It was the roaring sea, θάλασσα ἠχήεσσα,—

ἀμφὶ δὲ τ’ ἄκραι

Ἠϊόνες βοόωσιν, ἐρευγομένης ἁλὸς ἔξω.

And the summits of the bank

Around resound, the sea being vomited forth.

As we stood looking on this scene we were gradually convinced that

fishing here and in a pond were not, in all respects, the same, and

that he who waits for fair weather and a calm sea may never see the

glancing skin of a mackerel, and get no nearer to a cod than the wooden

emblem in the State House.

Having lingered on the shore till we were well-nigh chilled to death by

the wind, and were ready to take shelter in a Charity-house, we turned

our weather-beaten faces toward Provincetown and the Bay again, having

now more than doubled the Cape.

[1] _I. e._ a vessel.

[2] The sea, which is arched over its sandy bottom like a heaven.

[3] Battle.

X

PROVINCETOWN

Early the next morning I walked into a fish-house near our hotel, where

three or four men were engaged in trundling out the pickled fish on

barrows, and spreading them to dry. They told me that a vessel had

lately come in from the Banks with forty-four thousand codfish. Timothy

Dwight says that, just before he arrived at Provincetown, “a schooner

come in from the Great Bank with fifty-six thousand fish, almost one

thousand five hundred quintals, taken in a single voyage; the main deck

being, on her return, eight inches under water in calm weather.” The

cod in this fish-house, just out of the pickle, lay packed several feet

deep, and three or four men stood on them in cowhide boots, pitching

them on to the barrows with an instrument which had a single iron

point. One young man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the fish repeatedly.

Well, sir, thought I, when that older man sees you he will speak to

you. But presently I saw the older man do the same thing. It reminded

me of the figs of Smyrna. “How long does it take to cure these fish?” I

asked.

“Two good drying days, sir,” was the answer.

I walked across the street again into the hotel to breakfast, and mine

host inquired if I would take “hashed fish or beans.” I took beans,

though they never were a favorite dish of mine. I found next summer

that this was still the only alternative proposed here, and the

landlord was still ringing the changes on these two words. In the

former dish there was a remarkable proportion of fish. As you travel

inland the potato predominates. It chanced that I did not taste fresh

fish of any kind on the Cape, and I was assured that they were not so

much used there as in the country. That is where they are cured, and

where, sometimes, travellers are cured of eating them. No fresh meat

was slaughtered in Provincetown, but the little that was used at the

public houses was brought from Boston by the steamer.

[Illustration: In Provincetown harbor]

A great many of the houses here were surrounded by fish-flakes close up

to the sills on all sides, with only a narrow passage two or three feet

wide, to the front door; so that instead of looking out into a flower

or grass plot, you looked on to so many square rods of cod turned wrong

side outwards. These parterres were said to be least like a

flower-garden in a good drying day in mid-summer. There were flakes of

every age and pattern, and some so rusty and overgrown with lichens

that they looked as if they might have served the founders of the

fishery here. Some had broken down under the weight of successive

harvests. The principal employment of the inhabitants at this time

seemed to be to trundle out their fish and spread them in the morning,

and bring them in at night. I saw how many a loafer who chanced to be

out early enough got a job at wheeling out the fish of his neighbor who

was anxious to improve the whole of a fair day. Now, then, I knew where

salt fish were caught. They were everywhere lying on their backs, their

collar-bones standing out like the lapels of a man-o’-war-man’s jacket,

and inviting all things to come and rest in their bosoms; and all

things, with a few exceptions, accepted the invitation. I think, by the

way, that if you should wrap a large salt fish round a small boy, he

would have a coat of such a fashion as I have seen many a one wear to

muster. Salt fish were stacked up on the wharves, looking like corded

wood, maple and yellow birch with the bark left on. I mistook them for

this at first, and such in one sense they were,—fuel to maintain our

vital fires,—an eastern wood which grew on the Grand Banks. Some were

stacked in the form of huge flower-pots, being laid in small circles

with the tails outwards, each circle successively larger than the

preceding until the pile was three or four feet high, when the circles

rapidly diminished, so as to form a conical roof. On the shores of New

Brunswick this is covered with birch-bark, and stones are placed upon

it, and being thus rendered impervious to the rain, it is left to

season before being packed for exportation.

It is rumored that in the fall the cows here are sometimes fed on

cod’s-heads! The godlike part of the cod, which, like the human head,

is curiously and wonderfully made, forsooth has but little less brain

in it,—coming to such an end I to be craunched by cows I I felt my own

skull crack from sympathy. What if the heads of men were to be cut off

to feed the cows of a superior order of beings who inhabit the islands

in the ether? Away goes your fine brain, the house of thought and

instinct, to swell the cud of a ruminant animal!—However, an inhabitant

assured me that they did not make a practice of feeding cows on

cod’s-heads; the cows merely would eat them sometimes; but I might live

there all my days and never see it done. A cow wanting salt would also

sometimes lick out all the soft part of a cod on the flakes. This he

would have me believe was the foundation of this fish-story.

It has been a constant traveller’s tale and perhaps slander, now for

thousands of years, the Latins and Greeks have repeated it, that this

or that nation feeds its cattle, or horses, or sheep, on fish, as may

be seen in Ælian and Pliny, but in the Journal of Nearchus, who was

Alexander’s admiral, and made a voyage from the Indus to the Euphrates

three hundred and twenty-six years before Christ, it is said that the

inhabitants of a portion of the intermediate coast, whom he called

Ichthyophagi or Fish-eaters, not only ate fishes raw and also dried and

pounded in a whale’s vertebra for a mortar and made into a paste, but

gave them to their cattle, there being no grass on the coast; and

several modern travellers—Braybosa, Niebuhr, and others—make the same

report. Therefore in balancing the evidence I am still in doubt about

the Provincetown cows. As for other domestic animals, Captain King in

his continuation of Captain Cook’s Journal in 1779, says of the dogs of

Kamtschatka, “Their food in the winter consists entirely of the heads,

entrail, and backbones of salmon, which are put aside and dried for

that purpose; and with this diet they are fed but sparingly.” (Cook’s

Journal, Vol. VII., p. 315.)

As we are treating of fishy matters, let me insert what Pliny says,

that “the commanders of the fleets of Alexander the Great have related

that the Gedrosi, who dwell on the banks of the river Arabis, are in

the habit of making the doors of their houses with the jaw-bones of

fishes, and raftering the roofs with their bones.” Strabo tells the

same of the Ichthyophagi. “Hardouin remarks that the Basques of his day

were in the habit of fencing their gardens with the ribs of the whale,

which sometimes exceeded twenty feet in length; and Cuvier says that at

the present time the jaw-bone of the whale is used in Norway for the

purpose of making beams or posts for buildings.” (Bohn’s ed., trans, of

Pliny, Vol. II., p. 361.) Herodotus says the inhabitants on Lake

Prasias in Thrace (living on piles) “give fish for fodder to their

horses and beasts of burden.”

Provincetown was apparently what is called a flourishing town. Some of

the inhabitants asked me if I did not think that they appeared to be

well off generally. I said that I did, and asked how many there were in

the almshouse. “O, only one or two, infirm or idiotic,” answered they.

The outward aspect of the houses and shops frequently suggested a

poverty which their interior comfort and even richness disproved. You

might meet a lady daintily dressed in the Sabbath morning, wading in

among the sandhills, from church, where there appeared no house fit to

receive her, yet no doubt the interior of the house answered to the

exterior of the lady. As for the interior of the inhabitants I am still

in the dark about it. I had a little intercourse with some whom I met

in the street, and was often agreeably disappointed by discovering the

intelligence of rough, and what would be considered unpromising

specimens. Nay, I ventured to call on one citizen the next summer, by

special invitation. I found him sitting in his front doorway, that

Sabbath evening, prepared for me to come in unto him; but unfortunately

for his reputation for keeping open house, there was stretched across

his gateway a circular cobweb of the largest kind and quite entire.

This looked so ominous that I actually turned aside and went in the

back way.

This Monday morning was beautifully mild and calm, both on land and

water, promising us a smooth passage across the Bay, and the fishermen

feared that it would not be so good a drying day as the cold and windy

one which preceded it. There could hardly have been a greater contrast.

This was the first of the Indian summer days, though at a late hour in

the morning we found the wells in the sand behind the town still

covered with ice, which had formed in the night. What with wind and sun

my most prominent feature fairly cast its slough. But I assure you it

will take more than two good drying days to cure me of rambling. After

making an excursion among the hills in the neighborhood of the

Shank-Painter Swamp, and getting a little work done in its line, we

took our seat upon the highest sand-hill overlooking the town, in

mid-air, on a long plank stretched across between two hillocks of sand,

where some boys were endeavoring in vain to fly their kite; and there

we remained the rest of that forenoon looking out over the placid

harbor, and watching for the first appearance of the steamer from

Wellfleet, that we might be in readiness to go on board when we heard

the whistle off Long Point.

We got what we could out of the boys in the meanwhile. Provincetown

boys are of course all sailors and have sailors’ eyes. When we were at

the Highland Light the last summer, seven or eight miles from

Provincetown Harbor, and wished to know one Sunday morning if the

_Olata_, a well-known yacht, had got in from Boston, so that we could

return in her, a Provincetown boy about ten years old, who chanced to

be at the table, remarked that she had. I asked him how he knew. “I

just saw her come in,” said he. When I expressed surprise that he could

distinguish her from other vessels so far, he said that there were not

so many of those two-topsail schooners about but that he could tell

her. Palfrey said, in his oration at Barnstable, the duck does not take

to the water with a surer instinct than the Barnstable boy. [He might

have said the Cape Cod boy as well.] He leaps from his leading-strings

into the shrouds, it is but a bound from the mother’s lap to the

masthead. He boxes the compass in his infant soliloquies. He can hand,

reef, and steer by the time he flies a kite.

