PROVINCETOWN.
"A man may stand there and put all America behind
him."--THOREAU.
As it was already dark when I arrived in Provincetown, I saw only the
glare from the lantern of Highland Light in passing through Truro, and
the gleaming from those at Long Point and Wood End, before the train
drew up at the station. It having been a rather busy day with me (I had
embarked at Nantucket in the morning, idled away a few hours at Vineyard
Haven, and rested as many at Cohasset Narrows), it will be easily
understood why I left the investigation of my whereabouts to the morrow.
My wants were at this moment reduced to a bed, a pair of clean sheets,
and plenty of blankets; for though the almanac said it was July in
Provincetown, the night breeze blowing freshly was strongly suggestive
of November.
It was Swift, I think, who said he never knew a man reach eminence who
was not an early riser. Doubtless the good doctor was right. But, then,
if he had lodged as I lodged, and had risen as I did, two mortal hours
before breakfast-time, he might have allowed his precept to have its
exceptions. I devoted these hours to rambling about the town.
Though not more than half a hundred miles from Boston, as the crow
flies, Cape Cod is regarded as a sort of _terra incognita_ by fully half
of New England. It has always been considered a good place to emigrate
from, rather than as offering inducements for its young men and women to
remain at home; though no class of New Englanders, I should add, are
more warmly attached to the place of their nativity. The ride throughout
the Cape affords the most impressive example of the tenacity with which
a population clings to locality that has ever come under my observation.
To one accustomed to the fertile shores of Narraganset Bay or the
valley of the Connecticut, the region between Sandwich, where you enter
upon the Cape, and Orleans, where you reach the bend of the fore-arm, is
bad enough, though no desert. Beyond this is simply a wilderness of
sand.
The surface of the country about Brewster and Orleans is rolling
prairie, barren, yet thinly covered with an appearance of soil. Stone
walls divide the fields, but from here down the Cape you will seldom see
a stone of any size in going thirty miles. My faith in Pilgrim testimony
began to diminish as I looked on all sides, and in vain, for a
"spit's-depth of excellent black earth," such as they tell of. It has,
perchance, been blown away, or buried out of sight in the shiftings
constantly going on here. Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro grow more and
more forbidding, as you approach the _Ultima Thule_, or land's end.[214]
[Illustration: COHASSET NARROWS.]
Mr. Thoreau, who has embodied the results of several excursions to the
Cape in some admirable sketches, calls it the bared and bended arm of
Massachusetts. Mr. Everett had already used the same figure. To me it
looks like a skinny, attenuated arm thrust within a stocking for
mending--the bony elbow at Chatham, the wrist at Truro, and the
half-closed fingers at Provincetown. It seems quite down at the heel
about Orleans, and as if much darning would be needed to make it as good
as new. It was something to conceive, and more to execute, such a tramp
as Thoreau's, for no one ought to attempt it who can not rise superior
to his surroundings, and shake off the gloom the weird and wide-spread
desolateness of the landscape inspires. I would as lief have marched
with Napoleon from Acre, by Mount Carmel, through the moving sands of
Tentoura.
The resemblance of the Cape to a hook appears to have struck navigators
quite early. On old Dutch maps it is delineated with tolerable accuracy,
and named "Staaten Hoeck," and the bay inclosed within the bend of it
"Staaten Bay." Massachusetts Bay is "Noord Zee," and Cape Malabar
"Vlacke Hoeck." Milford Haven appears about where Eastham is now
located. On the earliest map of Champlain the extremity of the Cape is
called "C. Blanc," or the White Cape.[215] Mather says of Cape Cod, he
supposes it will never lose the name "till swarms of cod-fish be seen
swimming on the highest hills."
[Illustration: HIGHLAND LIGHT, CAPE COD.]
This hook, though a sandy one, caught many a school of migratory fish,
and even whales found themselves often embayed in the bight of it, on
their way south, until, from being so long hunted down, they learned to
keep a good offing. It also caught all the southerly drift along shore,
such as stray ships from France and England. Bartholomew Gosnold and
John Brereton were the first white men to land on it. De Monts,
Champlain, De Poutrincourt, Smith, and finally the Forefathers, were
brought up and turned back by it.
Bradford, under date of 1620, writes thus in his journal: "A word or two
by ye way of this Cape: it was thus first named (Cape Cod) by Captain
Gosnold and his company, Ano:1602, and after by Capten Smith was caled
Cape James; but it retains ye former name amongst seamen. Also yt
pointe which first shewed those dangerous shoulds unto them, they
called Point Care, and Tucker's Terrour;[216] but ye French and Dutch,
to this day, call it Malabarr, by reason of those perilous shoulds, and
ye losses they have suffered their."
Notwithstanding what Bradford says, the name of Mallebarre is affixed to
the extreme point of Cape Cod on early French maps. In Smith's "New
England" is the following description:
"Cape Cod is the next presents itselfe, which is onely a headland of
high hills of sand, overgrowne with shrubbie pines, hurts, and such
trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers. The Cape is made by the
maine sea on the one side and a great Bay on the other, in forme of a
sickle; on it doth inhabit the people of Pawmet; and in the bottome of
the Bay, the people of Chawum. Towards the south and south-west of this
Cape is found a long and dangerous shoale of sands and rocks. But so
farre as I encircled it, I found thirtie fadom water aboard the shore
and a strong current, which makes mee thinke there is a channel about
this Shoale, where is the best and greatest fish to be had, Winter and
Summer, in all that Countrie. But the Salvages say there is no channel,
but that the shoales beginne from the maine at Pawmet to the ile of
Nausit, and so extends beyond their knowledge into the sea."
