[Illustration:_Copyright, 1898, by A. W. Elson & Co._ James Otis ]
CAPE COD
ITS PEOPLE AND THEIR HISTORY
BY
HENRY C. KITTREDGE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1930
COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY HENRY C. KITTREDGE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
TO
G. L. K.
PREFACE
Some years ago, being idly present at a tiny harbor--a mere nook in
the coast of the Cape (for _the_ Cape it is to all good Americans)--I
scraped acquaintance with an ancient and solitary fisherman who had
just landed and was lunching in the shade. He was so quietly at home
in the landscape that I felt a scrupulous and uneasy impulse to
authenticate myself as the real thing and not a naturalized colonist
or a floating element in the population. I told him, accordingly,
that I claimed all the rights and privileges of a native (which, be
it remembered, are many and important), because, though I was born in
Boston, my mother came from Barnstable and was a direct descendant of
the first settlers of 1639. ‘And so,’ I concluded with modest triumph,
‘I may claim to go back pretty far as a Cape man.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied,
with a slow smile, ‘you have a good claim; and as for me, I go back
pretty far too.’ ‘How far?’ I asked. ‘Oh, my great-grandmother was
descended from the Hockanom Indians of Yarmouth.’ As Artemus Ward puts
it, ‘He _had_ me there!’
The author of this book, it may be inferred from this anecdote, has
grown up in propitious nurture and admonition. He, too, in his daily
walk, claims with pride the privileges of a native, and he writes
with that intimacy and understanding which befit the chronicler of so
distinguished a region as Cape Cod. It is ‘a piece of prudence, as well
as good manners,’ Swift tells us, ‘to put men upon talking on subjects
they are best versed in.’ And so I leave him with confidence to the
friendly reader.
GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Alfred Crocker, Esq., of Centerville, for detailed
information about salt-making in the salt works of his father, Loring
Crocker, of Barnstable. Mr. Alfred Crocker spent several years in this
business and is one of the few persons alive who is qualified to give
first-hand information on it. Thanks are due to Mr. Thomas F. Hall, of
Omaha, Nebraska, for facts about the Shiverick clipper, Belle of the
West, in which he sailed for over four years, part of the time as mate.
I wish to thank Mr. Gilbert Coleman, one of the leading oyster dealers
of Cotuit, for information about the shellfisheries in that village
for the last seventy years; and Mr. Elmer Rich, chairman of the Board
of Selectmen of Wellfleet, and Mr. Frank A. Williams, town clerk, for
information about the oyster and quahaug industries in their town. Both
these men have long been engaged in the business there. Particular
thanks are due to Mr. Elmer Mayo, of Chatham, for permission to copy a
letter to him from L. M. Shaw, Secretary of the United States Treasury,
recounting the facts of Mr. Mayo’s rescue of surfman Ellis off Monomoy.
This letter accompanied the medal which the Department presented to Mr.
Mayo on that occasion. I am also indebted to Ezra H. Baker, Esq., of
Boston, for information about anchor-dragging off the south side of the
Cape in the eighties, when he used to watch the boats thus employed. I
have especially to thank Mr. John H. Edmonds, State Archivist, for the
map showing locations of wrecks and for his perfectly authenticated
narrative of the Whidaw episode.
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Crowell, of East Dennis, have shown me every
courtesy and assistance in obtaining the photograph of the Wild Hunter,
which is taken from the original painting in the possession of Mr.
Crowell’s mother, Mrs. Louisa M. Crowell. I wish also to thank Miss
Edith M. White, of Yarmouthport, for her great kindness in lending me
pictures of Captains Asa, John, and Oliver Eldridge, reproductions of
which appear in this volume. The portrait of James Otis is copyright
by A. W. Elson, of Belmont, to whom thanks are due for permission to
use it. The same acknowledgment is due Mr. Fred Small, of Buzzards Bay,
for his photographs of marsh and beach. The picture of the Dillingham
house in Brewster is reproduced with the kind permission of Mr. Isaac
Dillingham, of Newton Center, and that of the old Sears house in
Dennis with the permission of Mrs. Margaret Richardson, its present
owner, to whom I am also indebted for the date of its construction.
The present volume would never have been undertaken without the advice
and assistance of my father, George L. Kittredge, whose collection of
documents pertaining to the Cape has always been at my disposal, whose
knowledge of the bibliography of Cape history has saved me months of
searching, and whose suggestions for the arrangement of material have
been as happy as they were welcome.