This was the very day one would have chosen to sit upon a hill

overlooking sea and land, and muse there. The mackerel fleet was

rapidly taking its departure, one schooner after another, and standing

round the Cape, like fowls leaving their roosts in the morning to

disperse themselves in distant fields. The turtle-like sheds of the

salt-works were crowded into every nook in the hills, immediately

behind the town, and their now idle windmills lined the shore. It was

worth the while to see by what coarse and simple chemistry this almost

necessary of life is obtained, with the sun for journeyman, and a

single apprentice to do the chores for a large establishment. It is a

sort of tropical labor, pursued too in the sunniest season; more

interesting than gold or diamond-washing, which, I fancy, it somewhat

resembles at a distance. In the production of the necessaries of life

Nature is ready enough to assist man. So at the potash works which I

have seen at Hull, where they burn the stems of the kelp and boil the

ashes. Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got

half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory. It is said, that owing to

the reflection of the sun from the sand-hills, and there being

absolutely no fresh water emptying into the harbor, the same number of

superficial feet yields more salt here than in any other part of the

county. A little rain is considered necessary to clear the air, and

make salt fast and good, for as paint does not dry, so water does not

evaporate in dog-day weather. But they were now, as elsewhere on the

Cape, breaking up their salt-works and selling them for lumber.

From that elevation we could overlook the operations of the inhabitants

almost as completely as if the roofs had been taken off. They were

busily covering the wicker-worked flakes about their houses with salted

fish, and we now saw that the back yards were improved for this purpose

as much as the front; where one man’s fish ended another’s began. In

almost every yard we detected some little building from which these

treasures were being trundled forth and systematically spread, and we

saw that there was an art as well as a knack even in spreading fish,

and that a division of labor was profitably practised. One man was

withdrawing his fishes a few inches beyond the nose of his neighbor’s

cow which had stretched her neck over a paling to get at them. It

seemed a quite domestic employment, like drying clothes, and indeed in

some parts of the county the women take part in it.

I noticed in several places on the Cape a sort of clothes-_flakes_.

They spread brush on the ground, and fence it round, and then lay their

clothes on it, to keep them from the sand. This is a Cape Cod

clothes-yard.

The sand is the great enemy here. The tops of some of the hills were

enclosed and a board put up, forbidding all persons entering the

enclosure, lest their feet should disturb the sand, and set it

a-blowing or a-sliding. The inhabitants are obliged to get leave from

the authorities to cut wood behind the town for fish-flakes,

bean-poles, pea-brush, and the like, though, as we were told, they may

transplant trees from one part of the township to another without

leave. The sand drifts like snow, and sometimes the lower story of a

house is concealed by it, though it is kept off by a wall. The houses

were formerly built on piles, in order that the driving sand might pass

under them. We saw a few old ones here still standing on their piles,

but they were boarded up now, being protected by their younger

neighbors. There was a school-house, just under the hill on which we

sat, filled with sand up to the tops of the desks, and of course the

master and scholars had fled. Perhaps they had imprudently left the

windows open one day, or neglected to mend a broken pane. Yet in one

place was advertised “Fine sand for sale here,”—I could hardly believe

my eyes,—probably some of the street sifted,—a good instance of the

fact that a man confers a value on the most worthless thing by mixing

himself with it, according to which rule we must have conferred a value

on the whole back-side of Cape Cod;—but I thought that if they could

have advertised “Fat Soil,” or perhaps “Fine sand got rid of,” ay, and

“Shoes emptied here,” it would have been more alluring. As we looked

down on the town, I thought that I saw one man, who probably lived

beyond the extremity of the planking, steering and tacking for it in a

sort of snow-shoes, but I may have been mistaken. In some pictures of

Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the

ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand. Nevertheless,

natives of Provincetown assured me that they could walk in the middle

of the road without trouble even in slippers, for they had learned how

to put their feet down and lift them up without taking in any sand. One

man said that he should be surprised if he found half a dozen grains of

sand in his pumps at night, and stated, moreover, that the young ladies

had a dexterous way of emptying their shoes at each step, which it

would take a stranger a long time to learn. The tires of the

stage-wheels were about five inches wide; and the wagon-tires generally

on the Cape are an inch or two wider, as the sand is an inch or two

deeper than elsewhere. I saw a baby’s wagon with tires six inches wide

to keep it near the surface. The more tired the wheels, the less tired

the horses. Yet all the time that we were in Provincetown, which was

two days and nights, we saw only one horse and cart, and they were

conveying a coffin. They did not try such experiments there on common

occasions. The next summer I saw only the two-wheeled horse-cart which

conveyed me thirty rods into the harbor on my way to the steamer. Yet

we read that there were two horses and two yoke of oxen here in 1791,

and we were told that there were several more when we were there,

beside the stage team. In Barber’s Historical Collections, it is said,

“So rarely are wheel-carriages seen in the place that they are a matter

of some curiosity to the younger part of the community. A lad who

understood navigating the ocean much better than land travel, on seeing

a man driving a wagon in the street, expressed his surprise at his

being able to drive so straight without the assistance of a rudder.”

There was no rattle of carts, and there would have been no rattle if

there had been any carts. Some saddle-horses that passed the hotel in

the evening merely made the sand fly with a rustling sound like a

writer sanding his paper copiously, but there was no sound of their

tread. No doubt there are more horses and carts there at present. A

sleigh is never seen, or at least is a great novelty on the Cape, the

snow being either absorbed by the sand or blown into drifts.

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of

their “soil,” but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry

their fish on.

Notwithstanding all this sand, we counted three meeting-houses, and

four school-houses nearly as large, on this street, though some had a

tight board fence about them to preserve the plot within level and

hard. Similar fences, even within a foot of many of the houses, gave

the town a less cheerful and hospitable appearance than it would

otherwise have had. They told us that, on the whole, the sand had made

no progress for the last ten years, the cows being no longer permitted

to go at large, and every means being taken to stop the sandy tide.

In 1727 Provincetown was “invested with peculiar privileges,” for its

encouragement. Once or twice it was nearly abandoned; but now lots on

the street fetch a high price, though titles to them were first

obtained by possession and improvement, and they are still transferred

by quitclaim deeds merely, the township being the property of the

State. But though lots were so valuable on the street, you might in

many places throw a stone over them to where a man could still obtain

land, or sand, by squatting on or improving it.

[Illustration: Provincetown—A bit of the village from the wharf]

Stones are very rare on the Cape. I saw a very few small stones used

for pavements and for bank walls, in one or two places in my walk, but

they are so scarce that, as I was informed, vessels have been forbidden

to take them from the beach for ballast, and therefore their crews used

to land at night and steal them. I did not hear of a rod of regular

stone wall below Orleans. Yet I saw one man underpinning a new house in

Eastham with some “rocks,” as he called them, which he said a neighbor

had collected with great pains in the course of years, and finally made

over to him. This I thought was a gift worthy of being recorded,—equal

to a transfer of California “rocks,” almost. Another man who was

assisting him, and who seemed to be a close observer of nature, hinted

to me the locality of a rock in that neighborhood which was “forty-two

paces in circumference and fifteen feet high,” for he saw that I was a

stranger, and, probably, would not carry it off. Yet I suspect that the

locality of the few large rocks on the forearm of the Cape is well

known to the inhabitants generally. I even met with one man who had got

a smattering of mineralogy, but where he picked it up I could not

guess. I thought that he would meet with some interesting geological

nuts for him to crack, if he should ever visit the mainland, Cohasset,

or Marblehead for instance.

The well stones at the Highland Light were brought from Hingham, but

the wells and cellars of the Cape are generally built of brick, which

also are imported. The cellars, as well as the wells, are made in a

circular form, to prevent the sand from pressing in the wall. The

former are only from nine to twelve feet in diameter, and are said to

be very cheap, since a single tier of brick will suffice for a cellar

of even larger dimensions. Of course, if you live in the sand, you will

not require a large cellar to hold your roots. In Provincetown, when

formerly they suffered the sand to drive under their houses,

obliterating all rudiments of a cellar, they did not raise a vegetable

to put into one. One farmer in Wellfleet, who raised fifty bushels of

potatoes, showed me his cellar under a corner of his house, not more

than nine feet in diameter, looking like a cistern: but he had another

of the same size under his barn.

You need dig only a few feet almost anywhere near the shore of the Cape

to find fresh water. But that which we tasted was invariably poor.

though the inhabitants called it good, as if they were comparing it

with salt water. In the account of Truro, it is said. “Wells dug near

the shore are dry at low water, or rather at what is called young

flood, but are replenished with the flowing of the tide,”—- the salt

water, which is lowest in the sand, apparently forcing the fresh up.

When you express your surprise at the greenness of a Provincetown

garden on the beach, in a dry season, they will sometimes tell you that

the tide forces the moisture up to them. It is an interesting fact that

low sand-bars in the midst of the ocean, perhaps even those which are

laid bare only at low tide, are reservoirs of fresh water at which the

thirsty mariner can supply himself. They appear, like huge sponges, to

hold the rain and dew which fall on them, and which, by capillary

attraction, are prevented from mingling with the surrounding brine.

The Harbor of Provincetown—which, as well as the greater part of the

Bay, and a wide expanse of ocean, we overlooked from our perch—is

deservedly famous. It opens to the south, is free from rocks, and is

never frozen over. It is said that the only ice seen in it drifts in

sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. Dwight remarks that “The storms

which prevail on the American coast generally come from the east; and

there is no other harbor on a windward shore within two hundred miles.”

J. D. Graham, who has made a very minute and thorough survey of this

harbor and the adjacent waters, states that “its capacity, depth of

water, excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords from

all winds, combine to render it one of the most valuable ship harbors

on our coast.” It is _the_ harbor of the Cape and of the fishermen of

Massachusetts generally. It was known to navigators several years at

least before the settlement of Plymouth. In Captain John Smith’s map of

New England, dated 1614, it bears the name of Milford Haven, and

Massachusetts Bay that of Stuard’s Bay. His Highness, Prince Charles,

changed the name of Cape Cod to Cape James; but even princes have not

always power to change a name for the worse, and as Cotton Mather said,

Cape Cod is “a name which I suppose it will never lose till shoals of

codfish be seen swimming on its highest hills.”

Many an early voyager was unexpectedly caught by this hook, and found

himself embayed. On successive maps, Cape Cod appears sprinkled over

with French, Dutch, and English names, as it made part of New France,

New Holland, and New England. On one map Provincetown Harbor is called

“Fuic (bownet?) Bay,” Barnstable Bay “Staten Bay,” and the sea north of

it “Mare del Noort,” or the North Sea. On another, the extremity of the

Cape is called “Staten Hoeck,” or the States Hook. On another, by

Young, this has Noord Zee, Staten hoeck or Hit hoeck, but the copy at

Cambridge has no date; the whole Cape is called “Niew Hollant,” (after

Hudson); and on another still, the shore between Race Point and Wood

End appears to be called “Bevechier.” In Champlain’s admirable Map of

New France, including the oldest recognizable map of what is now the

New England coast with which I am acquainted, Cape Cod is called C.