The historical outcome of the Cape is in the early navigations, and in
the fact that Provincetown was the harbor entered by the Forefathers.
The first land they saw, after Devon and Cornwall had sunk in the sea,
was this sand-bar, for it is nothing else. It appeared to their eager
eyes, as it will probably never again be seen, wooded down to the shore.
Whales, that they had not the means of taking, disported around them.
They dropped anchor three-quarters of a mile from shore, and, in order
to land, were forced to wade a "bow shoot," by which many coughs and
colds were caught, and a foundation for the winter's sickness laid. The
first landing was probably on Long Point. The men set about discovery;
for the master had told them, with a sailor's bluntness, he would be rid
of them as soon as possible. The women went also to shore to wash, thus
initiating on Monday, November 23d, the great New England washing-day.
Were there to be a day of general observance in New England
commemorative of the landing of the Pilgrims, it should be that on which
they first set foot on her soil at Cape Cod; the day, too, on which the
compact was signed.[217] Whatever of sentiment attached to the event
should, it would seem, be consecrated to the very spot their feet first
pressed. There is yet time to rescue the day from unaccountable and
unmerited neglect.
On the map of Cyprian Southack a thoroughfare is delineated from
Massachusetts Bay to the ocean at Eastham, near Sandy Point. His words
are: "The place where I came through with a whale-boat, April 26th,
1717, to look after Bellame the pirate." I have never seen this map,
which Douglass pronounces "a false and pernicious sea-chart."
From its barring their farther progress, Cape Cod was well known to the
discoverers of the early part of the seventeenth century. According to
Lescarbot, Poutrincourt spent fifteen days in a port on the south side.
It had been formally taken possession of in the name of the French king.
The first conflict between the whites and natives occurred there; and in
its sands were interred the remains of the first Christian who died
within the ancient limits of New England.[218]
The assault of the natives on De Poutrincourt is believed to have
occurred at Chatham, ironically named by the French Port Fortune, in
remembrance of their mishaps there. It was the very first collision
recorded between Europeans and savages in New England. Five of De
Poutrincourt's men having slept on shore contrary to orders, and without
keeping any watch, the Indians fell on them at day-break, October 15th,
1606, killing two outright. The rest, who were shot through and through
with arrows, ran down to the shore, crying out, "Help! they are
murdering us!" the savages pursuing with frightful whoopings.
Hearing these outcries and the appeal for help, the sentinel on board
the bark gave the alarm: "_Aux armes!_ they are killing our people!"
Roused by the signal, those on board seized their arms, and ran on deck,
without taking time to dress themselves. Fifteen or sixteen threw
themselves into the shallop, without stopping to light their matches,
and pushed for the shore. Finding they could not reach it on account of
an intervening sand-bank, they leaped into the water and waded a
musket-shot to land. De Poutrincourt, Champlain, Daniel Hay, Robert
Grave the younger, son of Du Pont Grave, and the younger Poutrincourt,
with their trumpeter and apothecary, were of the party that rushed
pell-mell, almost stark naked, upon the savages.
The Indians, perceiving the rescuing band within a bow-shot of them,
took to flight. It was idle to pursue those nimble-footed savages; so
the Frenchmen brought their dead companions to the foot of the cross
they had erected on the preceding day, and there buried them. While
chanting the funeral prayers and orisons of the Church, the natives,
from a safe distance, shouted derisively and danced to celebrate their
treason. After their funeral rites were ended the French voyagers
silently returned on board.
In a few hours, the tide being so low as to prevent the whites from
landing, the natives again appeared on the shore. They threw down the
cross, disinterred the bodies of the slain Frenchmen, and stripped them
before the eyes of their exasperated comrades. Several shots were fired
at them from the bronze gun on board, the natives at every discharge
throwing themselves flat on their faces. As soon as the French could
land, they again set up the cross, and reinterred the dead. The natives,
for the second time, fled to a distance.[219]
[Illustration: WASHING FISH.]
Provincetown was originally part of Truro. Its etymology explains that
its territory belonged to the province of Massachusetts. The earliest
inhabitants had no other title than possession, and their conveyance is
by quit-claim. For many years the place experienced the alternations of
thrift and decay, being at times well-nigh deserted. In 1749, says
Douglass, in his "Summary," the town consisted of only two or three
settled families, two or three cows, and six to ten sheep. The houses
formerly stood in one range, without regularity, along the beach, with
the drying-flakes around them. Fishing vessels were run upon the soft
sand, and their cargoes thrown into the water, where, after being washed
free from salt, the fish were taken up and carried to the flakes in
hand-barrows. Cape Cod Harbor, by which name it is also familiar to the
readers of Pilgrim chronicles, was the earliest name of Provincetown.
