COHASSET LEDGES AND MARSHES[1]
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A sickle-shaped shore--wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea,
rearing massive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water,
for another shore. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly
yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against
Cohasset's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.
Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Cohasset her
Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide,
melting into lush green at low tide.
Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a
continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the
sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving
stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted
savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of
salt. For too many a passing traveler Cohasset is known only as the most
fashionable resort on the South Shore. But Cohasset's story is a longer
one than that, and far more profound.
Cohasset is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so
honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm
at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges
that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil,
and are of the same kind everywhere--granite. Granite is a rock which is
formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture,
needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore,
wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by
deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary
rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow
crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to
five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into
granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the granite, a
wrinkling so gradual that doubtless if generations of men had lived on
top of the wrinkle they would have sworn it did not move. But move it
did, and the superimposed rock must have been worn off at a rate of less
than a hundredth part of an inch every year in order to lose two or
three miles of it in twenty-five million years. As the granite was
wrinkled up by the movement of the earth's crust, certain cracks opened
and filled with lava, forming dikes. The geologist to-day can glance at
these dikes and tell the period of their formation as casually as a
jockey looking at a horse's mouth can tell his age. He could also tell
of the "faulting," or slipping down, of adjacent masses of solid rock,
which has occurred often enough to carve the characteristic Cohasset
coast.
The making of the rock bottom is a story which extends over millions of
years: the making of the soil extends over thousands. The gigantic
glacier which once formed all over the northern part of North America,
and which remained upon it most of the time until about seven thousand
years ago, ground up the rock like a huge mill and heaped its grist into
hills and plains and meadows. The marks of it are as easy to see as
finger prints in putty. There are scratches on the underlying rock in
every part of the town, pointing in the southerly direction in which the
glacier moved. The gravel and clay belts of the town have all been
stretched out in the same direction as the scratches, and many are the
boulders which were combed out of the moving glacier by the peaks of the
ledges, and are now poised, like the famous Tipping Rock, just where the
glacier left them when it melted. Few towns in America possess greater
geological interest or a wider variety of glacial phenomena than
Cohasset--all of which may be studied more fully with the aid of E.
Victor Bigelow's "Narrative History of the Town of Cohasset,
Massachusetts," and William O. Crosby's "Geology of the Boston Basin."
This, then, is briefly the first part of Cohasset's ledges. The second
part deals with human events, including many shipwrecks and disasters,
and more than one romantic episode. Perhaps this human section is best
begun with Captain John Smith.
Captain John Smith was born too early. If ever a hero was brought into
the world to adorn the moving-picture screen, that hero of the "iron
collar," of piratical capture, of wedlock with an Indian princess, was
the man. Failing of this high calling he did some serviceable work in
discovering and describing many of the inlets on the coast of New
England. Among these inlets Cohasset acted her part as hostess to the
famous navigator and staged a small and vivid encounter with the
aborigines. The date of this presentation was in 1614; the scenario may
be found in Smith's own diary. Smith and a party of eight or more
sailors made the trip between the ledges in a small rowboat. It is
believed that they landed somewhere near Hominy Point. Their landing was
not carried out without some misadventure, however, for in some way this
party of explorers angered the Indians with whom they came in contact,
and the result was an attack from bow and arrow. The town of Cohasset,
in commemorating this encounter by a tablet, has inscribed upon the
tablet Smith's own words:
"We found the people on those parts very kind, but in their fury no less
valiant: and at Quonhaset falling out there with but one of them, he
with three others crossed the harbour in a cannow to certain rocks
whereby we must pass, and there let flie their arrowes for our shot,
till we were out of danger, yet one of them was slaine, and the other
shot through the thigh."
History follows fast along the ledges: history of gallant deeds and
gallant defense during the days of the Revolution and the War of 1812;
deeds of disaster along the coast and one especial deed of great
engineering skill.
The beauty and the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon
these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries
have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land,
has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has
been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite
naturally the business of "wrecking"--that is, saving the pieces--came
to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did
Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the
world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a
Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars
in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain
Tower, of Cohasset, with a crew of Cohasset divers and seamen, who set
sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza
Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in the enterprise, agreed
to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first
year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had
reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their
skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand,
however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that
time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their
chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to assist them on the
same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was
recovered--no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!
As the wrecks along the Cohasset coast were principally caused by the
dangerous reefs spreading in either direction from what is known as
Minot's Ledge, the necessity of a lighthouse on that spot was early
evident, and the erecting of the present Minot's Light is one of the
most romantic engineering enterprises of our coast history. The original
structure was snapped off like a pikestaff in the great storm of 1851,
and the present one of Quincy granite is the first of its kind in
America to be built on a ledge awash at high tide and with no adjacent
dry land. The tremendous difficulties were finally overcome, although in
the year 1855 the work could be pursued for only a hundred and thirty
hours, and the following year for only a hundred and fifty-seven. To
read of the erection of this remarkable lighthouse reminds one of the
building of Solomon's temple. The stone was selected with the utmost
care, and the Quincy cutters declared that such chiseling had never
before left the hand of man. Then every single block for the lower
portion was meticulously cut, dovetailed, and set in position on
Government Island in Cohasset Harbor. The old base, exquisitely laid,
where they were thus set up is still visible, as smooth as a billiard
table, although grass-covered. In addition to the flawless cutting and
joining of the blocks, the ledge itself was cut into a succession of
levels suitable to bear a stone foundation--work which was possible only
at certain times of the tide and seasons of the year. The cutting of
each stone so that it exactly fitted its neighbor, above, below, and at
either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same
level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light--the
building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an
inch to a foot--was in the United States Government Building at the
Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite
tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in
a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those
who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Cohasset. A
famous Cohasset rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to
raise the stones; the massive granite blocks were teamed by one whose
proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to shift a stone
twice; a Cohasset man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to
the ledge, and another assisted in the selection of the stone.