Blan (i.e. Cape White), from the color of its sands, and Massachusetts

Bay is Baye Blanche. It was visited by De Monts and Champlain in 1605,

and the next year was further explored by Poitrincourt and Champlain.

The latter has given a particular account of these explorations in his

“Voyages,” together with separate charts and soundings of two of its

harbors,—_Malle Barre_, the Bad Bar (Nauset Harbor?), a name now

applied to what the French called _Cap Baturier_; and _Port Fortune_,

apparently Chatham Harbor. Both these names are copied on the map of

“Novi Belgii,” in Ogilvy’s America. He also describes minutely the

manners and customs of the savages, and represents by a plate the

savages surprising the French and killing five or six of them. The

French afterward killed some of the natives, and wished, by way of

revenge, to carry off some and make them grind in their hand-mill at

Port Royal.

It is remarkable that there is not in English any adequate or correct

account of the French exploration of what is now the coast of New

England, between 1604 and 1608, though it is conceded that they then

made the first permanent European settlement on the continent of North

America north of St. Augustine. If the lions had been the painters it

would have been otherwise. This omission is probably to be accounted

for partly by the fact that the _early edition_ of Champlain’s

“Voyages” had not been consulted for this purpose. This contains by far

the most particular, and, I think, the most interesting chapter of what

we may call the Ante-Pilgrim history of New England, extending to one

hundred and sixty pages quarto; but appears to be unknown equally to

the historian and the orator on Plymouth Rock. Bancroft does not

mention Champlain at all among the authorities for De Monts’s

expedition, nor does he say that he ever visited the coast of New

England. Though he bore the title of pilot to De Monts, he was, in

_another sense_, the leading spirit, as well as the historian of the

expedition. Holmes, Hildreth, and Barry, and apparently all our

historians who mention Champlain, refer to the edition of 1632, in

which all the separate charts of our harbors, etc., and about one-half

the narrative, are omitted; for the author explored so many lands

afterward that he could afford to forget a part of what he had done.

Hildreth, speaking of De Monts’s expedition, says that “he looked into

the Penobscot [in 1605], which Pring had discovered two years before,”

saying nothing about Champlain’s extensive exploration of it for De

Monts in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to Purchas); also that he

followed in the track of Pring along the coast “to Cape Cod, which he

called Malabarre.” (Haliburton had made the same statement before him

in 1829. He called it Cap Blanc, and Malle Barre (the Bad Bar) was the

name given to a harbor on the east side of the Cape). Pring says

nothing about a river there. Belknap says that Weymouth discovered it

in 1605. Sir F. Gorges, says, in his narration (Maine Hist. Coll., Vol.

II., p. 19), 1658, that Pring in 1606 “made a perfect discovery of all

the rivers and harbors.” This is the most I can find. Bancroft makes

Champlain to have discovered more western rivers in Maine, not naming

the Penobscot; he, however, must have been the discoverer of distances

on this river (see Belknap, p. 147). Pring was absent from England only

about six months, and sailed by this part of Cape Cod (Malabarre)

because it yielded no sassafras, while the French, who probably had

not heard of Pring, were patiently for years exploring the coast in

search of a place of settlement, sounding and surveying its harbors.

John Smith’s map, published in 1616, from observations in 1614-15, is

by many regarded as the oldest map of New England. It is the first that

was made after this country was called New England, for he so called

it; but in Champlain’s “Voyages,” edition 1613 (and Lescarbot, in 1612,

quotes a still earlier account of his voyage), there is a map of it

made when it was known to Christendom as New France, called _Carte

Géographique de la Nouvelle Franse faictte par le Sieur de Champlain

Saint Tongois Cappitaine ordinaire pour le roi en la Marine,—faict l’en

1612_, from his observations between 1604 and 1607; a map extending

from Labrador to Cape Cod and westward _to the Great Lakes_, and

crowded with information, geographical, ethnographical, zoölogical, and

botanical. He even gives the variation of the compass as observed by

himself at that date on many parts of the coast. This, taken together

with the many _separate charts_ of harbors and their soundings on a

large scale, which this volume contains,—among the rest. _Qui ni be

quy_ (Kennebec), _Chouacoit R._ (Saco R.), _Le Beau port, Port St.

Louis_ (near Cape Ann), and others on our coast,—but _which are not in

the edition of 1632_, makes this a completer map of the New England and

adjacent northern coast than was made for half a century afterward,

almost, we might be allowed to say, till another Frenchman, Des Barres,

made another for us, which only our late Coast Survey has superseded.

Most of the maps of this coast made for a long time after betray their

indebtedness to Champlain. He was a skilful navigator, a man of

science, and geographer to the King of France. He crossed the Atlantic

about twenty times, and made nothing of it; often in a small vessel in

which few would dare to go to sea today; and on one occasion making the

voyage from Tadoussac to St. Malo in eighteen days. He was in this

neighborhood, that is, between Annapolis, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod,

observing the land and its inhabitants, and making a map of the coast,

from May, 1604, to September, 1607, _or about three and a half years_,

and he has described minutely his method of surveying harbors. By his

own account, a part of his map was engraved in 1604 (?). When

Pont-Gravé and others returned to France in 1606, he remained at Port

Royal with Poitrincourt, “in order,” says he, “by the aid of God, to

finish the chart of the coasts which I had begun”; and again in his

volume, printed before John Smith visited this part of America, he

says: “It seems to me that I have done my duty as far as I could, if I

have not forgotten to put in my said chart whatever I saw, and give a

particular knowledge to the public of what had never been described nor

discovered so particularly as I have done it, although some other may

have heretofore written of it; but it was a very small affair in

comparison with what we have discovered within the last ten years.”

It is not generally remembered, if known, by the descendants of the

Pilgrims, that when their forefathers were spending their first

memorable winter in the New World, they had for neighbors a colony of

French no further off than Port Royal (Annapolis, Nova Scotia), three

hundred miles distant (Prince seems to make it about five hundred

miles); where, in spite of many vicissitudes, they had been for fifteen

years. They built a grist-mill there as early as 1606; also made bricks

and turpentine on a stream, Williamson says, in 1606. De Monts, who was

a Protestant, brought his minister with him, who came to blows with the

Catholic priest on the subject of religion. Though these founders of

Acadie endured no less than the Pilgrims, and about the same proportion

of them—thirty-five out of seventy-nine (Williamson’s Maine says

thirty-six out of seventy)—died the first winter at St. Croix, 1604-5,

sixteen years earlier, no orator, to my knowledge, has ever celebrated

their enterprise (Williamson’s History of Maine does considerably),

while the trials which their successors and descendants endured at the

hands of the English have furnished a theme for both the historian and

poet. (See Bancroft’s History and Longfellow’s Evangeline.) The remains

at their fort at St. Croix were discovered at the end of the last

century, and helped decide where the true St. Croix, our boundary, was.

The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are probably older than the

oldest English monument in New England north of the Elizabeth Islands,

or perhaps anywhere in New England, for if there are any traces of

Gosnold’s storehouse left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft says,

advisedly, in 1834, “It requires a believing eye to discern the ruins

of the fort”; and that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr.

Charles T. Jackson tells me that, in the course of a geological survey

in 1827, he discovered a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat

Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in Nova Scotia, bearing a

Masonic coat-of-arms and the date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier

than the landing of the Pilgrims. This was left in the possession of

Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia.

There were Jesuit priests in what has since been called New England,

converting the savages at Mount Desert, then St. Savior, in

1613,—having come over to Port Royal in 1611, though they were almost

immediately interrupted by the English, years before the Pilgrims came

hither to enjoy their own religion. This according to Champlain.

Charlevoix says the same; and after coming from France in 1611, went

west from Port Royal along the coast as far as the Kennebec in 1612,

and was often carried from Port Royal to Mount Desert.

Indeed, the Englishman’s history of _New_ England commences only when

it ceases to be _New_ France. Though Cabot was the first to discover

the continent of North America, Champlain, in the edition of his

“Voyages” printed in 1632, after the English had for a season got

possession of Quebec and Port Royal, complains with no little justice:

“The common consent of all Europe is to represent New France as

extending at least to the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth degrees of

latitude, as appears by the maps of the world printed in Spain, Italy,

Holland, Flanders, Germany, and England, until they possessed

themselves of the coasts of New France, where are Acadie, the Etchemins

(Maine and New Brunswick), the Almouchicois (Massachusetts?), and the

Great River St. Lawrence, where they have imposed, according to their

fancy, such names as New England, Scotland, and others; but it is not

easy to efface the memory of a thing which is known to all

Christendom.”

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador, gave

the English no just title to New England, or to the United States,

generally, any more than to Patagonia. His careful biographer (Biddle)

is not certain in what voyage he ran down the coast of the United

States as is reported, and no one tells us what he saw. Miller, in the

New York Hist. Coll., Vol. I., p. 28, says he does not appear to have

landed anywhere. Contrast with this Verrazzani’s tarrying fifteen days

at one place on the New England coast, and making frequent excursions

into the interior thence. It chances that the latter’s letter to

Francis I., in 1524, contains “the earliest original account extant of

the Atlantic coast of the United States”; and even from that time the

northern part of it began to be called _La Terra Francese_, or French

Land. A part of it was called New Holland before it was called New

England. The English were very backward to explore and settle the

continent which they had stumbled upon. The French preceded them both

in their attempts to colonize the continent of North America (Carolina

and Florida, 1562-4), and in their first permanent settlement (Port

Royal, 1605); and the right of possession, naturally enough, was the

one which England mainly respected and recognized in the case of Spain,

of Portugal, and also of France, from the time of Henry VII.

The explorations of the French gave to the world the first valuable

maps of these coasts. Denys of Honfleur made a map of the Gulf of St.

Lawrence in 1506. No sooner had Cartier explored the St. Lawrence, in

1535, than there began to be published by his countrymen remarkably

accurate charts of that river as far up as Montreal. It is almost all

of the continent north of Florida that you recognize on charts for more

than a generation afterward,—though Verrazzani’s rude plot (made under

French auspices) was regarded by Hackluyt, more than fifty years after

his voyage (in 1524), as the most accurate representation of our coast.