The place has now lost the peculiar character it owed to the windmills
on the sandy heights above the town and the salt-works on the beach
before it. The streets, described by former writers as impassable, by
reason of the deep sand, I found no difficulty in traversing. What with
an admixture of clay, and a top-dressing of oyster-shells and pebble,
brought from a distance, they have managed to make their principal
thoroughfares solid enough. Step aside from these, if you would know
what Provincetown was like in the past.
If the streets were better than I had thought, the houses were far
better. The great number of them were of wood, looking as most New
England houses look--ready for the torch. They usually had underpinnings
of brick, instead of being, as formerly, built on posts, in order that
the sand might blow underneath them. There were willows, poplars,
locusts, and balm of Gilead, standing about in odd corners, and of good
size. I saw a few sickly fruit-trees that appeared dying for lack of
moisture; and some enterprising citizens were able to make a show of
lilacs, syringas, pinks, and geraniums in their front yards. I talked
with them, and saw that the unremitting struggle for life that attended
the growth of these few simple flowers seemed to increase their love for
them, and enlarge their feeling for what was beautiful. All the earth
they have is imported. I called to mind those Spanish vineyards, where
the peasant carries a hamper of soil up the sunny slopes of the
mountain-sides, and in some crevice of the rocks plants his vine.
There are two principal streets in Provincetown. One of them, I should
imagine, more than a mile in length, runs along the harbor; the other
follows an elevated ridge of the sand-hills, and is parallel with the
first. A plank-walk is laid on one side of the avenue by the shore, the
other side being occupied by stores, fish-houses, and wharves. No
sinister meaning is attached to walking the plank in Provincetown; for
what is the whole Cape if not a gang-plank pushed out over the side of
the continent?
Where the street on the ridge is carried across gaps among the hills,
the retaining walls were of bog-peat, which was also laid on the sides
of those hills exposed to the force of the wind. Whortleberry, bayberry,
and wild rose were growing out of the interstices. They flourish as well
as when the Pilgrims were here, though all the primitive forest
disappeared long ago. I ascended the hill on which the town-hall
building stands. You must go up the town road, or break the law, as I
saw, by the straggling foot-paths, the youngsters were in the habit of
doing. Read sand for scoriae, and the fate of Herculaneum seems impending
over Provincetown. The safeguards taken to prevent the hills blowing
down upon it impresses the stranger with a sense of insecurity, though
the inhabitants do not seem much to mind it. I have heard that in
exposed situations on the Cape window-glass becomes opaque by reason of
the frequent sand-blasts rattling against the panes.
On the hill was formerly a windmill, having the flyers inside, so
resembling, say the town annalists, a lofty tower. It was a famous
landmark for vessels making the port. The chart-makers have now
replaced it with the town hall, and every mariner steering for
Provincetown has an eye to it.
The harbor is completely landlocked. There is good anchorage for vessels
of the largest class. Ofttimes it is crowded with shipping seeking a
haven of refuge. This morning there were perhaps fifty sail, of every
kind of craft. An inward-bound vessel must steer around every point of
the compass before the anchor is let go in safety. In the Revolution the
port was made use of by the British squadrons, to refit, and procure
water.[220] The tide flows on the bay side of the Cape about twenty
feet, while at the back of it there is a flow of only five or six feet.
The town is of extreme length, compared with its breadth, being
contracted between the range of high sand-hills behind it and the beach.
It lies fronting the south-east, bordering the curve of the shore, which
sweeps grandly around half the circumference of a circle on the bay
side. In one direction extends the long line of shore. If Boston be your
starting-point, you must travel a hundred and twenty miles to get fifty;
and, by the time you arrive at the extremity of the Cape, should be able
to box the compass. Looking south, Long Point terminates the land view.
Following with the eye the outline of the hook, it rests an instant on
the shaft of the light-house at Wood End, the extreme southerly point of
the Cape. Thence the coast trends north-west as far as Race Point, which
is shut out from view by intervening hills. Race Point is the outermost
land of the Cape. All these names are well known to mariners, the world
over.
The shores are bordered with dangerous bars and shallows. As shipping
could not get up to the town, the town has gone off to it, in the shape
of a wharf of great length. Our Pilgrim ancestors had to wade a "bow
shoot" to get on dry land. A resident told me that with fishing-boots on
I could cross to the head of Herring Cove at low tide. Assuredly, it is
one of the most wonderful of havens, and little likely to be dispensed
with, even if the vexed question of
"A way for ships to shape,
Instead of winding round the _Cape_
A short-cut through the _collar_,"
be answered by a ship-canal from Barnstable to Buzzard's Bay.[221]
On the summit of Town Hill you are almost astride the Cape, having the
Atlantic on one side, and Massachusetts Bay in full view on the other.
The port is not what it was when some storm-tossed bark, in accepting
its shelter, was the town talk for months. Ships come and go by scores
and hundreds, folding their wings and settling down on the water like
weary sea-gulls.
With an outward appearance of prosperity, I found the people bemoaning
the hard times. Taxes, they said, were twenty dollars in the thousand,
and only ten at Wareham; fish were scarce, and prices low, too, though
as to the last item consumers think otherwise. The fishermen I saw were
burly, athletic fellows, apparently not more thrifty than their class
everywhere. They are averse to doing any thing else than fish, and, if
the times are bad, are content to potter about their boats and
fishing-gear till better days, much as they would wait for wind and
tide. If they can not go fishing they had as lief do nothing, though
want threatens.
