This light-house, known to mariners as the Cape Cod or Highland Light,
is one of our "primary sea-coast lights," and is usually the first seen
by those approaching the entrance of Massachusetts Bay from Europe. It
is forty-three miles from Cape Ann Light, and forty-one from Boston
Light. It stands about twenty rods from the edge of the bank, which is
here formed of clay. I borrowed the plane and square, level and
dividers, of a carpenter who was shingling a barn near by, and, using
one of those shingles made of a mast, contrived a rude sort of quadrant,
with pins for sights and pivots, and got the angle of elevation of the
bank opposite the light-house, and with a couple of cod-lines the length
of its slope, and so measured its height on the shingle. It rises one
hundred and ten feet above its immediate base, or about one hundred and
twenty-three feet above mean low water. Graham, who has carefully
surveyed the extremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred and thirty
feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an angle of forty degrees with the
horizon, where I measured it, but the clay is generally much steeper. No
cow nor hen ever gets down it. Half a mile farther south the bank is
fifteen or twenty-five feet higher, and that appeared to be the highest
land in North Truro. Even this vast clay-bank is fast wearing away.
Small streams of water trickling down it at intervals of two or three
rods have left the intermediate clay in the form of steep Gothic roofs
fifty feet high or more, the ridges as sharp and rugged-looking as
rocks; and in one place the bank is curiously eaten out in the form of a
large semicircular crater.
According to the light-house keeper, the Cape is wasting here on both
sides, though most on the eastern. In some places it had lost many rods
within the last year, and erelong the light-house must be moved. We
calculated, _from his data_, how soon the Cape would be quite worn away
at this point,--"for," said he, "I can remember sixty years back." We
were even more surprised at this last announcement--that is, at the slow
waste of life and energy in our informant, for we had taken him to be
not more than forty--than at the rapid wasting of the Cape, and we
thought that he stood a fair chance to outlive the former.
Between this October and June of the next year I found that the bank had
lost about forty feet in one place opposite the light-house, and it was
cracked more than forty feet farther from the edge at the last date, the
shore being strewn with the recent rubbish. But I judged that generally
it was not wearing away here at the rate of more than six feet annually.
Any conclusions drawn from the observations of a few years or one
generation only are likely to prove false, and the Cape may balk
expectation by its durability. In some places even a wrecker's foot-path
down the bank lasts several years. One old inhabitant told us that when
the light-house was built, in 1798, it was calculated that it would
stand forty-five years, allowing the bank to waste one length of fence
each year, "but," said he, "there it is" (or rather another near the
same site, about twenty rods from the edge of the bank).
The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere: for one man told me of a
vessel wrecked long ago on the north of Provincetown whose "_bones_"
(this was his word) are still visible many rods within the present line
of the beach, half buried in sand. Perchance they lie along-side the
_timbers_ of a whale. The general statement of the inhabitants is, that
the Cape is wasting on both sides, but extending itself on particular
points on the south and west, as at Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at
Billingsgate, Long, and Race Points. James Freeman stated in his day
that above three miles had been added to Monomoy Beach during the
previous fifty years, and it is said to be still extending as fast as
ever. A writer in the "Massachusetts Magazine," in the last century,
tells us, that, "when the English first settled upon the Cape, there was
an island off Chatham, at three leagues' distance, called Webb's Island,
containing twenty acres, covered with red-cedar or savin. The
inhabitants of Nantucket used to carry wood from it"; but he adds that
in his day a large rock alone marked the spot, and the water was six
fathoms deep there. The entrance to Nauset Harbor, which was once in
Eastham, has now travelled south into Orleans. The islands in Wellfleet
Harbor once formed a continuous beach, though now small vessels pass
between them. And so of many other parts of this coast.