The French trail is distinct. They went measuring and sounding, and

when they got home had something to show for their voyages and

explorations. There was no danger of their charts being lost, as

Cabot’s have been.

The most distinguished navigators of that day were Italians, or of

Italian descent, and Portuguese. The French and Spaniards, though less

advanced in the science of navigation than the former, possessed more

imagination and spirit of adventure than the English, and were better

fitted to be the explorers of a new continent even as late as 1751.

This spirit it was which so early carried the French to the Great Lakes

and the Mississippi on the north, and the Spaniard to the same river on

the south. It was long before our frontiers reached their settlements

in the west, and a _voyageur_ or _coureur de bois_ is still our

conductor there. Prairie is a French word, as Sierra is a Spanish one.

Augustine in Florida, and Santa Fé in New Mexico [1582], both built by

the Spaniards, are considered the oldest towns in the United States.

Within the memory of the oldest man, the Anglo-Americans were confined

between the Appalachian Mountains and the sea, “a space not two hundred

miles broad,” while the Mississippi was by treaty the eastern boundary

of New France. (See the pamphlet on settling the Ohio, London, 1763,

bound up with the travels of Sir John Bartram.) So far as inland

discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that

of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise

of traders. Cabot spoke like an Englishman, as he was, if he said, as

one reports, in reference to the discovery of the American Continent,

when he found it running toward the north, that it was a great

disappointment to him, being in his way to India; but we would rather

add to than detract from the fame of so great a discoverer.

Samuel Penhallow, in his history (Boston, 1726), p. 51, speaking of

“Port Royal and Nova Scotia,” says of the last that its “first seizure

was by Sir Sebastian Cobbet for the crown of Great Britain, in the

reign of King Henry VII.; but lay dormant till the year 1621,” when Sir

William Alexander got a patent of it, and possessed it some years; and

afterward Sir David Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, “to the

surprise of all thinking men, it was given up unto the French.”

Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the first Governor of the

Massachusetts Colony, who was not the most likely to be misinformed,

who, moreover, has the _fame_, at least, of having discovered Wachusett

Mountain (discerned it forty miles inland), talking about the “Great

Lake” and the “hideous swamps about it,” near which the Connecticut and

the “Potomack” took their rise; and among the memorable events of the

year 1642 he chronicles Darby Field, an Irishman’s expedition to the

“White hill,” from whose top he saw eastward what he “judged to be the

Gulf of Canada,” and westward what he “judged to be the great lake

which Canada River comes out of,” and where he found much “Muscovy

glass,” and “could rive out pieces of forty feet long and seven or

eight broad.” While the very inhabitants of New England were thus

fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a _terra

incognita_ to them,—or rather many years before the earliest date

referred to,—Champlain, the _first Governor of Canada_, not to mention

the inland discoveries of Cartier,[1] Roberval, and others, of the

preceding century, and his own earlier voyage, had already gone to war

against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great

Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.

In Champlain’s “Voyages,” printed in 1613, there is a plate

representing a fight in which he aided the Canada Indians against the

Iroquois, near the south end of Lake Champlain, in July, 1609, eleven

years before the settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft says he joined the

Algonquins in an expedition against the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in

the northwest of New York. This is that “Great Lake,” which the

English, hearing some rumor of from the French, long after, locate in

an “Imaginary Province called Laconia, and spent several years about

1630 in the vain attempt to discover.” (Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine

Hist. Coll., Vol. II., p. 68.) Thomas Morton has a chapter on this

“Great Lake.” In the edition of Champlain’s map dated 1632, the Falls

of Niagara appear; and in a great lake northwest of _Mer Douce_ (Lake

Huron) there is an island represented, over which is written, “_Isle ou

il y a une mine de cuivre_,”—“Island where there is a mine of copper.”

This will do for an offset to our Governor’s “Muscovy Glass.” Of all

these adventures and discoveries we have a minute and faithful account,

giving facts and dates as well as charts and soundings, all scientific

and Frenchman-like, with scarcely one fable or traveller’s story.

Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans long before the seventeenth

century. It may be that Cabot himself beheld it. Verrazzani, in 1524,

according to his own account, spent fifteen days on our coast, in

latitude 41° 40 minutes (some suppose in the harbor of Newport), and

often went five or six leagues into the interior there, and he says

that he sailed thence at once one hundred and fifty leagues

northeasterly, _always in sight of the coast_. There is a chart in

Hackluyt’s “Divers Voyages,” made according to Verrazzani’s plot, which

last is praised for its accuracy by Hackluyt, but I cannot distinguish

Cape Cod on it, unless it is the “C. Arenas,” which is in the right

latitude, though ten degrees west of “Claudia,” which is thought to be

Block Island.

The “Biographic Universelle” informs us that “An ancient manuscript

chart drawn in 1529 by Diego Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmographer, has

preserved the memory of the voyage of Gomez [a Portuguese sent out by

Charles the Fifth]. One reads in it under (_au dessous_) the place

occupied by the States of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island,

_Terre d’Etienne Gomez, qu’il découvrit en_ 1525 (Land of Etienne

Gomez, which he discovered in 1525).” This chart, with a memoir, was

published at Weimar in the last century.

Jean Alphonse, Roberval’s pilot in Canada in 1642, one of the most

skilful navigators of his time, and who has given remarkably minute and

accurate direction for sailing up the St. Lawrence, showing that he

knows what he is talking about, says in his “_Routier_” (it is in

Hackluyt), “I have been at a bay as far as the forty-second degree,

between Norimbegue [the Penobscot?] and Florida, but I have not

explored the bottom of it, and I do not know whether it passes from one

land to the other,” _i.e._ to Asia. (“ J’ai été à une Baye jusques par

les 42e degres entre la Norimbegue et la Floride; mais je n’en ai pas

cherché le fond, et ne sçais pas si elle passe d’une terre à l’autre.”)

This may refer to Massachusetts Bay, if not possibly to the western

inclination of the coast a little farther south. When he says, “I have

no doubt that the Norimbegue enters into the river of Canada,” he is

perhaps so interpreting some account which the Indians had given

respecting the route from the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic by the St.

John, or Penobscot, or possibly even the Hudson River.

We hear rumors of this country of “Norumbega” and its great city from

many quarters. In a discourse by a great French sea-captain in

Ramusio’s third volume (1556-65), this is said to be the name given to

the land by its inhabitants, and Verrazzani is called the discoverer of

it; another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or the river, Aguncia.

It is represented as an island on an accompanying chart. It is

frequently spoken of by old writers as a country of indefinite extent,

between Canada and Florida, and it appears as a large island with Cape

Breton at its eastern extremity, on the map made according to

Verrazzani’s plot in Hackluyt’s “Divers Voyages.” These maps and rumors

may have been the origin of the notion, common among the early

settlers, that New England was an island. The country and city of

Norumbega appear about where Maine now is on a map in Ortelius

(“Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,” Antwerp, 1570), and the “R. Grande” is

drawn where the Penobscot or St. John might be.

In 1604, Champlain being sent by the Sieur de Monts to explore the

coast of Norumbegue, sailed up the Penobscot twenty-two or twenty-three

leagues from “Isle Haute,” or till he was stopped by the falls. He

says: “I think that this river is that which many pilots and historians

call Norumbegue, and which the greater part have described as great and

spacious, with numerous islands; and its entrance in the forty-third or

forty-third and one half or, according to others, the forty-fourth

degree of latitude, more or less.” He is convinced that “the greater

part” of those who speak of a great city there have never seen it, but

repeat a mere rumor, but he thinks that some have seen the mouth of the

river since it answers to their description.

Under date of 1607 Champlain writes: “Three or four leagues north of

the Cap de Poitrincourt [near the head of the Bay of Fundy in Nova

Scotia] we found a cross, which was very old, covered with moss and

almost all decayed, which was an evident sign that there had formerly

been Christians there.”

Also the following passage from Lescarbot will show how much the

neighboring coasts were frequented by Europeans in the sixteenth

century. Speaking of his return from Port Royal to France in 1607, he

says: “At last, within four leagues of Campseau [the Gut of Canso], we

arrived at a harbor [in Nova Scotia], where a worthy old gentleman from

St. John de Lus, named Captain Savale, was fishing, who received us

with the utmost courtesy. And as this harbor, which is small, but very

good, has no name, I have given it on my geographical chart the name of

Savalet. [It is on Champlain’s map also.] This worthy man told us that

this voyage was the forty-second which he had made to those parts, and

yet the Newfoundlanders [_Terre neuviers_] make only one a year. He was

wonderfully content with his fishery, and informed us that he made

daily fifty crowns’ worth of cod, and that his voyage would be worth

ten thousand francs. He had sixteen men in his employ; and his vessel

was of eighty tons, which could carry a hundred thousand dry cod.”

(Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612.) They dried their fish on the

rocks on shore.

The “Isola della Réna” (Sable Island?) appears on the chart of “Nuova

Francia” and Norumbega, accompanying the “Discourse” above referred to

in Ramusio’s third volume, edition 1556-65. Champlain speaks of there

being at the Isle of Sable, in 1604, “grass pastured by oxen (_bœufs_)

and cows which the Portuguese carried there more than sixty years ago,”

_i.e._ sixty years before 1613; in a later edition he says, which came

out of a Spanish vessel which was lost in endeavoring to settle on the

Isle of Sable; and he states that De la Roche’s men, who were left on

this island seven years from 1598, lived on the flesh of these cattle

which they found “_en quantie)_,” and built houses out of the wrecks of

vessels which came to the island (“perhaps Gilbert’s”), there being no

wood or stone. Lescarbot says that they lived “on fish and the milk of

cows left there about eighty years before by Baron de Leri and Saint

Just.” Charlevoix says they ate up the cattle and then lived on fish.

Haliburton speaks of cattle left there as a rumor. De Leri and Saint

Just had suggested plans of colonization on the Isle of Sable as early

as 1515 (1508?) according to Bancroft, referring to Charlevoix. These

are but a few of the instances which I might quote.