It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from the spectacular beauty of
the Cohasset shore, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering
with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid
surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of
Colonial and pioneer life.
One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open
land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests
pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front
of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham
settlement at Bare Cove (Cohasset was part of Hingham originally) found
the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.
Cohasset to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her
borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find
that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying
within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.
These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant
pasturage for neighboring cattle and brought the Hingham settlers
quickly to Cohasset meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of
Cohasset is the history of this common pasturage--"Commons," as it was
known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among
the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole
settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any
townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conohasset without yokes
or rings, upon the town's common land."
But the Massachusetts Bay Colony was hard-headed as well as pious, and
several naïve hints creep into the early records of sharers of the
Commons who were shrewdly eyeing the salt land of Cohasset. A real
estate transfer of 1640 has this potential flavor: "Half the lot at
Conehasset, if any fall by lot, and half the commons which belong to
said lot." And again, four years later, Henry Tuttle sold to John
Fearing "what right he had to the Division of Conihassett Meadows." The
first land to come under the measuring chain and wooden stake of
surveyors was about the margin of Little Harbor about the middle of the
seventeenth century. After that the rest of the township was not long in
being parceled out. One of the curious methods of land division was in
the Beechwood district. The apportionment seems to have had the
characteristics of ribbon cake. Sections of differing desirability--to
meet the demands of justice and natural conditions--were measured out in
long strips, a mile long and twenty-five feet wide. Many an old stone
wall marking this early grant is still to be seen in the woods. Could
anything but the indomitable spirit of those English settlers and the
strong feeling for land ownership have built walls of carted stone about
enclosures a mile long and twenty-five feet wide?
Having effected a division of land in Cohasset, families soon began to
settle away from the mother town of Hingham, and after a prolonged
period of government at arm's length, with all its attendant
discomforts, the long, bitter struggle resolved itself into Cohasset's
final separation from Hingham, and its development from a precinct into
an independent township.
While the marshes to the north were the cause of Cohasset being first
visited, settled, and made into a township, yet the marshes to the south
hold an even more vital historical interest. These southern marshes,
bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Bassing Beach, were visited
by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not
come from the same township, nor were they under the same local
government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate
Harbor and Cohasset marks the line of two conflicting grants--the
Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In the early days of New England royal grants from the throne or patents
from colonial councils in London were deemed necessary before settling
in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must
have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now
how any one in England could have prevented the pioneers from settling
where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies
(indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred
acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two
colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the
harvesting of salt hay.
All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame--the
Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little
stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division
between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and
the Massachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The
dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous
commissioners from both sides. That the salt grass of Bassing Beach
should have assumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to
land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the
dispute was not referred back to England, but was settled by the
colonists themselves.
The author of the "Narrative History of Cohasset" calls this an event of
only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the
cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had
its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint
commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the
first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and
then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt
grass of Cohasset is little more than a fringe about the two harbors,
may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but
certainly this spot and boundary line should always be associated with
the respect for property which has ennobled the Anglo-Saxon race.
Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early
days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many
Cohasset adventures, twists Jerusalem Road, the brilliant beauty of
which has been so often--but never too often--remarked. This was the
main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of
barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.
Even if a man had a horse the journey was cruelly tedious, for there
were only a few stretches where the horse could go faster than a
walk--and the way was pock-marked with boulders and mudholes. With no
stage-coach before 1815, and being off the highway between Plymouth and
Boston, it is small wonder that the early Cohasset folk either walked or
went by sea to Hingham and thence to Boston.
It has been suggested that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyhassett,"
who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or
sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the
herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey
Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a
resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were
responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of
Galilee--which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem
to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and
present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire
Perce had accumulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the
drought came and the men hurried to him to buy corn, he greeted them
with "Well, boys, so you've come down to Egypt to buy corn." Another
proof, if one were needed, of the Biblical familiarity of those days.
It is hard to stop writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of
history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in
front of the old white meeting-house--one of the prettiest and most
perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore--has been pressed by the feet
of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable,
indeed, when one thinks of the march of American history. But to the
tawny ledges, tumbling out to sea, these three hundred years are as but
a day; for the story of the stones, like the story of the stars, is
measured in terms of milliards. To such immemorial keepers of the coast
the life of man is a brief tale that is soon told, and fades as swiftly
as the fading leaf.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] For much of this chapter I am indebted to my friend Alice C. Hyde.