Perhaps what the ocean takes from one part of the Cape it gives to
another,--robs Peter to pay Paul. On the eastern side the sea appears to
be everywhere encroaching on the land. Not only the land is undermined,
and its ruins carried off by currents, but the sand is blown from the
beach directly up the steep bank, where it is one hundred and fifty feet
high, and covers the original surface there many feet deep. If you sit
on the edge, you will have ocular demonstration of this by soon getting
your eyes full. Thus the bank preserves its height as fast as it is worn
away. This sand is steadily travelling westward at a rapid rate, "more
than a hundred yards," says one writer, within the memory of inhabitants
now living; so that in some places peat-meadows are buried deep under
the sand, and the peat is cut through it; and in one place a large
peat-meadow has made its appearance on the shore in the bank covered
many feet deep, and peat has been cut there. This accounts for that
great pebble of peat which we saw in the surf. The old oysterman had
told us that many years ago he lost a "crittur" by her being mired in a
swamp near the Atlantic side, east of his house, and twenty years ago he
lost the swamp itself entirely, but has since seen signs of it appearing
on the beach. He also said that he had seen cedar-stumps "as big as
cart-wheels" (!) on the bottom of the Bay, three miles off Billingsgate
Point, when leaning over the side of his boat in pleasant weather, and
that that was dry land not long ago. Another told us that a log canoe
known to have been buried many years before on the Bay side at East
Harbor in Truro, where the Cape is extremely narrow, appeared at length
on the Atlantic side, the Cape having rolled over it; and an old woman
said,--"Now, you see, it is true what I told you, that the Cape is
moving."
The bars along the coast shift with every storm, and in many places
there is occasionally none at all. We ourselves observed the effect of a
single storm with a high tide in the night, in July, 1855. It moved the
sand on the beach opposite the light-house to the depth of six feet, and
three rods in width as far as we could see north and south, and carried
it bodily off no one knows exactly where, laying bare in one place a
large rock five feet high which was invisible before, and narrowing the
beach to that extent. There is usually, as I have said, no bathing on
the back side of the Cape, on account of the undertow; but when we were
there last, the sea had, three months before, cast up a bar near this
light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over which the tide did
not flow, leaving a narrow cove, then a quarter of a mile long, between
it and the shore, which afforded excellent bathing. This cove had from
time to time been closed up as the bar travelled northward, in one
instance imprisoning four or five hundred whiting and cod, which died
there, and the water as often turned fresh and finally gave place to
sand. This bar, the inhabitants assured us, might be wholly removed, and
the water be six feet deep there in two or three days.
The light-house keeper said, that, when the wind blowed strong on to the
shore, the waves ate fast into the bank, but when it blowed off, they
took no sand away; for in the former case the wind heaped up the surface
of the water next to the beach, and to preserve its equilibrium a strong
undertow immediately set back again into the sea, which carried with it
the sand and whatever else was in the way, and left the beach hard to
walk on; but in the latter case the undertow set on, and carried the
sand with it, so that it was particularly difficult for shipwrecked men
to get to land when the wind blowed on to the shore, but easier when it
blowed off. This undertow, meeting the next surface-wave on the bar
which itself has made, forms part of the dam over which the latter
breaks, as over an upright wall. The sea thus plays with the land,
holding a sand-bar in its mouth awhile before it swallows it, as a cat
plays with a mouse; but the fatal gripe is sure to come at last. The sea
sends its rapacious east-wind to rob the land, but before the former has
got far with its prey, the land sends its honest west-wind to recover
some of its own. But, according to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent,
and distribution of sand-bars and banks are principally determined, not
by winds and waves, but by tides.
Our host said that you would be surprised, if you were on the beach when
the wind blew a hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of the
drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried directly northward and
parallel with the shore as fast as a man can walk, by the in-shore
current, which sets strongly in that direction at flood-tide. The
strongest swimmers also are carried along with it, and never gain an
inch toward the beach. Even a large rock has been moved half a mile
northward along the beach. He assured us that the sea was never still on
the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your head, so
that a great part of the time you could not launch a boat there, and
even in the calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up the
beach, though then you could get off on a plank. Champlain and
Poitrincourt could not land here in 1606, on account of the swell, (_la
houlle_,) yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de
la Borde's "Relation des Caraibes," my edition of which was published at
Amsterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says:--
"Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [_i.e._ a god], makes the
great _lames a la mer_, and overturns canoes. _Lames a la mer_
are the long _vagues_ which are not broken (_entrecoupees_),
and such as one sees come to land all in one piece, from one
end of a beach to another, so that, however little wind there
may be, a shallop or a canoe could hardly land (_aborder
terre_) without turning over, or being filled with water."