The boys take to the water by instinct. I saw one adrift in a boat
without oars, making his way to land by tilting the side of the dory.
They go to the fishing-banks with their fathers, and can hand, reef, and
steer with an old salt. One traveler tells of a Provincetown cow-boy who
captured and killed a blackfish he descried near the shore. As soon as
they had strength to pull in a fish, they were put on board a boat.
I noticed the familiar names that have been transplanted and thriven
everywhere. Those of Atwood, Nickerson, Newcomb, Rich, Ryder, Snow, and
Doane have the Cape ring about them. In general they are "likely" men,
as the phrase here is, getting on as might be expected of a people who
literally cast their bread upon the waters, and live on a naked crust of
earth that the sea is forever gnawing and growling at. The girls are
pretty. I say it on the authority of an expert in such matters who
accompanied me. Not all are sandy-haired.
There is a strong dash of humor about these people. They are piquant
Capers, dry and sharp as the sand. One of them was relating that he had
once watched for so long a time that he finally fell asleep while
crossing the street to his boarding-house, and on going to bed had not
waked for twenty-four hours. "Wa'al," said an old fellow, removing a
short pipe from between his lips, "you was jest a-cannin' on it up,
warn't ye?"
There is quite a colony of Portuguese in Provincetown. In my rambles I
met with a band of them returning from the swamp region back of the
town. They looked gypsy-like with their swarthy faces and gleaming eyes.
The younger women had clear olive complexions, black eyes, and the
elongated Madonna faces of their race; the older ones were grisly and
witch-like, with shriveled bodies and wrinkled faces. All of them bore
bundles of fagots on their heads that our tender women would have sunk
under, yet they did not seem in the least to mind them. They chattered
merrily as they passed by me, and I watched them until out of sight;
for, picturesque objects anywhere, here they were doubly so. They had
all gaudy handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and shawls worn
sash-wise, and knotted at the hip, the bright bits of warm color
contrasting kindly with the dead white of the sand. There were shapely
figures among them, but the men's boots they of necessity wore
subtracted a little from the symmetry of outline and my admiration.
They number about fifty families--these Portuguese--and are increasing.
One citizen expressed a vague apprehension lest they should exclude,
eventually, the whites, as the whites had expelled the Indians. And why
not? They believe in large families, while we believe in small ones or
none at all. The Pilgrims were fewer than they when they came to Cape
Cod, though they did believe in large families. Besides, Gaspard
Cortereal, a "Portingale," fell in with the land hereabouts before any
of our English. The Portuguese are reported to have stocked Sable Island
with domestic animals thirty years before Gilbert's coming to
Newfoundland.[222] Assuredly, Cortereal had as good a mortgage on the
country as Cabot, who did not land, but only beheld it in sailing by. I
had found the town effervescent. The killing of a Portuguese by his
captain, in a quarrel on board a fishing vessel, had set the whole town
talking. Coming from the city, where we average a murder a week, I was
quite startled at the measure of horror and indignation the deed excited
here. Subsequently I learned that such crimes were rare, and that in
this out-of-the-way corner of the land people had quite old-fashioned
notions about the value of human life and limb.
[Illustration: MACKEREL.--A FAMILY GROUP.]
The cod and mackerel fisheries have been the making of Provincetown,
though they complained of dull times when I was there, the fleet not
numbering more than fifty or sixty sail. Some schooners go whaling to
the Gulf of Mexico, Western Islands, or far up the north coast; but the
fares there are poor, they say, and growing poorer. The first mackerel
exhibited in the spring in Boston market are taken in Provincetown
Harbor.
Former travelers have observed that the art as well as the name of
hay-making was applied to the curing of the cod here, the fish, when
made, being stacked in the same manner. Cattle are reported to have
sometimes eaten them in lieu of salt hay. When the fishing season was at
its height, it must have been something to have seen--the length and
breadth of the town over-spread with cod-fish, occupying the front yards
and intervals between the houses. A good wife then, instead of going to
the garden for vegetables, would bring in a cod-fish from the flakes.
Then the hook was well baited.
I suppose the phrase "cod-fish aristocracy" did not originate on the
Cape, but may have a more ancient beginning than is generally believed,
as the Dutch were, in the year 1347, engaged in a civil war which lasted
many years, the rival parties being called "Hooks" and "Cod-fish,"
respectively. The former supported Margaret, Countess of Holland; the
latter, William, her son.
Champlain relates that the Indians, in this bay, fished for cod with
lines made of bark, to which a bone hook was attached, the bone being
fashioned like a harpoon, and fastened to a piece of wood with what he
believed to be hemp, such as they had in France. Bass, blue-fish, and
sturgeon were taken by spearing.
A fish dinner is eaten at least once a week by every family in New
England. In Catholic countries the supply of dried fish is usually
exhausted by the end of Lent. We have seen that Bradford received a
Jesuit at his own table, and regaled him with a fish dinner because it
was Friday, a piece of old-time courtesy some would have us think the
Pilgrims incapable of. Somewhat later they had a law in Massachusetts
banishing Jesuits or other Roman Catholic ecclesiastics out of their
jurisdiction on pain of death.
