THE SCITUATE SHORE
[Illustration]
Scituate is different: different from Cohasset, with its superbly bold
coast and its fashionable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of
settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the
indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are
refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees
into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.
Scituate life has always been along the shore. It is from the shore that
coot-shooting used to furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and
still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar
formation of the shore which has developed a small, clinker-built boat,
and made the town famous for day fishing. It is along the shore that the
unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along
the shore that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.
Scituate's history is really a fishing history, for as early as 1633 a
fishing station was established here, and in course of time the North
River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once
the scene of more shipbuilding than any other river in New England.
There is nothing more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality
than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and
economic potentialities of the fishing-trade. The Spaniard sought for
gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur
trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander
promptly applied himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel.
Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England,"
says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never such
idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great
pain: he is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so
much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."
It began when Squanto the Indian showed the amazed colonists how he
could tread the eels out of the mud with his feet and catch them with
his hands. This was convenient, to be sure, but the colonists did not
long content themselves with such primitive methods. They sent to
England for cod hooks and lines; mackerel hooks and lines; herring nets
and seines; shark hooks, bass nets, squid lines, and eel pots; and in a
short time they had established a trade which meant more money than the
gold mines of Guiana or Potosi. The modern financier who makes a fortune
from the invention of a collar button or the sale of countless penny
packages of gum is the lineal descendant of that first thrifty New
Englander who did not scorn the humble cod because it was cheap and
plentiful (you remember how these same cod "pestered" the ships of
Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has
distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter,
and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish
was--twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound,
and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish
for a penny--yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is
inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of
the Roman Catholic Church abroad opened an immense demand, and in a
short time quantities of various kinds of fish (Josselyn in 1672
enumerates over two hundred caught in New England waters) were dried and
salted and sent to England.
This constant and steadily increasing trade radically affected the whole
economic structure and history of New England for two centuries. Ships
and all the shipyard industries; the farm, on which fish was used not
only as a medium of exchange, but also as a valuable fertilizer; the
home, where the many operations of curing and salting were carried
on--all of those were developed directly by the growth of this
particular trade. Laws were made and continually revised regarding the
fisheries and safeguarding their rights in every conceivable fashion;
ship carpenters were exempt from military service, and many special
exemptions were extended to fishermen under the general statutes.
The oyster is now a dish for the epicure and the lobster for the
millionaire. But in the old days when oysters a foot long were not
uncommon, and lobsters sometimes grew to six feet, every one had all he
wanted, and sometimes more than he wanted, of these delicacies. The
stranger in New England may notice how certain customs still prevail,
such as the Friday night fish dinner and the Sunday morning fish-cakes;
and also that New Englanders as a whole have a rather fastidious taste
in regard to the preparation of both salt- and fresh-water products.
The food of any region is characteristic of that region, and to travel
along the Old Coast Road and not partake of one of the delicious fish
dinners, is as absurd as it would be to omit rice from a menu in China
or roast beef from an English dinner.
While the fishing trade was highly important in all the South Shore
towns, yet it was especially so in Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty
vessels, principally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village,
and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.
In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish
and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fishing was so
persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not
hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than
the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land
wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to
fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.
But in spite of the sea's readily accessible crop it was natural that
the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry
land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on
the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more
courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which
succeeded them. Gilson, Vassal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar,
Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies
of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was
on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then
the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of grass, and then the
mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the
regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention
of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent
fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs
and shore, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is
the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.
And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the shore that one sees
Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is
still carried on in primitive fashion. The mossers work from dories,
gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges
along the shore. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert mass, all sleek
and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there,
neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One
can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is
just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.
It shimmers from purple into lavender; the lavender into something like
rose; and by the time of the final washing and bleaching it lies in fine
light white crinkles, almost like wool. It is a pretty sight, and the
neatness and dispatch of the mossers make the odd sea-flower gardens
attractive patches on the beach. Sometimes a family working together
will make as much as a thousand dollars in a season gathering and
preparing the moss. One wonders if all the people in the world could
eat enough blancmange to consume this salty product, and is relieved to
be reminded that the moss is also used for brewing and dyeing.
It is really a pity to see Scituate only from a motor. There is real
atmosphere to the place, which is worth breathing, but it takes more
time to breathe in an atmosphere than merely to "take the air." Should
you decide to ramble about the ancient town you will surely find your
way to Scituate Point. The old stone lighthouse, over a century old, is
no longer used, and the oil lantern, hung nightly out at the end of the
romantic promontory, seems a return to days of long ago. You will also
see the place where, in the stirring Revolutionary days, little Abigail
and Rebecca Bates, with fife and drum marched up and down, close to the
shore and yet hidden from sight, playing so furiously that their
"martial music and other noises" scared away the enemy and saved the
town from invasion. You will go to Second Cliff where are the summer
homes of many literary people, and you will pass through Egypt,
catching what glimpse you can of the stables and offices, paddocks and
cottages of the immense estate of Dreamwold. And of course you will have
pointed out to you the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, whose sole claim
to remembrance is his poem of the "Old Oaken Bucket." The well-sweep is
still where he saw it, when, as editor of the _New York Mirror_, it
suddenly flashed before his reminiscent vision, but the old oaken bucket
itself has been removed to a museum.
After you have done all these things, you will, if you are wise, forsake
Scituate Harbor, which is the old section, and Scituate Beach, which is
the newer, summer section, and find the way to the burial ground, which,
after the one in Plymouth, is the oldest in the State. Possibly there
will be others at the burial ground, for ancestor worshipers are not
confined to China, and every year there springs up a new crop of
genealogists to kneel before the moss-grown headstones and, with truly
admirable patience, decipher names and dates, half obliterated by the
finger of time. One does not wonder that their descendants are so eager
to trace their connection back to those men of Kent, whose sturdy title
rings so bravely down the centuries. To be sure, what is left to trace
is very slight in most cases, and quite without any savor of
personality. Too often it is merely brief and dry recital of dates and
number of progeny, and names of the same. Few have left anything so
quaint as the words of Walter Briggs, who settled there in 1651 and from
whom Briggs Harbor was named. His will contains this thoughtful
provision: "For my wife Francis, one third of my estate during her life,
also a gentle horse or mare, and Jemmy the negur shall catch it for
her."
The good people who came later (1634) from Plymouth and Boston and took
up their difficult colonial life under the pastorate of Mr. Lathrop,
seem to have done their best to make "Satuit" (as it was first called,
from the Indians, meaning "cold brook") conform as nearly as possible to
the other pioneer settlements, even to the point of discovering witches
here. But religion and fasting were not able to accomplish what the
ubiquitous summer influx has, happily, also failed to effect. Scituate
remains different.
Perhaps it was those men of Kent who gave it its indestructibly romantic
bias; perhaps it is the jealousy of the ever-encroaching sea. The gray
geese flying over the iridescent moss gleaming upon the pebbled beaches,
the solitary lantern on the point are all parts of that differentness.
And those who love her best are glad that it is so.
[Illustration]