But on the Bay side, the water, even at its edge, is often as smooth and
still as in a pond. Commonly there are no boats used along this beach.
There was a boat belonging to the Highland Light, which the next keeper,
after he had been there a year, had not launched, though he said that
there was good fishing just off the shore. Generally the life-boats
cannot be used when needed. When the waves run very high, it is
impossible to get a boat off, however skilfully you steer it, for it
will often be completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching
breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be lifted up
by its bows, turned directly over backwards, and all the contents
spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the same way.
I heard of a party who went off fishing back of Wellfleet some years
ago, in two boats, in calm weather, who, when they had laden their boats
with fish, and approached the land again, found such a swell breaking on
it, though there was no wind, that they were afraid to enter it. At
first they thought to pull for Provincetown; but night coming on, and
that was many miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate one. As often
as they approached the shore and saw the terrible breakers that
intervened, they were deterred. In short, they were thoroughly
frightened. Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those in one
boat chose a favorable opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good
luck, in reaching the land; but they were unwilling to take the
responsibility of telling the others when to come in, and as the other
helmsman was inexperienced, their boat was swamped at once, yet all
managed to save themselves.
Much smaller waves soon make a boat "nail-sick," as the phrase is. The
keeper said that after a long and strong blow there would be three large
waves, each successively larger than the last, and then no large ones
for some time, and that, when they wished to land in a boat, they came
in on the last and largest wave. Sir Thomas Browne, (as quoted in
Brand's "Popular Antiquities," p. 372,) on the subject of the tenth wave
being "greater or more dangerous than any other," after quoting Ovid,--
"Qui venit hic fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes:
Posterior nono est, undecimoque prior,"--
says, "Which, notwithstanding, is evidently false; nor can it be made
out by observation either upon the shore or the ocean, as we have with
diligence explored in both. And surely in vain we expect a regularity in
the waves of the sea, or in the particular motions thereof, as we may in
its general reciprocations, whose causes are constant, and effects
therefore correspondent; whereas its fluctuations are but motions
subservient, which winds, storms, shores, shelves, and every
interjacency irregulates."
We read that the Clay Pounds were so called "because vessels have had
the misfortune to be pounded against them in gales of wind," which we
regard as a doubtful derivation. There are small ponds here, upheld by
the clay, which were formerly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps this, or
Clay Ponds, is the origin of the name. Water is found in the clay quite
near the surface; but we heard of one man who had sunk a well in the
sand close by, "till he could see stars at noonday," without finding
any.
Over this bare highland the wind has full sweep. Even in July it blows
the wings over the heads of the young turkeys, which do not know enough
to head against it; and in gales the doors and windows are blown in, and
you must hold on to the light-house to prevent being blown into the
Atlantic. They who merely keep out on the beach in a storm in the winter
are sometimes rewarded by the Humane Society. If you would feel the full
force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount
Washington, or at the Highland Light in Truro.
It was said in 1794 that more vessels were cast away on the east shore
of Truro than anywhere in Barnstable County. Notwithstanding this
light-house has since been erected, after almost every storm we read of
one or more vessels wrecked here, and sometimes more than a dozen wrecks
are visible from this point at one time. The inhabitants hear the crash
of vessels going to pieces as they sit round their hearths, and they
commonly date from some memorable shipwreck. If the history of this
beach could be written from beginning to end, it would be a thrilling
page in the history of commerce.
Truro was settled in the year 1700 as _Dangerfield_. This was a very
appropriate name, for I read on a monument in the graveyard near Pamet
River the following inscription:--
Sacred
to the memory of
57 citizens of Truro,
who were lost in seven
vessels, which
foundered at sea in
the memorable gale
of Oct. 3d, 1841.
Their names and ages by families were recorded on different sides of the
stone. They are said to have been lost on George's Bank, and I was told
that only one vessel drifted ashore on the back side of the Cape, with
the boys locked into the cabin and drowned. It is said that the homes of
all were "within a circuit of two miles." Twenty-eight inhabitants of
Dennis were lost in the same gale; and I read that "in one day,
immediately after this storm, nearly or quite one hundred bodies were
taken up and buried on Cape Cod." The Truro Insurance Company failed for
want of skippers to take charge of its vessels. But the surviving
inhabitants went a-fishing again the next year as usual. I found that it
would not do to speak of shipwrecks there, for almost every family has
lost some of its members at sea. "Who lives in that house?" I inquired.