Cape Cod is commonly said to have been discovered in 1602. We will

consider at length under what circumstances, and with what observation

and expectations, the first Englishmen whom history clearly discerns

approached the coast of New England. According to the accounts of

Archer and Brereton (both of whom accompanied Gosnold), on the 26th of

March, 1602, old style, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold set sail from

Falmouth, England, for the North part of Virginia, in a small bark

called the _Concord_, they being in all, says one account, “thirty-two

persons, whereof eight mariners and sailors, twelve purposing upon the

discovery to return with the ship for England, the rest remain there

for population.” This is regarded as “the first attempt of the English

to make a settlement within the limits of New England.” Pursuing a new

and a shorter course than the usual one by the Canaries, “the 14th of

April following” they had sight of Saint Mary’s, an island of the

Azores. As their sailors were few and “none of the best” (I use their

own phrases), and they were “going upon an unknown coast,” they were

not “overbold to stand in with the shore but in open weather”; so they

made their first discovery of land with the lead. The 23d of April the

ocean appeared yellow, but on taking up some of the water in a bucket,

“it altered not either in color or taste from the sea azure.” The 7th

of May they saw divers birds whose names they knew, and many others in

their “English tongue of no name.” The 8th of May “the water changed to

a yellowish green, where at seventy fathoms” they “had ground.” The

9th, they had upon their lead “many glittering stones,”—“which might

promise some mineral matter in the bottom.” The 10th, they were over a

bank which they thought to be near the western end of St. John’s

Island, and saw schools of fish. The 12th, they say, “continually

passed fleeting by us sea-oare, which seemed to have their movable

course towards the northeast.” On the 13th, they observed “great beds

of weeds, much wood, and divers things else floating by,” and “had

smelling of the shore much as from the southern Cape and Andalusia in

Spain.” On Friday, the 14th, early in the morning they descried land on

the north, in the latitude of forty-three degrees, apparently some part

of the coast of Maine. Williamson (History of Maine) says it certainly

could not have been south of the central Isle of Shoals. Belknap

inclines to think it the south side of Cape Ann. Standing fair along by

the shore, about twelve o’clock the same day, they came to anchor and

were visited by eight savages, who came off to them “in a Biscay

shallop, with sail and oars,”—“an iron grapple, and a kettle of

copper.” These they at first mistook for “Christians distressed.” One

of them was “apparelled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge,

made after our sea-fashion, hoes and shoes on his feet; all the rest

(saving one that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were naked.”

They appeared to have had dealings with “some Basques of St. John de

Luz, and to understand much more than we,” say the English, “for want

of language, could comprehend.” But they soon “set sail westward,

leaving them and their coast.” (This was a remarkable discovery for

discoverers.)

“The 15th day,” writes Gabriel Archer, “we had again sight of the land,

which made ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason of a large

sound that appeared westward between it and the main, for coming to the

west end thereof, we did perceive a large opening, we called it Shoal

Hope. Near this cape we came to anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we

took great store of cod-fish, for which we altered the name and called

it Cape Cod. Here we saw skulls of herring, mackerel, and other small

fish, in great abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but without

danger; also we came to anchor again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the

land in the latitude of forty-two degrees. This Cape is well near a

mile broad, and lieth northeast by east. The captain went here ashore,

and found the ground to be full of peas, strawberries, whortleberries,

etc., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore somewhat deep; the

firewood there by us taken in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel, and

beach. A young Indian came here to the captain, armed with his bow and

arrows, and had certain plates of copper hanging at his ears; he showed

a willingness to help us in our occasions.”

“The 16th we trended the coast southerly, which was all champaign and

full of grass, but the islands somewhat woody.”

Or, according to the account of John Brereton, “riding here,” that is,

where they first communicated with the natives, “in no very good

harbor, and withal doubting the weather, about three of the clock the

same day in the afternoon we weighed, and standing southerly off into

sea the rest of that day and the night following, with a fresh gale of

wind, in the morning we found ourselves embayed with a mighty headland;

but coming to an anchor about nine of the clock the same day, within a

league of the shore, we hoisted out the one half of our shallop, and

Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and three others, went ashore,

being a white sandy and very bold shore; and marching all that

afternoon with our muskets on our necks, on the highest hills which we

saw (the weather very hot), at length we perceived this headland to be

parcel of the main, and sundry islands lying almost round about it; so

returning towards evening to our shallop (for by that time the other

part was brought ashore and set together), we espied an Indian, a young

man of proper stature, and of a pleasing countenance, and after some

familiarity with him, we left him at the sea side, and returned to our

ship, where in five or six hours’ absence we had pestered our ship so

with codfish, that we threw numbers of them overboard again; and surely

I am persuaded that in the months of March, April, and May, there is

upon this coast better fishing, and in as great plenty, as in

Newfoundland; for the skulls of mackerel, herrings, cod, and other

fish, that we daily saw as we went and came from the shore, were

wonderful,” etc.

“From this place we sailed round about this headland, almost all the

points of the compass, the shore very bold; but as no coast is free

from dangers, so I am persuaded this is as free as any. The land

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

It is not quite clear on which side of the Cape they landed. If it was

inside, as would appear from Brereton’s words, “From this place we

sailed round about this headland almost all the points of the compass,”

it must have been on the western shore either of Truro or Wellfleet. To

one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along the Cape, the only “white,

sandy, and very bold shore” that appears is in these towns, though the

bank is not so high there as on the eastern side. At a distance of four

or five miles the sandy cliffs there look like a long fort of yellow

sandstone, they are so level and regular, especially in Wellfleet,—the

fort of the land defending itself against the encroachments of the

Ocean. They are streaked here and there with a reddish sand as if

painted. Farther south the shore is more flat, and less _obviously_ and

abruptly sandy, and a little tinge of green here and there in the

marshes appears to the sailor like a rare and precious emerald. But in

the Journal of Pring’s Voyage the next year (and Salterne, who was with

Pring, had accompanied Gosnold) it is said, “Departing hence [_i.e._

from Savage Rocks] we bore unto that great gulf which Captain Gosnold

overshot the year before.”[2]

So they sailed round the Cape, calling the southeasterly extremity

“Point Cave,” till they came to an island which they named Martha’s

Vineyard (now called No Man’s Land), and another on which they dwelt

awhile, which they named Elizabeth’s Island, in honor of the Queen, one

of the group since so called, now known by its Indian name Cuttyhunk.

There they built a small storehouse, the first house built by the

English in New England, whose cellar could recently still be seen, made

partly of stones taken from the beach. Bancroft says (edition of 1837),

the ruins of the fort can no longer be discerned. They who were to have

remained becoming discontented, all together set sail for England with

a load of sassafras and other commodities, on the 18th of June

following.

The next year came Martin Pring, looking for sassafras, and thereafter

they began to come thick and fast, until long after sassafras had lost

its reputation.

These are the oldest accounts which we have of Cape Cod, unless,

perchance, Cape Cod is, as some suppose, the same with that

“Kial-ar-nes” or Keel-Cape, on which, according to old Icelandic

manuscripts, Thorwald, son of Eric the Red, after sailing many days

southwest from Greenland, broke his keel in the year 1004; and where,

according to another, in some respects less trustworthy manuscript,

Thor-finn Karlsefue (“that is, one who promises or is destined to be an

able or great man”; he is said to have had a son born in New England,

from whom Thorwaldsen the sculptor was descended), sailing past, in the

year 1007, with his wife Gudrida, Snorre Thorbrandson, Biarne

Grinolfson, and Thorhall Garnlason, distinguished Norsemen, in three

ships containing “one hundred and sixty men and all sorts of live

stock” (probably the first Norway rats among the rest), having the land

“on the right side” of them, “roved ashore,” and found “_ör-æfi_

(trackless deserts),” and “_Strand-ir láng-ar ok sand-ar_ (long narrow

beaches and sand-hills),” and “called the shores _Furdustrand-ir_

(Wonder-Strands), because the sailing by them seemed long.”

According to the Icelandic manuscripts, _Thorwald_ was the first,

then,—unless possibly one Biarne Heriulfson (_i.e._ son of Heriulf) who

had been seized with a great desire to travel, sailing from Iceland to

Greenland in the year 986 to join his father who had migrated thither,

for he had resolved, says the manuscript, “to spend the following

winter, like all the preceding ones, with his father,”—being driven far

to the southwest by a storm, when it cleared up saw the low land of

Cape Cod looming faintly in the distance; but this not answering to the

description of Greenland, he put his vessel about, and, sailing

northward along the coast, at length reached Greenland and his father.

At any rate, he may put forth a strong claim to be regarded as the

discoverer of the American continent.

These Northmen were a hardy race, whose younger sons inherited the

ocean, and traversed it without chart or compass, and they are said to

have been “the first who learned the art of sailing on a wind.”

Moreover, they had a habit of casting their door-posts overboard and

settling wherever they went ashore. But as Biarne, and Thorwald, and

Thorfinn have not mentioned the latitude and longitude distinctly

enough, though we have great respect for them as skilful and

adventurous navigators, we must for the present remain in doubt as to

what capes they did see. We think that they were considerably further

north.

If time and space permitted, I could present the claims of other

several worthy persons. Lescarbot, in 1609, asserts that the French

sailors had been accustomed to frequent the Newfoundland Banks from

time immemorial, “for the codfish with which they feed almost all

Europe and supply all sea-going vessels,” and accordingly “the language

of the nearest lands is half Basque”; and he quotes Postel, a learned

but extravagant French author, born in 1510, only six years after the

Basques, Bretons, and Normans are said to have discovered the Grand

Bank and adjacent islands, as saying, in his _Charte Géographique_,

which we have not seen: “Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis

utilitatem summa litterarum memoria a Gallis adiri solita, et ante

mille sexcentos annos frequentari solita est; sed eo quod sit urbibus

inculta et vasta, spreta est.” “This land, on account of its very

lucrative fishery, was accustomed to be visited by the Gauls from the

very dawn of history, and more than sixteen hundred years ago was

accustomed to be frequented; but because it was unadorned with cities,

and waste, it was despised.”

It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered the mine, but I discovered it

to the world. And now Bob Smith is putting in his claim.