CONTENTS
I. GEOLOGY AND EARLY APPEARANCE 3
II. THE EXPLORERS 13
III. THE INDIANS 27
IV. THE FIRST SETTLERS 52
V. HOW THEY LIVED IN THE EARLY SETTLEMENTS 71
VI. CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY TO 1775 88
VII. THE REVOLUTION 112
VIII. FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR ASHORE 134
IX. WHALING 164
X. FISHERIES 182
XI. STORMS, WRECKS, AND WRECKERS 208
XII. THE MERCHANT MARINE 232
XIII. THE CIVIL WAR 257
XIV. THE CHURCH 265
XV. THE CANAL 292
EPILOGUE 304
NOTES 307
BIBLIOGRAPHY 313
INDEX 319
ILLUSTRATIONS
JAMES OTIS _Frontispiece_
From a photogravure by A. W. Elson & Co., after the portrait by J. D.
Blackburn
MAP OF EASTHAM, ORLEANS, AND NAUSET BEACH
CHAMPLAIN’S DRAWING OF THE FIGHT WITH THE INDIANS AT CHATHAM
From Champlain’s _Voyages_ in the Harvard College Library
CHAMPLAIN’S MAP OF NAUSET HARBOR
From Champlain’s _Voyages_ in the Harvard College Library
CHAMPLAIN’S MAP OF CHATHAM, SHOWING INDIAN HOUSES AND MONOMOY
From Champlain’s _Voyages_ in the Harvard College Library
PAGE OF SERMON THAT JOHN COTTON PREACHED TO THE YARMOUTH
INDIANS IN 1712 (IN ENGLISH AND INDIAN)
From the original in the Massachusetts Historical Society
CAPTAIN JAMES BAXTER’S HOUSE, BARNSTABLE
Photograph by Francis W. Sprague, 2d
SEARS HOUSE, DENNIS
Photograph by Fred Small
ISAAC DILLINGHAM HOUSE, BREWSTER
Photograph by Fred Small
WALTER DILLINGHAM HOUSE, BREWSTER
Photograph by Fred Small
CAPTAIN JOHN COLLINS
From an old lithograph in Frederick Freeman’s
_History of Cape Cod_ (1858)
CAPTAIN JOHN ELDRIDGE
Photograph in possession of Miss Edith White, Yarmouthport
THE WILD HUNTER, CLIPPER SHIP
From a painting in possession of Mrs. Louise M. Crowell, East Dennis
LORING CROCKER’S BARNSTABLE SALT WORKS IN 1870
Photograph supplied by Mr. Alfred Crocker
MAP OF PROVINCETOWN AND EAST HARBOR
BLACKFISH ASHORE AT PROVINCETOWN
Photograph by John A. Smith, Provincetown
SANDY NECK AND THE HAY-GROUNDS, WEST BARNSTABLE
Photograph by Fred Small
PART OF PROVINCETOWN’S FISHING FLEET A GENERATION AGO
Photograph by John A. Smith, Provincetown
PROVINCETOWN FISH-FLAKES WITH SCHOONER FREDDIE W. ALTON AT THE DOCK
Photograph taken about 1890 by John A. Smith, Provincetown
MAP SHOWING APPROXIMATE LOCATIONS OF CAPE COD WRECKS DOWN TO 1903
Section of a map compiled and drawn in the United States
Engineer Office, Newport, R.I. By courtesy of Mr. John H. Edmonds
THE WRECK OF THE CALEDONIA, JANUARY 1, 1863
From a contemporary lithograph
WRECKERS PULLING OFF A BEACHED SCHOONER AT PROVINCETOWN
Photograph by John A. Smith, Provincetown
ELIJAH COBB
From a lithograph in Frederick Freeman’s _History of Cape Cod_ (1858)
ASA SHIVERICK
From a steel engraving in Simeon L. Deyo’s
_History of Barnstable County_
ROWLAND R. CROCKER
From an engraving in Frederick Freeman’s _History of Cape Cod_ (1858)
CAPTAIN ASA ELDRIDGE
From a daguerreotype in possession of Miss Edith White, Yarmouthport
CAPTAIN OLIVER ELDRIDGE
From a daguerreotype in possession of Miss Edith White, Yarmouthport
WEST BARNSTABLE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BUILT 1717-18
Photograph by Francis W. Sprague, 2d
CAPE COD
ITS PEOPLE AND THEIR HISTORY
CAPE COD
• •
•
CHAPTER I
GEOLOGY AND EARLY APPEARANCE
A generation or two ago the notion existed in the minds of those who
were at all interested that Cape Cod had risen from the sea--a Cytherea
of sand and scrub pine--washed into being by the whim of tides and
currents. There was good reason for this belief. Every year new sand
bars appeared in the harbors, and old bars changed their shape. Year
by year the inhabitants watched their long peninsulas of outer beach
stretch farther and farther into the sea, the wind piling them into
sand dunes as they went. Sometimes, too, they saw whole sections of
beach washed away, leaving new channels between sea and harbor, until
the tides of another year closed them with solid barriers of sand.