"Three widows," was the reply. The stranger and the inhabitant view the
shore with very different eyes. The former may have come to see and
admire the ocean in a storm; but the latter looks on it as the scene
where his nearest relatives were wrecked. When I remarked to an old
wrecker, partially blind, who was sitting on the edge of the bank
smoking a pipe, which he had just lit with a match of dried beach-grass,
that I supposed he liked to hear the sound of the surf, he answered,
"No, I do not like to hear the sound of the surf." He had lost at least
one son in "the memorable gale," and could tell many a tale of the
shipwrecks which he had witnessed there.
In the year 1717, a noted pirate named Bellamy was led on to the bar off
Wellfleet by the captain of a snow which he had taken, to whom he had
offered his vessel again, if he would pilot him into Provincetown
Harbor. Tradition says that the latter threw over a burning tar-barrel
in the night, which drifted ashore, and the pirates followed it. A storm
coming on, their whole fleet was wrecked, and more than a hundred dead
bodies lay along the shore. Six who escaped shipwreck were executed. "At
times to this day," (1793,) says the historian of Wellfleet, "there are
King William and Queen Mary's coppers picked up, and pieces of silver
called cob-money. The violence of the seas moves the sands on the outer
bar, so that at times the iron caboose of the ship [that is, Bellamy's]
at low ebbs has been seen." Another tells us, that, "for many years
after this shipwreck, a man of a very singular and frightful aspect used
every spring and autumn to be seen travelling on the Cape, who was
supposed to have been one of Bellamy's crew. The presumption is that he
went to some place where money had been secreted by the pirates, to get
such a supply as his exigencies required. When he died, many pieces of
gold were found in a girdle which he constantly wore."
As I was walking on the beach here in my last visit, looking for shells
and pebbles, just after that storm which I have mentioned as moving the
sand to a great depth, not knowing but I might find some cob-money, I
did actually pick up a French crown-piece, worth about a dollar and six
cents, near high-water mark, on the still moist sand, just under the
abrupt, caving base of the bank. It was of a dark slate-color, and
looked like a flat pebble, but still bore a very distinct and handsome
head of Louis XV., and the usual legend on the reverse, "_Sit Nomen
Domini Benedictum_," (Blessed be the Name of the Lord,)--a pleasing
sentiment to read in the sands of the sea-shore, whatever it might be
stamped on,--and I also made out the date, 1741. Of course, I thought at
first that it was that same old button which I have found so many times,
but my knife soon showed the silver. Afterward, rambling on the bars at
low tide, I cheated my companion by holding up round shells (_Scutellae_)
between my fingers, whereupon he quickly stripped and came off to me.
In the Revolution, a British ship-of-war, called the Somerset, was
wrecked near the Clay Pounds, and all on board, some hundreds in number,
were taken prisoners. My informant said that he had never seen any
mention of this in the histories, but that at any rate he knew of a
silver watch, which one of those prisoners by accident left there, which
was still going to tell the story. But this event is noticed by some
writers.
The next summer I saw a sloop from Chatham dragging for anchors and
chains just off this shore. She had her boats out at the work while she
shuffled about on various tacks, and, when anything was found, drew up
to hoist it on board. It is a singular employment, at which men are
regularly hired and paid for their industry, to hunt to-day in pleasant
weather for anchors which have been lost,--the sunken faith and hope of
mariners, to which they trusted in vain: now, perchance, it is the rusty
one of some old pirate's ship or Norman fisherman, whose cable parted
here two hundred years ago; and now the best bower-anchor of a Canton or
a California ship, which has gone about her business. If the roadsteads
of the spiritual ocean could be thus dragged, what rusty flukes of hope
deceived and parted chain-cables of faith might again be windlassed
aboard! enough to sink the finder's craft, or stock new navies to the
end of time. The bottom of the sea is strown with anchors, some deeper
and some shallower, and alternately covered and uncovered by the sand,
perchance with a small length of iron cable still attached,--of which
where is the other end? So many unconcluded tales to be continued
another time. So, if we had diving-bells adapted to the spiritual deeps,
we should see anchors with their cables attached, as thick as eels in
vinegar, all wriggling vainly toward their holding-ground. But that is
not treasure for us which another man has lost; rather it is for us to
seek what no other man has found or can find,--not be Chatham men,
dragging for anchors.