But let us not laugh at Postel and his visions. He was perhaps better

posted up than we; and if he does seem to draw the long bow, it may be

because he had a long way to shoot,—quite across the Atlantic, If

America was found and lost again once, as most of us believe, then why

not twice? especially as there were likely to be so few records of an

earlier discovery. Consider what stuff history is made of,—that for the

most part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity. Who will tell us

even how many Russians were engaged in the battle of the Chernaya, the

other day? Yet no doubt, Mr. Scriblerus, the historian, will fix on a

definite number for the schoolboys to commit to their excellent

memories. What, then, of the number of Persians at Salamis? The

historian whom I read knew as much about the position of the parties

and their tactics in the last-mentioned affair, as they who describe a

recent battle in an article for the press now-a-days, before the

particulars have arrived. I believe that, if I were to live the life of

mankind over again myself (which I would not be hired to do), with the

Universal History in my hands, I should not be able to tell what was

what.

Earlier than the date Postel refers to, at any rate. Cape Cod lay in

utter darkness to the civilized world, though even then the sun rose

from eastward out of the sea every day, and, rolling over the Cape,

went down westward into the Bay. It was even then Cape and Bay,—ay, the

Cape of _Codfish_, and the Bay of the _Massachusetts_, perchance.

Quite recently, on the 11th of November, 1620, old style, as is well

known, the Pilgrims in the _Mayflower_ came to anchor in Cape Cod

harbor. They had loosed from Plymouth, England, the 6th of September,

and, in the words of “Mourts’ Relation,” “after many difficulties in

boisterous storms, at length, by God’s providence, upon the 9th of

November, we espied land, which we deemed to be Cape Cod, and so

afterward it proved. Upon the 11th of November we came to anchor in the

bay, which is a good harbor and pleasant bay, circled round except in

the entrance, which is about four miles over from land to land,

compassed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras,

and other sweet wood. It is a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ships

may safely ride. There we relieved ourselves with wood and water, and

refreshed our people, while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to

search for an habitation.” There we put up at Fuller’s Hotel, passing

by the Pilgrim House as too high for us (we learned afterward that we

need not have been so particular), and we refreshed ourselves with

hashed fish and beans, beside taking in a supply of liquids (which were

not intoxicating), while our legs were refitted to coast the back-side.

Further say the Pilgrims: “We could not come near the shore by three

quarters of an English mile, because of shallow water; which was a

great prejudice to us; for our people going on shore were forced to

wade a bow-shot or two in going aland, which caused many to get colds

and coughs; for it was many times freezing cold weather.” They

afterwards say: “It brought much weakness amongst us”; and no doubt it

led to the death of some at Plymouth.

The harbor of Provincetown is very shallow near the shore, especially

about the head, where the Pilgrims landed. When I left this place the

next summer, the steamer could not get up to the wharf, but we were

carried out to a large boat in a cart as much as thirty rods in shallow

water, while a troop of little boys kept us company, wading around, and

thence we pulled to the steamer by a rope. The harbor being thus

shallow and sandy about the shore, coasters are accustomed to run in

here to paint their vessels, which are left high and dry when the tide

goes down.

It chanced that the Sunday morning that we were there, I had joined a

party of men who were smoking and lolling over a pile of boards on one

of the wharves (_nihil humanum a me, etc_.), when our landlord, who was

a sort of tithing-man, went off to stop some sailors who were engaged

in painting their vessel. Our party was recruited from time to time by

other citizens, who came rubbing their eyes as if they had just got out

of bed; and one old man remarked to me that it was the custom there to

lie abed very late on Sunday, it being a day of rest. I remarked that,

as I thought, they might as well let the men paint, for all us. It was

not noisy work, and would not disturb our devotions. But a young man in

the company, taking his pipe out of his mouth, said that it was a plain

contradiction of the law of God, which he quoted, and if they did not

have some such regulation, vessels would run in there to tar, and rig,

and paint, and they would have no Sabbath at all. This was a good

argument enough, if he had not put it in the name of religion. The next

summer, as I sat on a hill there one sultry Sunday afternoon the

meeting-house windows being open, my meditations were interrupted by

the noise of a preacher who shouted like a boatswain, profaning the

quiet atmosphere, and who, I fancied, must have taken off his coat. Few

things could have been more disgusting or disheartening. I wished the

tithing-man would stop him.

[Illustration: The day of rest]

The Pilgrims say: “There was the greatest store of fowl that ever we

saw.”

We saw no fowl there, except gulls of various kinds; but the greatest

store of them that ever we saw was on a flat but slightly covered with

water on the east side of the harbor, and we observed a man who had

landed there from a boat creeping along the shore in order to get a

shot at them, but they all rose and flew away in a great scattering

flock, too soon for him, having apparently got their dinners, though he

did not get his.

It is remarkable that the Pilgrims (or their reporter) describe this

part of the Cape, not only as well wooded, but as having a deep and

excellent soil, and hardly mention the word _sand_. Now what strikes

the voyager is the barrenness and desolation of the land. _They_ found

“the ground or earth sand-hills, much like the downs in Holland, but

much better the crust of the earth, a spit’s depth, excellent black

earth.” _We_ found that the earth had lost its crust,—if, in-deed, it

ever had any,—and that there was no soil to speak of. We did not see

enough black earth in Provincetown to fill a flower-pot, unless in the

swamps. They found it “all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper,

birch, holly, vines, some ash, walnut; the wood for the most part open

and without underwood, fit either to go or ride in.” We saw scarcely

anything high enough to be called a tree, except a little low wood at

the east end of the town, and the few ornamental trees in its

yards,—only a few small specimens of some of the above kinds on the

sand-hills in the rear; but it was all thick shrubbery, without any

large wood above it, very unfit either to go or ride in. The greater

part of the land was a perfect desert of yellow sand, rippled like

waves by the wind, in which only a little Beach-grass grew here and

there. They say that, just after passing the head of East Harbor Creek,

the boughs and bushes “tore” their “very armor in pieces” (the same

thing happened to such armor as we wore, when out of curiosity we took

to the bushes); or they came to deep valleys, “full of brush,

wood-gaile, and long grass,” and “found springs of fresh water.”

For the most part we saw neither bough nor bush, not so much as a shrub

to tear our clothes against if we would, and a sheep would lose none of

its fleece, even if it found herbage enough to make fleece grow there.

We saw rather beach and poverty-grass, and merely sorrel enough to

color the surface. I suppose, then, by Woodgaile they mean the

Bayberry.

All accounts agree in affirming that this part of the Cape was

_comparatively_ well wooded a century ago. But notwithstanding the

great changes which have taken place in these respects, I cannot but

think that we must make some allowance for the greenness of the

Pilgrims in these matters, which caused them to see green. We do not

believe that the trees were large or the soil was deep here. Their

account may be true particularly, but it is generally false. They saw

literally, as well as figuratively, but one side of the Cape. They

naturally exaggerated the fairness and attractiveness of the land, for

they were glad to get to any land at all after that anxious voyage.

Everything appeared to them of the color of the rose, and had the scent

of juniper and sassafras. Very different is the general and off-hand

account given by Captain John Smith, who was on this coast six years

earlier, and speaks like an old traveller, voyager, and soldier, who

had seen too much of the world to exaggerate, or even to dwell long, on

a part of it. In his “Description of New England,” printed in 1616,

after speaking of Accomack, since called Plymouth, he says: “Cape Cod

is the next presents itself, which is only a headland of high hills of

sand, overgrown with shrubby pines, _hurts_ [i.e. whorts, or

whortleberries], and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all

weathers. This Cape is made by the main sea on the one side, and a

great bay on the other, in form of a sickle.” Champlain had already

written, “Which we named _Cap Blanc_ (Cape White), because they were

sands and downs (_sables et dunes_) which appeared thus.”

When the Pilgrims get to Plymouth their reporter says again, “The land

for the crust of the earth is a spit’s depth,”—that would seem to be

their recipe for an earth’s crust,—“excellent black mould and fat in

some places.” However, according to Bradford himself, whom some

consider the author of part of “Mourt’s Relation,” they who came over

in the _Fortune_ the next year were somewhat daunted when “they came

into the harbor of Cape Cod, and there saw nothing but a naked and

barren place.” They soon found out their mistake with respect to the

goodness of Plymouth soil. Yet when at length, some years later, when

they were fully satisfied of the poorness of the place which they had

chosen, “the greater part,” says Bradford, “consented to a removal to a

place called Nausett,” they agreed to remove all together to Nauset,

now Eastham, which was jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire; and

some of the most respectable of the inhabitants of Plymouth did

actually remove thither accordingly.

It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed but few of the

qualities of the modern pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the

American backwoodsmen. They did not go at once into the woods with

their axes. They were a family and church, and were more anxious to

keep together, though it were on the sand, than to explore and colonize

a New World. When the above-mentioned company removed to Eastham, the

church at Plymouth was left, to use Bradford’s expression, “like an

ancient mother grown old, and forsaken of her children.” Though they

landed on Clark’s Island in Plymouth harbor, the 9th of December (O.

S.), and the 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and the 18th they rambled

about the mainland, and the 19th decided to settle there, it was the

8th of January before Francis Billington went with one of the master’s

mates to look at the magnificent pond or lake now called “Billington

Sea,” about two miles distant, which he had discovered from the top of

a tree, and mistook for a great sea. And the 7th of March “Master

Carver with five others went to the great ponds which seem to be

excellent fishing,” both which points are within the compass of an

ordinary afternoon’s ramble,—however wild the country. It is true they

were busy at first about their building, and were hindered in that by

much foul weather; but a party of emigrants to California or Oregon,

with no less work on their hands,—and more hostile Indians,—would do as

much exploring the first afternoon, and the Sieur de Champlain would

have sought an interview with the savages, and examined the country as

far as the Connecticut, and made a map of it, before Billington had

climbed his tree. Or contrast them only with the French searching for

copper about the Bay of Fundy in 1603, tracing up small streams with

Indian guides. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pioneers and the

ancestors of pioneers, in a far grander enterprise.

By this time we saw the little steamer _Naushon_ entering the harbor,

and heard the sound of her whistle, and came down from the hills to

meet her at the wharf. So we took leave of Cape Cod and its

inhabitants. We liked the manners of the last, what little we saw of

them, very much. They were particularly downright and good-humored. The

old people appeared remarkably well preserved, as if by the saltness of

the atmosphere, and after having once mistaken, we could never be

certain whether we were talking to a coeval of our grandparents, or to

one of our own age. They are said to be more purely the descendants of

the Pilgrims than the inhabitants of any other part of the State. We

were told that “sometimes, when the court comes together at Barnstable,

they have not a single criminal to try, and the jail is shut up.” It

was “to let” when we were there. Until quite recently there was no

regular lawyer below Orleans. Who then will complain of a few regular

man-eating sharks along the back-side?