In effect, the cod-fish is to New England what roast beef is to old
Albion. The likeness of one is hanging in the State-house at Boston, as
the symbol of a leading Massachusetts industry. Down East the girls
carry bits of it in their pockets, and it is set on the bar-room
counters for luncheon. A Yankee can fatten on it where an Englishman
would starve. The statement is fortified by what we call the truth of
history.
In 1714 her Majesty of England concluded a peace with her restless
neighbor across the Channel; or, as Pope rhymes it,
"At length great Anna said, 'Let discord cease;'
She said, the world obey'd, and all was peace."
This was the famous treaty that Matthew Prior, the negotiator-poet,
calls "the d--d Peace of Utrecht." Prior went to Paris with Bolingbroke.
Having arrived there during Lent, he was, by an edict, permitted to have
roast beef as a mark of royal favor, and on, I presume, his own
application. I rescue this _morceau_ from the abyss of state archives:
"Nous Baron de Breteuil et de Preuilly, premier Baron de Touraine, Conr
du Roy en ses Conseils, Introducteur des Ambassadeurs et Princes
Etrangeres pres de Sa Matie; Enjoignons au Boucher de l'Hotel de Dieu
de fournir pendant le Careme au _prix ordinaire_, suivant l'ordre du
Roy, toute la viande de Boucherie, et Rotisserie qui sera necessaire
pour la subsistance de la maison de plenipotentiaire de la Reyne de la
Grande Bretagne, M. Prior."[223]
If the great staple of New England is so firmly associated with the
Cape, its claims in another direction deserve also to be remembered. The
whale-fishery of New England had its beginning here. The hook caught
those leviathans as the Penobscot weirs catch salmon. It was long
afterward that Nantucket bristled with harpoons. That sea-girt isle
borrowed her art of the Cape, and induced a professor in whale-craft,
Ichabod Paddock by name, to come over and teach it to her. The Pilgrims
would have begun on the instant, but they had not the gear. The Indians
followed it in their primitive way, and the exploring parties saw them
stripping blubber from a stranded blackfish exactly as now practiced.
[Illustration: POND VILLAGE, CAPE COD.]
During the years the whales swam along the shore by Cape Cod there was
good fishing in boats. Watchmen stationed on the hills gave notice by
signals when one was in sight. After some time they passed farther off
on the banks, and sloops carrying whale-boats were used. Cotton Mather
refers to the fishery here. Douglass notes a whale struck on the back of
Cape Cod that yielded one hundred and thirty-four barrels of oil. In
1739 six small whales were taken in Provincetown Harbor. In 1746 not
more than three or four whales were taken on the Cape.
The first whaling adventure to the Falkland Islands is referred to the
enterprise of two inhabitants of Truro, who received the hint from
Admiral Montague, of the British navy, in 1774.[224]
This admiral, commonly called "Mad Montague," was a character. There is
an anecdote of his causing his coxswain to put the hands of some drowned
Dutch sailors in their pockets, and then betting fifty guineas to five
they died thus. The only reminiscence of whaling that I saw in
Provincetown was a gate-way formed of the ribs of a whale before the
door of a cottage. Over the house-door was a gilded eagle, of wood, that
had decorated some luckless craft. At the tavern the door was kept ajar
by a curiously carved whale's tooth wedged underneath. My landlord,
gray-haired, but still straight and sinewy, remarked, as he saw me
examining it, "I struck that fellow."
But what I came to see here was the desert, and I had not yet seen it.
Turning my back upon the town, I set out for Race Point, three miles
distant. The last house I passed--and this was a slaughter-house--had
the sign-board of a ship, the _Plymouth Rock_, nailed above the lintel.
For a certain distance the path was easy to follow; it then became
obscure, and I finally lost it altogether; but the sea on the Atlantic
side was always roaring a hoarse halloo.
It was never before my fortune to thread so curious and at the same time
so desolate a way as this. It filled up the pictures of my reading of
the coasts of Barbary or of Lower Egypt. I first crossed a range of
sand-hills thinly grown with beach-plum, whortleberry, brake, and sheep
laurel, or wild rhododendron.[225] Now and then there was a grove of
stunted pitch-pines on the hill-sides, and upon descending I found the
hollows occupied by swamps more or less extensive, where the growth was
denser and the stagnant water dotted with white blossoming lilies. There
were also clumps of the fragrant white laurel in full bloom. In such
places the bushes grew thickly, and I had to force my way through them.
The largest of these sunken ponds is named Shank Painter. Seeing what a
share they have in preserving Provincetown, I shall always respect a bog
or a morass. Over on the shore, between Race Point and Wood End, they
have Shank Painter Bar. Here and there in the swamp were clearings of an
acre or two planted with cranberry-vines, which yield a handsome return.
It was blossoming-time, and the ground was starred with their delicate
white flowers, having the corolla rolled back, as seen in the
tiger-lily. I found ripe blueberries growing close to the sand, and wild
strawberries, of excellent flavor, on the borders of cranberry meadows.