The annals of this voracious beach! who could write them, unless it were
a shipwrecked sailor? How many who have seen it have seen it only in the
midst of danger and distress, the last strip of earth which their mortal
eyes beheld! Think of the amount of suffering which a single strand has
witnessed! The ancients would have represented it as a sea-monster with
open jaws, more terrible than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabitant of
Truro told me that about a fortnight after the St. John was wrecked at
Cohasset he found two bodies on the shore at the Clay Pounds. They were
those of a man and a corpulent woman. The man had thick boots on, though
his head was off, but "it was along-side." It took the finder some weeks
to get over the sight. Perhaps they were man and wife, and whom God had
joined the ocean-currents had not put asunder. Yet by what slight
accidents at first may they have been associated in their drifting! Some
of the bodies of those passengers were picked up far out at sea, boxed
up and sunk; some brought ashore and buried. There are more consequences
to a shipwreck than the underwriters notice. The Gulf Stream may return
some to their native shores, or drop them in some out-of-the-way cave of
ocean, where time and the elements will write new riddles with their
bones.--But to return to land again.
In this bank, above the clay, I counted in the summer two hundred holes
of the bank-swallow within a space six rods long, and there were at
least one thousand old birds within three times that distance,
twittering over the surf. I had never associated them in my thoughts
with the beach before. One little boy who had been a-bird's-nesting had
got eighty swallows' eggs for his share. Tell it not to the Humane
Society! There were many young birds on the clay beneath, which had
tumbled out and died. Also there were many crow-blackbirds hopping about
in the dry fields, and the upland plover were breeding close by the
light-house. The keeper had once cut off one's wing while mowing, as she
sat on her eggs there. This is also a favorite resort for gunners in the
fall to shoot the golden plover. As around the shores of a pond are seen
devil's-needles, butterflies, etc., so here, to my surprise, I saw at
the same season great devil's-needles of a size proportionably larger,
or nearly as big as my finger, incessantly coasting up and down the edge
of the bank, and butterflies also were hovering over it, and I never saw
so many dor-bugs and beetles of various kinds as strewed the beach. They
had apparently flown over the bank in the night, and could not get up
again, and some had perhaps fallen into the sea and were washed ashore.
They may have been in part attracted by the light-house lamps.
The Clay Pounds are a more fertile tract than usual. We saw some fine
patches of roots and corn here. As generally on the Cape, the plants had
little stalk or leaf, but ran remarkably to seed. The corn was hardly
more than half as high as in the interior, yet the ears were large and
full, and one farmer told us that he could raise forty bushels on an
acre without manure, and sixty with it. The heads of the rye also were
remarkably large. The shadbush, (_Amelanchier_,) beach-plums, and
blueberries, (_Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum_,) like the apple-trees and
oaks, were very dwarfish, spreading over the sand, but at the same time
very fruitful. The blueberry was but an inch or two high, and its fruit
often rested on the ground, so that you did not suspect the presence of
the bushes, even on those bare hills, until you were treading on them. I
thought that this fertility must be owing mainly to the abundance of
moisture in the atmosphere, for I observed that what little grass there
was was remarkably laden with dew in the morning, and in summer dense
imprisoning fogs frequently last till mid-day, turning one's beard into
a wet napkin about his throat, and the oldest inhabitant may lose his
way within a stone's-throw of his house, or be obliged to follow the
beach for a guide. The brick house attached to the light-house was
exceedingly damp at that season, and writing-paper lost all its
stiffness in it. It was impossible to dry your towel after bathing, or
to press flowers without their mildewing. The air was so moist that we
rarely wished to drink, though we could at all times taste the salt on
our lips. Salt was rarely used at table, and our host told us that his
cattle invariably refused it when it was offered them, they got so much
with their grass and at every breath; but he said that a sick horse, or
one just from the country, would sometimes take a hearty draught of salt
water, and seemed to like it and be the better for it.
