The Old Bay State presents a front to the rough Atlantic like a
gladiator at bay. She has in Cape Cod one defensive forearm boldly
extended, and she likewise is prepared, if necessary, to thrust out
the other, which keeps close guard upon her rugged granite breast in
Cape Ann. These capes are the portals of Massachusetts Bay, and of the
ocean entrance to Boston. Everyone, in viewing the map, marvels at the
extraordinary formation of Cape Cod. Thoreau, who in days gone by
tramped all over the Cape, says, "A man may stand there and put all
America behind him." This great sandy headland stretches eastward from
the mainland at Sandwich about thirty miles, then turns north and
northwest thirty miles more, finally terminating in a huge hook, bent
around to the south and east again, and forming the spacious
landlocked harbor of Provincetown. At Harwich and Chatham the elbow
sharply bends, the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay, the wrist at Truro,
and the closing fingers make Provincetown's haven. The Cape is nearly
all white sand, with boulders occasionally appearing, particularly
near the extremity. Thin layers of soil extend as far as Truro, but
the sand is seen through many rents, and the extremity is completely
bare, being a wilderness of sand, kept in partial motion by the winds,
and making constantly shifting dunes. The prevalent northeast winds
and surf are regarded as having made the hooked end of the Cape by
gradually moving the sands upon the shore around to the west and
south. This hooked end impressed the Colonial navigators, and the
ancient Dutch maps call it Staaten Hoeck, and the enclosed waters
Staaten Bay. The extremely white sand, in contrast with the darker
rocks of more northern shores, led Champlain to name it Cape Blanc.
Gosnold, as already announced, from the abundance of codfish named it
Cape Cod, whereof the faithful historian, Cotton Mather, who records
the fact, writes naïvely that he supposes it will never lose its name
"till swarms of codfish be seen swimming on the highest hills."
This remarkable cape came near being an island, Buzzard's Bay on the
south and Cape Cod bay on the north being so deeply indented that
their waters approach within about seven miles. The isthmus is a low,
broad alluvial valley stretching between, having Monumet River flowing
from Herring Pond south into Buzzard's Bay, and the Scusset River
north from the divide, their headwaters only a thousand yards apart,
so that this narrow neck of land, nowhere elevated more than
twenty-five feet, is all that saves the famous Cape from being an
island. A canal was projected there as early as 1676, and the proposed
"Cape Cod Ship Canal" has been regularly agitated ever since, and may
at some time be constructed, saving the shipping from the long detour
around the Cape. This neck has been called "the collar of the Cape,"
and beyond was the Indian domain of Monomoy. Chatham then was Nauset,
and Barnstable was Cummaquid, these, as indeed every village on the
Cape, being famous nurseries of sailors and fishermen. Here is some
agriculture, the farms and towns having roomy old houses, and the
extensive cranberry bogs showing one of the chief industries of the
people. Along the southern shore are Marshpee, Cotuit, and Hyannis,
all changing from fishing-ports to modern fashionable watering-places.
The surface is composed of sharply defined hills of white sand,
having broad sandy levels between that are almost desert plains. There
are some trees, but the growth becomes gradually stunted, as the
journey is made out upon the Cape, and villages are less frequent and
population sparser. Modern cottages crown the hilltops, and the
frequent cranberry bogs are as level as a floor, being thickly grown
with the myriad runners and sombre foliage of the prolific plant.
Passing Yarmouth and Harwich, the railway turns northward at the elbow
of the cape, where Chatham is on the ocean shore. Brewster is
northward, and Eastham, noted for its fortified church, whose colonial
pastor received by law, for his salary, part of every stranded whale
coming upon the shore. To the left is Welfleet, on the bay shore, and
to the right the triple lighthouses of Nauset Beach, in front of which
the ocean tides divide, moving in opposite directions, one current
south to Nantucket Sound, and the other north, to go around the Cape
into Massachusetts Bay. Northward is the sandy desert of Truro, the
"Dangerfield" of early days, regarded as the most fatal coast in New
England. This town of Truro has been described as "a village where its
able-bodied men are all ploughing the ocean together as a common
field," while in North Truro "the women and girls may sit at their
doors and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their
mackerel fifteen to twenty miles off on the sea, with hundreds of
white harvest-wagons." Here, upon the high hill making the ocean
shore, where the headland curves from north around to the west, is the
guardian beacon of Cape Cod, the lofty Highland Light, forty-one miles
southeast of Boston Light, and whose powerful white rays shine for
twenty miles over the ocean without, and the bay within. The tower
stands on a hill one hundred and forty-two feet high, and the light is
elevated nearly two hundred feet. Along here Thoreau walked on the
"sand-bar in the midst of the sea," and as he gazed far over the
ocean, thus reflected: "The nearest beach to us on the east was on the
coast of Galicia in Spain, whose capital is Santiago, though by old
poets' reckoning it should have been Atlantis, or the Hesperides; but
Heaven is found to be farther west now. At first we were abreast of
that part of Portugal _entre Douro e Mino_, and then Galicia and the
port of Pontevedro opened to us as we walked along, but we did not
enter, the breakers ran so high. The bold headland of Cape Finisterre,
a little north of east, jutted toward us next with its vain brag; for
we flung back 'Here is Cape Cod, Cape Land's Beginning.' A little
indentation toward the north--for the land loomed to our imaginations
like a common mirage--we knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we sang,
'There we lay, till next day, in the Bay of Biscay, O!' A little south
of east was Palos, where Columbus weighed anchor, and further yet the
pillars which Hercules set up."