An account says, cows might once be seen "wading, and even swimming, in
these ponds, plunging their heads into the water up to their horns,
picking up a scanty subsistence from the roots and herbs produced in
the water." I saw birch, maple, and a few other forest trees of stinted
growth in the swamp, and stumps of very large pines that had been,
perhaps, many times covered and uncovered by sand.[226]
[Illustration: PICKING AND SORTING CRANBERRIES--CAPE COD.]
Cranberry culture, already briefly alluded to, has become an important
industry on Cape Cod. It is pleasant to see the pickers busily gathering
the fruit for market, a labor performed almost wholly by females. An
instrument called a cranberry-rake was formerly used; but as it bruised
the fruit, it has been discarded for hand-picking. Very little outlay is
necessary in the preparation of a cranberry-bed, and much less labor
than is usual with ordinary farm crops, while the return is much
greater. Here the visitor is astonished at seeing the vine producing
abundantly in what appears to be pure white sand. These cranberry
plantations are very profitable. Captain Henry Hull, of Barnstable, was
one of the earliest cultivators on the Cape.
[Illustration: SAND-HILLS, PROVINCETOWN.]
Though it was raw and windy the marsh-flies bit shrewdly. After passing
over the first hills beyond Shank Painter, a very different scene
presented itself. Here was a stretch of lofty mounds of clean white
sand, five miles in length and a mile and a half in breadth, bare of all
vegetation, except scanty patches of beach grass. There was no longer a
path, and though I saw occasional foot-prints, I did not meet any one.
A carriage would be of no use where a horse would sink to his knees in
the sand. It was Equality Lane, where pauper or millionaire must trudge
for it. In some places the sand was soft and yielding, and again it was
so hard beaten by the wind that the footfall would scarcely leave an
impression. Scrambling to the summit of one of the highest hills, I
found myself overlooking a remarkable hollow completely surrounded with
sandy walls. A Bedouin might have been at home here, but shipwrecked
sailors would wander aimlessly, until, caught in some such _cul-de-sac_,
they gave up the ghost in despair. In wintry storms the route is
impracticable. The tourist who has never been to Naples may here do
Vesuvius _in poco_, taking care to empty his shoes after sliding from
the top to the bottom of a sand-hill.
The beach grass, I noticed, resembled the buffalo grass of the plains.
It grew at equal distances, even in spots where it had seeded itself. It
is the sheet-anchor of the Cape; for, now that the woods are nearly
gone, there is nothing else to prevent this avalanche of sand from
advancing and overwhelming every thing in its way. Why may not the
cotton-wood, which propagates itself in the sand on the borders of
Western rivers, prove a valuable auxiliary here? I have known a newly
formed sand-bar in the Missouri become a well-wooded island in ten
years. There, the tree grows to a great size, and seems to care little
for the kind of soil it gets. The poplar (of the same species)
flourished well, I saw, in Provincetown and elsewhere on the Cape. The
experiment is worth the trying.
In Dr. Belknap's account of Provincetown, printed in 1791, he says of
this range of sand-hills: "This volume of sand is gradually rolling
into the woods with the winds, and as it covers the trees to the tops,
they die. The tops of the trees appear above the sand, but they are all
dead. Where they have been lately covered the bark and twigs are still
remaining; from others they have fallen off; some have been so long
whipped and worn out with the sand and winds that there is nothing
remaining but the hearts and knots of the trees; but over the greater
part of this desert the trees have long since disappeared." The tops of
the dead trees mentioned by Dr. Belknap, the remnant of the forest seen
here by the Pilgrims, have been cut off for fuel, until few, if any, are
to be seen.
After crossing the wilderness, I came to the shore. It was blowing half
a gale, the sea being roughened by it, but not grand. There was but
little drift, and that such "unconsidered trifles" of the sea as the
vertebrae of fishes, jelly-fish, a few tangled bunches of weed, and some
pretty pebbles. Looking up and down the beach, I discovered one or two
wreckers seeking out the night's harvest; and presently there came a
cart in which were a man and woman, the man ever and anon jumping out to
gather up a little bundle of drift-wood, with which he ran back to the
cart, followed by a shaggy Newfoundland dog that barked and gamboled at
his side. These wreckers claim what they have discovered by placing
crossed sticks upon the heap, the mark being respected by all who come
after.
I followed the bank by the verge of the beach, the tide having but just
turned. Before me was the light-house, and the collection of huts at
Race Point. A single vessel, bound for a Southern port, was in sight,
that, after standing along, gunwale under, within half a mile of the
shore, filled away on the other tack, rounding the point in good style.
A hundred yards back of the usual high-water mark were well-defined
lines of drift, indicating the limit where the sea in great storms had
forced its way. I passed a group of huts, used perhaps at times by
fishermen, and at others as a shelter for shipwrecked mariners. The
doors were open, and, notwithstanding a palisade of barrel-staves, the
sand had drifted to a considerable depth within. Here also were pieces
of a vessel's bulwarks, the first vestiges of wreck I had seen.
In 1802 the Humane Society erected a hut of refuge at the head of
Stout's Creek; but it being improperly built with a chimney, and placed
on a spot where no beach grass grew, the strong winds blew the sand from
its foundation, and the weight of the chimney brought it to the ground.