It was surprising to see how much water was contained in the terminal
bud of the sea-side golden-rod, standing in the sand early in July, and
also how turnips, beets, carrots, etc., flourished even in pure sand. A
man travelling by the shore near there not long before us noticed
something green growing in the pure sand of the beach, just at
high-water mark, and on approaching found it to be a bed of beets
flourishing vigorously, probably from seed washed out of the Franklin.
Also beets and turnips came up in the sea-weed used for manure in many
parts of the Cape. This suggests how various plants may have been
dispersed over the world to distant islands and continents. Vessels,
with seeds in their cargoes, destined for particular ports, where
perhaps they were not needed, have been cast away on desolate islands,
and though their crews perished, some of their seeds have been
preserved. Out of many kinds a few would find a soil and climate adapted
to them, become naturalized, and perhaps drive out the native plants at
last, and so fit the land for the habitation of man. It is an ill wind
that blows nobody any good, and for the time lamentable shipwrecks may
thus contribute a new vegetable to a continent's stock, and prove on the
whole a lasting blessing to its inhabitants. Or winds and currents might
effect the same without the intervention of man. What, indeed, are the
various succulent plants which grow on the beach but such beds of beets
and turnips, sprung originally from seeds which perhaps were cast on the
waters for this end, though we do not know the Franklin which they came
out of? In ancient times some Mr. Bell (?) was sailing this way in his
ark with seeds of rocket, saltwort, sandwort, beach-grass, samphire,
bayberry, poverty-grass, etc., all nicely labelled with directions,
intending to establish a nursery somewhere; and did not a nursery get
established, though he thought that he had failed?
About the light-house I observed in the summer the pretty _Polygala
polygama_, spreading ray-wise flat on the ground, white
pasture-thistles, (_Cirsium pumilum_,) and amid the shrubbery the
_Smilax glauca_, which is commonly said not to grow so far north. Near
the edge of the banks about half a mile southward, the broom-crowberry,
(_Empetrum Conradii_,) for which Plymouth is the only locality in
Massachusetts usually named, forms pretty green mounds four or five feet
in diameter by one foot high,--soft, springy beds for the wayfarer: I
saw it afterward in Provincetown. But prettiest of all, the scarlet
pimpernel, or poor-man's weather-glass, (_Anagallis arvensis_,) greets
you in fair weather on almost every square yard of sand. From Yarmouth I
have received the _Chrysopsis falcata_, (golden aster,) and _Vaccinium
stamineum_, (deer-berry or squaw-huckleberry,) with fruit not edible,
sometimes as large as a cranberry (Sept. 7).
The Highland Light-house,[A] where we were staying, is a
substantial-looking building of brick, painted white, and surmounted by
an iron cap. Attached to it is the dwelling of the keeper, one story
high, also of brick, and built by Government. As we were going to spend
the night in a light-house, we wished to make the most of so novel an
experience, and therefore told our host that we should like to accompany
him when he went to light up. At rather early candle-light he lighted a
small Japan lamp, allowing it to smoke rather more than we like on
ordinary occasions, and told us to follow him. He led the way first
through his bedroom, which was placed nearest to the light-house, and
then through a long, narrow, covered passage-way, between whitewashed
walls, like a prison-entry, into the lower part of the light-house,
where many great butts of oil were arranged around; thence we ascended
by a winding and open iron stairway, with a steadily increasing scent of
oil and lamp-smoke, to a trap-door in an iron floor, and through this
into the lantern. It was a neat building, with everything in apple-pie
order, and no danger of anything rusting there for want of oil. The
light consisted of fifteen argand lamps, placed within smooth concave
reflectors twenty-one inches in diameter, and arranged in two horizontal
circles one above the other, facing every way excepting directly down
the Cape. These were surrounded, at a distance of two or three feet, by
large plate-glass windows, which defied the storms, with iron sashes, on
which rested the iron cap. All the iron work, except the floor, was
painted white. And thus the light-house was completed. We walked slowly
round in that narrow space as the keeper lighted each lamp in
succession, conversing with him at the same moment that many a sailor on
the deep witnessed the lighting of the Highland Light. His duty was to
fill and trim and light his lamps, and keep bright the reflectors. He
filled them every morning, and trimmed them commonly once in the course
of the night. He complained of the quality of the oil which was
furnished. This house consumes about eight hundred gallons in a year,
which cost not far from one dollar a gallon; but perhaps a few lives
would be saved, if better oil were provided. Another light-house keeper
said that the same proportion of winter-strained oil was sent to the
southernmost light-house in the Union as to the most northern. Formerly,
when this light-house had windows with small and thin panes, a severe
storm would sometimes break the glass, and then they were obliged to put
up a wooden shutter in haste to save their lights and reflectors,--and
sometimes in tempests, when the mariner stood most in need of their
guidance, they had thus nearly converted the light-house into a
dark-lantern, which emitted only a few feeble rays, and those commonly
on the land or lee side. He spoke of the anxiety and sense of
responsibility which he felt in cold and stormy nights in the winter,
when he knew that many a poor fellow was depending on him, and his lamps
burned dimly, the oil being chilled. Sometimes he was obliged to warm
the oil in a kettle in his house at midnight, and fill his lamps over
again,--for he could not have a fire in the light-house, it produced
such a sweat on the windows. His successor told me that he could not
keep too hot a fire in such a case. All this because the oil was poor. A
government lighting the mariners on its wintry coast with
summer-strained oil, to save expense! That were surely a summer-strained
mercy!
