When descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.

“From Bermuda’s reefs, from edges

Of sunken ledges,

On some far-off bright Azore;

From Bahama and the dashing,

Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

“From the trembling surf that buries

The Orkneyan Skerries.

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks and ships and drifting

Spars, uplifting

On the desolate rainy seas;

“Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless main.”