A few weeks later the ship _Brutus_ was cast away. Had the hut remained,
it is probable the whole of the unfortunate crew might have been saved,
as they gained the shore within a few rods of the spot where it had
stood. Upon such trifles the lives of men sometimes depend.
The curvature of the shore south of Race Point, by which I was walking,
is called Herring Cove. There is good anchorage here, and vessels may
ride safely when the wind is from north-east to south-east. The shore
between Race Point and Stout's Creek, in Truro, was formerly considered
the most dangerous on the Cape. Since the erection of Race Point Light,
disasters have been less frequent. An attempt to penetrate through the
hills to Provincetown by night would be attended with danger, especially
in the winter season, but by day the steeple of the Methodist church is
always in sight from the highest sand-hills.
Freeman, in his "History of Cape Cod," relates an occurrence that
happened here in 1722. A sloop from Duxbury, in which the Rev. John
Robinson and wife, and daughter Mary, had taken passage, was upset by a
sudden tempest near Nantasket Beach, at the entrance of Boston Harbor.
The body of Mrs. Robinson was found "in Herring Cove, a little within
Race Point," by Indians, about six weeks after the event. It was
identified by papers found in the stays, and by a gold necklace, that
had been concealed from the natives by the swelling of the neck. A
finger had been cut off, doubtless for the gold ring the unfortunate
lady had worn.
The winter of 1874-'75 will be memorable in New England beyond the
present generation, the extreme cold having fast locked up a greater
number of her harbors than was ever before known. Provincetown, that is
so providentially situated to receive the storm-tossed mariner, was
hermetically sealed by a vast ice-field, which extended from Wood End to
Manomet, a distance of twenty-two miles, grasping in its icy embrace all
intermediate shores and havens. In the neighborhood of Provincetown a
fleet of fishing vessels that was unable to reach the harbor became
immovably imbedded in the floe, thus realizing at our very doors all the
perils of Arctic navigation. A few were released by the aid of a
steam-cutter, but by far the greater number remained helplessly
imprisoned without other change than that caused by the occasional drift
of the ice-floe in strong gales.
The sight was indeed a novel one. Where before was the expanse of
blue-water, nothing could now be seen except the white slab, pure as
marble, which entombed the harbors. All within the grasp of the eye was
a Dead Sea. Flags of distress were displayed in every direction from the
masts of crippled vessels that no help could reach. Their hulls,
rigging, and tapering spars were so ice-crusted as to resemble ships of
glass. As many as twenty signals of distress were counted at one time
from the life-saving station at Provincetown. Some of these luckless
craft were crushed and sunk to the bottom; others were abandoned by
their crews, who had eaten their last crust and burned the bulwarks of
their vessels for fuel. The remainder were at length released by the
breaking-up of the ice-floe, which only relaxed its grip after having
held them fast for a month.
It would not be extravagant to say that the beach on the ocean side,
between Highland Light and Wood End, was strewed with wrecks. Vessel
after vessel was dashed into pieces by waves that bore great blocks of
drift-ice to aid in the work of destruction. One starless morning the
_James Rommell_ struck between Highland Light and Race Point. Instantly
the ice-laden surges leaped upon her decks. Wood and iron were crushed
like paper under the blows of sea and ice. The helpless vessel was
forced side wise toward the beach, where the waves began heaping up the
loose sand on the leeward side, until it reached as high as her decks.
When the vessel struck, the crew clambered up the rigging, and all were
saved, in a perishing condition, with the help of rescuing hands from
the life station. One poor fellow dropped dead on the shore he had
periled life to gain, a frozen corpse. In twenty-four hours there was no
more left of the _James Rommell_ than could be carried away in the
wreckers' carts.
[Illustration: LIFE BOAT STATION.--TRIAL OF THE BOMB AND LINE.]
But saddest of all was the loss of the Italian bark _Giovanni_. After
eighty-one days of stormy voyage from Palermo, a terrible gale, which
tore the frozen sails in shreds from her masts, drove her upon this
dangerous coast. In the midst of a blinding snow-storm, the unmanageable
vessel was borne steadily and mercilessly upon the shore. When she
struck, the shock brought down portions of her rigging, leaving her a
dismantled wreck. Her crew could see people moving about on the beach,
but no human power could aid them. Soon the _Giovanni_ began to sink
into the sandy grave the waves were fast digging to receive her hull,
and the seas sweeping her decks raged around the rigging, in which the
sailors had taken refuge. One by one they were picked off by the waves.
The wreckers' bombs failed to bring a line to them. A few of the ship's
company made a desperate push for the beach, which only one reached
alive. All night long the wreckers kept their watch by the shore, hoping
the gale might abate; but sea and wind beat and howled as wildly as
before. When it was light enough to descry the _Giovanni_, six objects
could be seen clinging in the ringing. The ship, it was perceived, was
fast breaking up. God help them, for no other could! The spectators saw
these poor fellows perish before their eyes. They saw the overstrained
masts bend and shiver and break, crashing in ruin down upon the
shattered hull. The next day only a piece of the bow remained, sticking
up like a grave-stone on the reef.