This keeper's successor, who kindly entertained me the next year, stated
that one extremely cold night, when this and all the neighboring lights
were burning summer oil, but he had been provident enough to reserve a
little winter oil against emergencies, he was waked up with anxiety, and
found that his oil was congealed, and his lights almost extinguished;
and when, after many hours' exertion, he had succeeded in replenishing
his reservoirs with winter oil at the wick-end, and with difficulty had
made them burn, he looked out, and found that the other lights in the
neighborhood, which were usually visible to him, had gone out, and he
heard afterward that the Pamet River and Billingsgate Lights also had
been extinguished.
Our host said that the frost, too, on the windows caused him much
trouble, and in sultry summer nights the moths covered them and dimmed
his lights; sometimes even small birds flew against the thick
plate-glass, and were found on the ground beneath in the morning with
their necks broken. In the spring of 1855 he found nineteen small
yellow-birds, perhaps goldfinches or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead
around the light-house; and sometimes in the fall he had seen where a
golden plover had struck the glass in the night, and left the down and
the fatty part of its breast on it.
Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep his light shining before
men. Surely the light-house keeper has a responsible, if an easy,
office. When his lamp goes out, _he_ goes out; or, at most, only one
such accident is pardoned.
I thought it a pity that some poor student did not live there, to profit
by all that light, since he would not rob the mariner. "Well," he said,
"I do sometimes come up here and read the newspaper when they are noisy
down below." Think of fifteen argand lamps to read the newspaper by!
Government oil!--light enough, perchance, to read the Constitution by! I
thought that he should read nothing less than his Bible by that light. I
had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a light-house,
which was more light, methinks, than the University afforded.
When we had come down and walked a dozen rods from the light-house, we
found that we could not get the full strength of its light on the narrow
strip of land between it and the shore, being too low for the focus,
and we saw only so many feeble and rayless stars; but at forty rods
inland we could see to read, though we were still indebted to only one
lamp. Each reflector sent forth a separate "fan" of light: one shone on
the windmill, and one in the hollow, while the intervening spaces were
in shadow. This light is said to be visible twenty nautical miles and
more, to an observer fifteen feet above the level of the sea. We could
see the revolving light at Race Point, the end of the Cape, about nine
miles distant, and also the light on Long Point, at the entrance of
Provincetown Harbor, and one of the distant Plymouth Harbor Lights,
across the Bay, nearly in a range with the last, like a star in the
horizon. The keeper thought that the other Plymouth Light was concealed
by being exactly in a range with the Long Point Light. He told us that
the mariner was sometimes led astray by a mackerel-fisher's lantern, who
was afraid of being run down in the night, or even by a cottager's
light, mistaking them for some well-known light on the coast,--and, when
he discovered his mistake, was wont to curse the prudent fisher or the
wakeful cottager without reason.
Though it was once declared that Providence placed this mass of clay
here on purpose to erect a light-house on, the keeper said that the
light-house should have been erected half a mile farther south, where
the coast begins to bend, and where the light could be seen at the same
time with the Nauset Lights, and distinguished from them. They now talk
of building one there. It happens that the present one is the more
useless now, so near the extremity of the Cape, because other
light-houses have since been erected there.