One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked what the fishermen did in

the winter, answered that they did nothing but go a-visiting, sit about

and tell stories,—though they worked hard in summer. Yet it is not a

long vacation they get. I am sorry that I have not been there in the

winter to hear their yarns. Almost every Cape man is Captain of some

craft or other,—every man at least who is at the head of his own

affairs, though it is not every one that is, for some heads have the

force of _Alpha privative_, negativing all the efforts which Nature

would fain make through them. The greater number of men are merely

corporals. It is worth the while to talk with one whom his neighbors

address as Captain, though his craft may have long been sunk, and he

may be holding by his teeth to the shattered mast of a pipe alone, and

only gets half-seas-over in a figurative sense, now. He is pretty sure

to vindicate his right to the title at last,—can tell one or two good

stories at least.

For the most part we saw only the back-side of the towns, but our story

is true as far as it goes. We might have made more of the Bay side, but

we were inclined to open our eyes widest at the Atlantic. We did not

care to see those features of the Cape in which it is inferior or

merely equal to the mainland, but only those in which it is peculiar or

superior. We cannot say how its towns look in front to one who goes to

meet them; we went to see the ocean behind them. They were merely the

raft on which we stood, and we took notice of the barnacles which

adhered to it, and some carvings upon it.

Before we left the wharf we made the acquaintance of a passenger whom

we had seen at the hotel. When we asked him which way he came to

Provincetown, he answered that he was cast ashore at Wood End, Saturday

night, in the same storm in which the _St. John_ was wrecked. He had

been at work as a carpenter in Maine, and took passage for Boston in a

schooner laden with lumber. When the storm came up, they endeavored to

get into Provincetown harbor. “It was dark and misty,” said he, “and as

we were steering for Long Point Light we suddenly saw the land near

us,—for our compass was out of order,—varied several degrees [a mariner

always casts the blame on his compass],—but there being a mist on

shore, we thought it was farther off than it was, and so held on, and

we immediately struck on the bar. Says the Captain, ‘We are all lost.’

Says I to the Captain, ‘Now don’t let her strike again this way; head

her right on.’ The Captain thought a moment, and then headed her on.

The sea washed completely over us, and wellnigh took the breath out of

my body. I held on to the running rigging, but I have learned to hold

on to the standing rigging the next time.” “Well, were there any

drowned?” I asked. “No; we all got safe to a house at Wood End, at

midnight, wet to our skins, and half frozen to death.” He had

apparently spent the time since playing checkers at the hotel, and was

congratulating himself on having beaten a tall fellow-boarder at that

game. “The vessel is to be sold at auction to-day,” he added. (We had

heard the sound of the crier’s bell which advertised it.) “The Captain

is rather down about it, but I tell him to cheer up and he will soon

get another vessel.”

At that moment the Captain called to him from the wharf. He looked like

a man just from the country, with a cap made of a woodchuck’s skin, and

now that I had heard a part of his history, he appeared singularly

destitute,—a Captain without any vessel, only a greatcoat! and that

perhaps a borrowed one! Not even a dog followed him; only his title

stuck to him. I also saw one of the crew. They all had caps of the same

pattern, and wore a subdued look, in addition to their naturally

aquiline features, as if a breaker—a “comber”—had washed over them. As

we passed Wood End, we noticed the pile of lumber on the shore which

had made the cargo of their vessel.

About Long Point in the summer you commonly see them catching lobsters

for the New York market, from small boats just off the shore, or

rather, the lobsters catch themselves, for they cling to the netting on

which the bait is placed of their own accord, and thus are drawn up.

They sell them fresh for two cents apiece. Man needs to know but little

more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps. The mackerel

fleet had been getting to sea, one after another, ever since midnight,

and as we were leaving the Cape we passed near to many of them under

sail, and got a nearer view than we had had;—half a dozen red-shirted

men and boys, leaning over the rail to look at us, the skipper shouting

back the number of barrels he had caught, in answer to our inquiry. All

sailors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In

one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on the rail and stood up as

high as any of them, and looked as wise. But the skipper, who did not

wish to be seen no better employed than a dog, rapped him on the nose

and sent him below. Such is human justice! I thought I could hear him

making an effective appeal down there from human to divine justice. He

must have had much the cleanest breast of the two.

[Illustration: A Provincetown fishing-vessel]

Still, many a mile behind us across the Bay, we saw the white sails of

the mackerel fishers hovering round Cape Cod, and when they were all

hull-down, and the low extremity of the Cape was also down, their white

sails still appeared on both sides of it, around where it had sunk,

like a city on the ocean, proclaiming the rare qualities of Cape Cod

Harbor. But before the extremity of the Cape had completely sunk, it

appeared like a filmy sliver of land lying flat on the ocean, and later

still a mere reflection of a sand-bar on the haze above. Its name

suggests a homely truth, but it would be more poetic if it described

the impression which it makes on the beholder. Some capes have

peculiarly suggestive names. There is Cape Wrath, the northwest point

of Scotland, for instance; what a good name for a cape lying far away

dark over the water under a lowering sky!

Mild as it was on shore this morning, the wind was cold and piercing on

the water. Though it be the hottest day in July on land, and the voyage

is to last but four hours, take your thickest clothes with you, for you

are about to float over melted icebergs. When I left Boston in the

steamboat on the 25th of June the next year, it was a quite warm day on

shore. The passengers were dressed in their thinnest clothes, and at

first sat under their umbrellas, but when we were fairly out on the

Bay, such as had only their coats were suffering with the cold, and

sought the shelter of the pilot’s house and the warmth of the chimney.

But when we approached the harbor of Provincetown, I was surprised to

perceive what an influence that low and narrow strip of sand, only a

mile or two in width, had over the temperature of the air for many

miles around. We penetrated into a sultry atmosphere where our thin

coats were once more in fashion, and found the inhabitants sweltering.

Leaving far on one side Manomet Point in Plymouth and the Scituate

shore, after being out of sight of land for an hour or two, for it was

rather hazy, we neared the Cohasset Rocks again at Minot’s Ledge, and

saw the great Tupelo-tree on the edge of Scituate, which lifts its

dome, like an umbelliferous plant, high over the surrounding forest,

and is conspicuous for many miles over land and water. Here was the new

iron light-house, then unfinished, in the shape of an egg-shell painted

red, and placed high on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea monster

floating on the waves,—destined to be phosphorescent. As we passed it

at half-tide we saw the spray tossed up nearly to the shell. A man was

to live in that egg-shell day and night, a mile from the shore. When I

passed it the next summer it was finished and two men lived in it, and

a light-house keeper said that they told him that in a recent gale it

had rocked so as to shake the plates off the table. Think of making

your bed thus in the crest of a breaker! To have the waves, like a pack

of hungry wolves, eying you always, night and day, and from time to

time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last. And not

one of all those voyagers can come to your relief,—but when your light

goes out, it will be a sign that the light of your life has gone out

also. What a place to compose a work on breakers! This light-house was

the cynosure of all eyes. Every passenger watched it for half an hour

at least; yet a colored cook belonging to the boat, whom I had seen

come out of his quarters several times to empty his dishes over the

side with a flourish, chancing to come out just as we were abreast of

this light, and not more than forty rods from it, and were all gazing

at it, as he drew back his arm, caught sight of it, and with surprise

exclaimed, “What’s that?” He had been employed on this boat for a year,

and passed this light every weekday, but as he had never chanced to

empty his dishes just at that point, had never seen it before. To look

at lights was the pilot’s business; he minded the kitchen fire. It

suggested how little some who voyaged round the world could manage to

see. You would almost as easily believe that there are men who never

yet chanced to come out at the right time to see the sun. What avails

it though a light be placed on the top of a hill, if you spend all your

life directly under the hill? It might as well be under a bushel. This

light-house, as is well known, was swept away in a storm in April,

1851, and the two men in it, and the next morning not a vestige of it

was to be seen from the shore.

A Hull man told me that he helped set up a white-oak pole on Minot’s

Ledge some years before. It was fifteen inches in diameter, forty-one

feet high, sunk four feet in the rock, and was secured by four

guys,—but it stood only one year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near the

same place stood eight years.

When I crossed the Bay in the _Melrose_ in July, we hugged the Scituate

shore as long as possible, in order to take advantage of the wind. Far

out on the Bay (off this shore) we scared up a brood of young ducks,

probably black ones, bred hereabouts, which the packet had frequently

disturbed in her trips. A townsman, who was making the voyage for the

first time, walked slowly round into the rear of the helmsman, when we

were in the middle of the Bay, and looking out over the sea, before he

sat down there, remarked with as much originality as was possible for

one who used a borrowed expression, “This is a great country.” He had

been a timber merchant, and I afterwards saw him taking the diameter of

the mainmast with his stick, and estimating its height. I returned from

the same excursion in the _Olata_, a very handsome and swift-sailing

yacht, which left Provincetown at the same time with two other packets,

the _Melrose_ and _Frolic_. At first there was scarcely a breath of air

stirring, and we loitered about Long Point for an hour in company,—with

our heads over the rail watching the great sand-circles and the fishes

at the bottom in calm water fifteen feet deep. But after clearing the

Cape we rigged a flying-jib, and, as the Captain had prophesied, soon

showed our consorts our heels. There was a steamer six or eight miles

northward, near the Cape, towing a large ship toward Boston. Its smoke

stretched perfectly horizontal several miles over the sea, and by a

sudden change in its direction, warned us of a change in the wind

before we felt it. The steamer appeared very far from the ship, and

some young men who had frequently used the Captain’s glass, but did not

suspect that the vessels were connected, expressed surprise that they

kept about the same distance apart for so many hours. At which the

Captain dryly remarked, that probably they would never get any nearer

together. As long as the wind held we kept pace with the steamer, but

at length it died away almost entirely, and the flying-jib did all the

work. When we passed the light-boat at Minot’s Ledge, the _Melrose_ and

_Frolic_ were just visible ten miles astern.

Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling

with forts like chestnuts-burs, or _echinidæ_, yet the police will not

let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring-match on one of them,

as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing

attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony

knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.