Of the _Giovanni's_ crew of fifteen only the one mentioned escaped. He
could not speak a syllable of English, but was able, by signs, to
identify the body of his captain, when it came ashore. The other bodies
that came in were laid out in Provincetown church, three miles from the
scene of the wreck. Stray portions of the ship's cargo of wine and fruit
were washed up, and while any of the former was to be had the beach was
not safe to be traversed. In the midst of this carnival of death, men
drunk with wine wandered up and down in the bitter cold, intent upon
robbery and violence. One or more of these beach pirates were found
dead, the victims of their own debauch.
The configuration of the shores of the Cape on the Atlantic side is very
different from what was observed by early voyagers. The Isle Nauset of
Smith has, for more than a century, been "wiped out" by the sea.[227]
Inlets to harbors have in some cases been closed and other passages
opened, as at Eastham and Orleans. In 1863 remains of the hull of an
ancient ship were uncovered at Nauset Beach in Orleans, imbedded in the
mud of a meadow a quarter of a mile from any water that would have
floated her. Curiosity was aroused by the situation as well as the
singular build of the vessel, and what was left of her was released from
the bed in which, it is believed, it had been inclosed for more than two
centuries. A careful writer considers it to have been the wreck of the
_Sparrow-hawk_, mentioned by Bradford as having been stranded here in
1626.[228]
There are generally two ranges of sand-bars on the ocean side of the
Cape; the outward being about three-fourths of a mile from shore, and
the inner range five hundred yards. As in the case of the ill-fated
_Giovanni_, a vessel usually brings up on the outer bar, and pounds over
it at the next tide, merely to encounter the inward shoal. Between these
two ranges a tremendous cross-sea is always running in severe gales,
and, if the wind has continued long from the same quarter, causing also
a current that will float the _debris_ of a wreck along the shore faster
than a man can walk. With the wind at south-east the wreck stuff will
not land, but is carried rapidly to the north-west. Shipwrecked mariners
have to cross this hell gate to reach the beach. The mortars used at the
life-stations will not carry a life-line to a vessel at five hundred
yards from the shore in the teeth of a gale, and are therefore useless
at that distance; but if the wreck is fortunate enough to be lifted over
the inner bar by the sea, it will strike the beach at a distance where
it is practicable to save life under ordinary contingencies. So great
are the obstacles to be overcome on this shore, that there is no part of
the New England coast, Nantucket perhaps excepted, where a sailor would
not rather suffer shipwreck.
Standing here, I felt as if I had not lived in vain. I was as near
Europe as my legs would carry me, at the extreme of this withered arm
with a town in the hollow of its hand. You seem to have invaded the
domain of old Neptune, and plucked him by the very beard. For centuries
the storms have beaten upon this narrow strip of sand, behind which the
commerce of a State lies intrenched. The assault is unflagging, the
defense obstinate. Fresh columns are always forming outside for the
attack, and the roll of ocean is forever beating the charge. Yet the
Cape stands fast, and will not budge. It is as if it should say, "After
me the Deluge."
[Illustration: A "SUNFISH."]
FOOTNOTES:
[214] There is a well-defined line of demarkation between the almost
uninterrupted rock wall of the north coast and the sand, which,
beginning in the Old Colony, in Scituate, constitutes Cape Cod; and, if
we consider Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Long Island as having at
some period formed the exterior shores, the almost unbroken belt of sand
continues to Florida. This line is so little imaginary that it is plain
to see where granite gives place to sand; and it is sufficiently curious
to arrest the attention even of the unscientific explorer.
[215] "Lequel nous nommames C. Blanc pour ce que c'estoient sables et
dunes qui paroissent ainsi."
[216] Named by Captain Gosnold, on account of the expressed fears of one
of his company.
[217] Being the 21st of November, it would fall quite near to the day
usually set apart for Thanksgiving in New England, which is merely an
arbitrary observance, commemorative of no particular occurrence.
[218] One of De Monts's men ("_un charpentier Maloin_") was killed here
in 1605 by the natives. In attempting to recover a kettle one of them
had stolen, he was transfixed with arrows.
[219] Lescarbot adds that the natives, turning their backs to the
vessel, threw the sand with both hands toward them from between their
buttocks, in derision, yelling like wolves.
[220] Hubbard relates a terrific storm here. See "New England," p. 644.
In 1813 there was a naval engagement at Provincetown.
[221] General Knox was interested in this project. Lemuel Cox, the
celebrated bridge architect, was engaged in cutting it.
[222] Champlain confirms this.
[223] Prior was personally acceptable to Louis XIV., who gave him a
diamond box with his portrait. He was also well known to Boileau.
[224] Captain David Smith and Captain Gamaliel Collins.
[225] In old times a decoction of checker-berry leaves was given to
lambs poisoned by eating the young leaves of the laurel in spring.
[226] There is an authentic account of ice being found here on the 4th
of July, 1741.
[227] When the English first settled upon the Cape there was an island
off Chatham, three leagues distant, called Webb's Island. It contained
twenty acres, covered with red-cedar or savin. The Nantucket people
resorted to it for fire-wood. In 1792, as Dr. Morse relates, it had
ceased to exist for nearly a century. "A large rock," he says, "that was
upon the island, and which settled as the earth washed away, now marks
the place."
[228] Amos Otis, in the "New England Historical and Genealogical
Register," 1865.
[Illustration: NANTUCKET, FROM THE SEA.]