Among the many regulations of the Light-House Board, hanging against the
wall here, many of them excellent, perhaps, if there were a regiment
stationed here to attend to them, there is one requiring the keeper to
keep an account of the number of vessels which pass his light during the
day. But there are a hundred vessels in sight at once, steering in all
directions, many on the very verge of the horizon, and he must have more
eyes than Argus, and be a good deal farther-sighted, to tell which are
passing his light. It is an employment in some respects best suited to
the habits of the gulls which coast up and down here and circle over the
sea.
I was told by the next keeper, that on the eighth of June following, a
particularly clear and beautiful morning, he rose about half an hour
before sunrise, and, having a little time to spare, for his custom was
to extinguish his lights at sunrise, walked down toward the shore to see
what he might find. When he got to the edge of the bank, he looked up,
and, to his astonishment, saw the sun rising, and already part way above
the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong, he made haste back, and,
though it was still too early by the clock, extinguished his lamps, and
when he had got through and come down, he looked out of the window, and,
to his still greater astonishment, saw the sun just where it was before,
two-thirds above the horizon. He showed me where its rays fell on the
wall across the room. He proceeded to make a fire, and when he had done,
there was the sun still at the same height. Whereupon, not trusting to
his own eyes any longer, he called up his wife to look at it, and she
saw it also. There were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their crews,
too, he said, must have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained
at that height for about fifteen minutes by the clock, and then rose as
usual, and nothing else extraordinary happened during that day. Though
accustomed to the coast, he had never witnessed nor heard of such a
phenomenon before. I suggested that there might have been a cloud in the
horizon invisible to him, which rose with the sun, and his clock was
only as accurate as the average; or perhaps, as he denied the
possibility of this, it was such a looming of the sun as is said to
occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John Franklin, for instance,
says in his "Narrative," that, when he was on the shore of the Polar
Sea, the horizontal refraction varied so much one morning that "the
upper limb of the sun twice appeared at the horizon before it finally
rose."
He certainly must be a son of Aurora to whom the sun looms, when there
are so many millions to whom it _glooms_ rather, or who never see it
till an hour _after_ it has risen. But it behooves us old stagers to
keep our lamps trimmed and burning to the last, and not trust to the
sun's looming.
This keeper remarked that the centre of the flame should be exactly
opposite the centre of the reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was
not careful to turn down his wicks in the morning, the sun falling on
the reflectors on the south side of the building would set fire to them,
like a burning-glass, in the coldest day, and he would look up at noon
and see them all lighted! When your lamp is ready to give light, it is
readiest to receive it, and the sun will light it. His successor said
that he had never known them to blaze in such a case, but merely to
smoke.
I saw that this was a place of wonders. In a sea-turn or shallow fog,
while I was there the next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge of
the bank twenty rods distant appeared like a mountain-pasture in the
horizon. I was completely deceived by it, and I could then understand
why mariners sometimes ran ashore in such cases, especially in the
night, supposing it to be far away, though they could see the land. Once
since this, being in a large oyster-boat two or three hundred miles from
here, in a dark night, when there was a thin veil of mist on land and
water, we came so near to running on to the land before our skipper was
aware of it, that the first warning was my hearing the sound of the surf
under my elbow. I could almost have jumped ashore, and we were obliged
to go about very suddenly to prevent striking. The distant light for
which we were steering, supposing it a light-house five or six miles
off, came through the cracks of a fisherman's bunk not more than six
rods distant.
The keeper entertained us handsomely in his solitary little ocean-house.
He was a man of singular patience and intelligence, who, when our
queries struck him, rang as clear as a bell in response. The light-house
lamps a few feet distant shone full into my chamber, and made it as
bright as day, so I knew exactly how the Highland Light bore all that
night, and I was in no danger of being wrecked. Unlike the last, this
was as still as a summer night. I thought, as I lay there, half awake
and half asleep, looking upward through the window at the lights
above my head, how many sleepless eyes from far out on the
ocean-stream--mariners of all nations spinning their yarns through the
various watches of the night--were directed toward my couch.