The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that

name which was wrecked on them, “which till then,” says Sir John Smith,

“for six thousand years had been nameless.” The English did not stumble

upon them in their first voyages to Virginia; and the first Englishman

who was ever there was wrecked on them in 1593. Smith says, “No place

known hath better walls nor a broader ditch.” Yet at the very first

planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first Governor,

the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.”

To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that

should be next shipwrecked on to them. It would have been more sensible

to have built as many “Charity-houses.” These are the vexed

Bermoothees.

Our great sails caught all the air there was, and our low and narrow

hull caused the least possible friction. Coming up the harbor against

the stream we swept by everything. Some young men returning from a

fishing excursion came to the side of their smack, while we were thus

steadily drawing by them, and, bowing, observed, with the best possible

grace, “We give it up.” Yet sometimes we were nearly at a standstill.

The sailors watched (two) objects on the shore to ascertain whether we

advanced or receded. In the harbor it was like the evening of a

holiday. The Eastern steamboat passed us with music and a cheer, as if

they were going to a ball, when they might be going to—Davy’s locker.

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix’s mate to some girls as we

passed that spot. That was the name of a sailor hung there, he

said.—“If I am guilty, this island will remain; but if I am innocent it

will be washed away,” and now it is all washed away!

Next (?) came the fort on George’s Island. These are bungling

contrivances: not our _fortes_ but our _foibles_. Wolfe sailed by the

strongest fort in North America in the dark, and took it.

I admired the skill with which the vessel was at last brought to her

place in the dock, near the end of Long Wharf. It was candle-light, and

my eyes could not distinguish the wharves jutting out towards us, but

it appeared like an even line of shore densely crowded with shipping.

You could not have guessed within a quarter of a mile of Long Wharf.

Nevertheless, we were to be blown to a crevice amid them,—steering

right into the maze. Down goes the mainsail, and only the jib draws us

along. Now we are within four rods of the shipping, having already

dodged several outsiders; but it is still only a maze of spars, and

rigging, and hulls,—not a crack can be seen. Down goes the jib, but

still we advance. The Captain stands aft with one hand on the tiller,

and the other holding his night-glass,—his son stands on the bowsprit

straining his eyes,—the passengers feel their hearts halfway to their

mouths, expecting a crash. “Do you see any room there?” asks the

Captain, quietly. He must make up his mind in five seconds, else he

will carry away that vessel’s bowsprit, or lose his own. “Yes, sir,

here is a place for us”; and in three minutes more we are fast to the

wharf in a little gap between two bigger vessels.

And now we were in Boston. Whoever has been down to the end of Long

Wharf, and walked through Quincy Market, has seen Boston.

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and the rest,

are the names of wharves projecting into the sea (surrounded by the

shops and dwellings of the merchants), good places to take in and to

discharge a cargo (to land the products of other climes and load the

exports of our own). I see a great many barrels and fig-drums,—piles of

wood for umbrella-sticks,—blocks of granite and ice,—great heaps of

goods, and the means of packing and conveying them,—much wrapping-paper

and twine,—many crates and hogsheads and trucks,—and that is Boston.

The more barrels, the more Boston. The museums and scientific societies

and libraries are accidental. They gather around the sands to save

carting. The wharf-rats and customhouse officers, and broken-down

poets, seeking a fortune amid the barrels. Their better or worse

lyceums, and preachings, and doctorings, these, too, are accidental,

and the malls of commons are always small potatoes. When I go to

Boston, I naturally go straight through the city (taking the Market in

my way), down to the end of Long Wharf, and look off, for I have no

cousins in the back alleys,—and there I see a great many countrymen in

their shirt-sleeves from Maine, and Pennsylvania, and all along shore

and in shore, and some foreigners beside, loading and unloading and

steering their teams about, as at a country fair.

When we reached Boston that October, I had a gill of Provincetown sand

in my shoes, and at Concord there was still enough left to sand my

pages for many a day; and I seemed to hear the sea roar, as if I lived

in a shell, for a week afterward.

The places which I have described may seem strange and remote to my

townsmen,—indeed, from Boston to Provincetown is twice as far as from

England to France; yet step into the cars, and in six hours you may

stand on those four planks, and see the Cape which Gosnold is said to

have discovered, and which I have so poorly described. If you had

started when I first advised you, you might have seen our tracks in the

sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way from the Nauset Lights to

Race Point, some thirty miles,—for at every step we made an impression

on the Cape, though we were not aware of it, and though our account may

have made no impression on your minds. But what is our account? In it

there is no roar, no beach-birds, no tow-cloth.

We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in

midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand,

amid the beach-grass and the bayberries, their companion a cow, their

wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach-plums, and their music the

surf and the peep of the beach-bird.

We went to see the Ocean, and that is probably the best place of all

our coast to go to. If you go by water, you may experience what it is

to leave and to approach these shores; you may see the Stormy Petrel by

the way, θαλασσοδρόμα, running over the sea, and if the weather is but

a little thick, may lose sight of the land in mid-passage. I do not

know where there is another beach in the Atlantic States, attached to

the mainland, so long, and at the same time so straight, and completely

uninterrupted by creeks or coves or fresh-water rivers or marshes; for

though there may be clear places on the map, they would probably be

found by the foot traveller to be intersected by creeks and marshes;

certainly there is none where there is a double way, such as I have

described, a beach and a bank, which at the same time shows you the

land and the sea, and part of the time two seas. The Great South Beach

of Long Island, which I have since visited, is longer still without an

inlet, but it is literally a mere sand-bar, exposed, several miles from

the Island, and not the edge of a continent wasting before the assaults

of the Ocean. Though wild and desolate, as it wants the bold bank, it

possesses but half the grandeur of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is the

imagination contented with its southern aspect. The only other beaches

of great length on our Atlantic coast, which I have heard sailors speak

of, are those of Barnegat on the Jersey shore, and Currituck between

Virginia and North Carolina; but these, like the last, are low and

narrow sandbars, lying off the coast, and separated from the mainland

by lagoons. Besides, as you go farther south, the tides are feebler,

and cease to add variety and grandeur to the shore. On the Pacific side

of our country also no doubt there is good walking to be found; a

recent writer and dweller there tells us that “the coast from Cape

Disappointment (or the Columbia River) to Cape Flattery (at the Strait

of Juan de Fuca) is nearly north and south, and can be travelled almost

its entire length on a beautiful sand-beach,” with the exception of two

bays, four or five rivers, and a few points jutting into the sea. The

common shell-fish found there seem to be often of corresponding types,

if not identical species, with those of Cape Cod. The beach which I

have described, however, is not hard enough for carriages, but must be

explored on foot. When one carriage has passed along, a following one

sinks deeper still in its rut. It has at present no name any more than

fame. That portion south of Nauset Harbor is commonly called Chatham

Beach. The part in Eastham is called Nauset Beach, and off Wellfleet

and Truro the Back-side, or sometimes, perhaps, Cape Cod Beach. I think

that part which extends without interruption from Nauset Harbor to Race

Point should be called Cape Cod Beach, and do so speak of it.

One of the most attractive points for visitors is in the northeast part

of Wellfleet, where accommodations (I mean for men and women of

tolerable health and habits) could probably be had within half a mile

of the sea-shore. It best combines the country and the seaside. Though

the Ocean is out of sight, its faintest murmur is audible, and you have

only to climb a hill to find yourself on its brink. It is but a step

from the glassy surface of the Herring Ponds to the big Atlantic Pond

where the waves never cease to break. Or perhaps the Highland Light in

Truro may compete with this locality, for there, there is a more

uninterrupted view of the Ocean and the Bay, and in the summer there is

always some air stirring on the edge of the bank there, so that the

inhabitants know not what hot weather is. As for the view, the keeper

of the light, with one or more of his family, walks out to the edge of

the bank after every meal to look off, just as if they had not lived

there all their days. In short, it will wear well. And what picture

will you substitute for that, upon your walls? But ladies cannot get

down the bank there at present without the aid of a block and tackle.

Most persons visit the sea-side in warm weather, when fogs are

frequent, and the atmosphere is wont to be thick, and the charm of the

sea is to some extent lost. But I suspect that the fall is the best

season, for then the atmosphere is more transparent, and it is a

greater pleasure to look out over the sea. The clear and bracing air,

and the storms of autumn and winter even, are necessary in order that

we may get the impression which the sea is calculated to make. In

October, when the weather is not intolerably cold, and the landscape

wears its autumnal tints, such as, methinks, only a Cape Cod landscape

ever wears, especially if you have a storm during your stay,—that I am

convinced is the best time to visit this shore. In autumn, even in

August, the thoughtful days begin, and we can walk anywhere with

profit. Beside, an outward cold and dreariness, which make it necessary

to seek shelter at night, lend a spirit of adventure to a walk.

The time must come when this coast will be a place of resort for those

New-Englanders who really wish to visit the sea-side. At present it is

wholly unknown to the fashionable world, and probably it will never be

agreeable to them. If it is merely a ten-pin alley, or a circular

railway, or an ocean of mint-julep, that the visitor is in search

of,—if he thinks more of the wine than the brine, as I suspect some do

at Newport,—I trust that for a long time he will be disappointed here.

But this shore will never be more attractive than it is now. Such

beaches as are fashionable are here made and unmade in a day, I may

almost say, by the sea shifting its sands. Lynn and Nantasket! this

bare and bended arm it is that makes the bay in which they lie so

snugly. What are springs and waterfalls? Here is the spring of springs,

the waterfall of waterfalls. A storm in the fall or winter is the time

to visit it; a light-house or a fisherman’s hut the true hotel. A man

may stand there and put all America behind him.

[1] It is remarkable that the first, if not the only, part of New

England which Cartier saw was Vermont (he also saw the mountains of

New York), from Montreal Mountain, in 1535, sixty-seven years before

Gosnold saw Cape Cod. _If seeing is discovering_,—and that is _all_

that it is proved that Cabot knew of the coast of the United

States,—then Cartier (to omit Verrazani and Gomez) was the discoverer

of New England rather than Gosnold, who is commonly so styled.

[2] “Savage Rock,” which some have supposed to be, from the name, the

_Salvages_, a ledge about two miles off Rockland, Cape Ann, was

probably the _Nubble_, a large, high rock near the shore, on the east

side of York Harbor, Maine. The first land made by Gosnold is presumed

by experienced navigators to be Cape Elizabeth, on the same coast.

(See Babson’s History of Gloucester, Massachusetts.)

The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.