In the face of such performances it is no wonder that our fathers
believed they were watching miniature manifestations of the same forces
that little by little had swept the Cape itself out of the sea. Not
until geologists advanced the glacial theory, and laymen accepted it,
did it occur to any one that Cape Cod as it appears to-day is the
result of the passing of glaciers, and that the activity of winds and
tides in shifting the restless sands of its coast line was merely the
trimming off and polishing of what the glaciers had left in the rough.
But such was the case.
The speed with which Science marches from discovery to discovery,
leaving behind her a trail of shattered theories, compels the most
dogmatic of us to be cautious. Nowadays, if we are wise, we qualify our
boldest assertions with some verbal loophole or other through which
we may escape when our thesis is shattered by the findings of a new
decade. The geology of Cape Cod is a case in point. But the most widely
accepted theory at the moment--one that has held for more than thirty
years and is probably correct--is that the foundation of the Cape, the
solid bed of clay that lies under the loose gravel and sand on the
surface, antedates all glaciers, and is one of the ‘ancient drainage
divides of the country.’ This very old foundation exists under almost
the whole length of the Cape, cropping out at the surface here and
there, as in the clay deposits that supply the West Barnstable Brick
Yard, and the spectacular cliffs, called the Clay Pounds, at North
Truro. For the rest, it is the despair of well-drivers, who have the
greatest difficulty in working through it. What the glaciers did, then,
was merely to cap this antique foundation with a blanket of light,
loose soil. This fact should be borne in mind in connection with all
that follows.
It took two glaciers, it seems, to apply this top layer of earth. One,
called the Buzzards Bay Glacier, stopped its journey southward with its
southern edge resting along the curving line of the Elizabeth Islands,
and its eastern side lying along the eastern shore of Buzzards Bay.
From here it stretched north along the coast line of Massachusetts.
Close beside it on the east was the Cape Cod Glacier, the southern
edge of which exactly fitted the curve of Cape Cod Bay. The movement
of the ice in glaciers is in three directions. It crawls southward,
of course, but at the same time spreads sideways in both directions;
thus the upper part of the Cape (from Bourne south to Falmouth and
thence northeast through Mashpee to the Bay at Sandwich) consists of
the rubbish of earth, gravel, and boulders that was pushed east by the
eastern edge of the Buzzards Bay Glacier, and west by the western edge
of the Cape Cod Glacier. In the same way the north shore of the Cape
was formed by deposits of earth that were scooped up in front of the
southern edge of the Cape Cod Glacier, while the eastward motion of its
ice pushed into place the section of the Cape from Orleans north to
Truro.
But the process was only begun. No sooner had these glaciers come to
rest than they began to melt, and a thousand streams appeared flowing
out from under them, carrying more soil with them. These rivers forced
their way through the earthy deposits already piled up in front of the
glaciers, and carrying the lighter material along, spread it out in the
broad gentle slope that forms the southern shore of the Cape, all the
territory, in fact, from the high ridge that runs east and west along
its axis, south to the beaches that border it from Cotuit to Chatham.
Similar rivers flowed out from under the eastern edge of the glacier
and gave breadth to the plains of Nauset.
In connection with this part of the Cape--to be more explicit,
the Ocean side from Chatham to Highland Light--another geological
conjecture must be mentioned. The existence of Nantucket Shoals and
Georges Bank is best explained by the theory that they are respectively
the southern and southeastern moraines deposited by a third glacier
called the South Channel Glacier. If such an ice field existed, the
westward spreading of its pack certainly contributed to the creation of
the region between Chatham and Highland Light, dividing the honors for
this achievement with the Cape Cod Glacier on the west. This hypothesis
is supported by the presence, in Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro, of a
series of parallel valleys, the floors of which slope from east to
west. Such valleys may have been formed by glacial rivers flowing out
from the west edge of the South Channel Glacier. In fact, it is hard to
account for them in any other way.
In brief, then, the Cape is composed of earth piled up by glaciers on
top of a preglacial foundation of clay, and then spread out and added
to by rivers of melting ice flowing out from under them. This process
was doubtless repeated. The quality of the ice varied greatly; it was
harder in some spots than in others, and melted more slowly. So it
happened that the rivers sometimes encountered in their course isolated
blocks of very hard ice from which the glacier itself had melted away.
These abandoned glacial fragments were often several acres in extent.
In time they were buried under the earth that was washed over them by
the rivers, and presented what was to all appearances solid land. But
when its ice foundation finally melted, this land sank, forming pockets
into which the ground water promptly seeped. These water pockets are
to-day the ponds that are found scattered thickly over the whole length
and breadth of the Cape.
Of course the retreating glaciers did not leave anything like the
smooth and regular shore line that the maps show to-day from
Provincetown to Monomoy Point. The coast was ragged and notched with
a hundred shapeless coves and spits, most of them composed of loose
gravel, just the sort of shore that the sea likes to fall upon and
trim smooth. Two of these irregularities, unlike the rest, were of
sufficient size to be classed as headlands and had enough rock in their
composition to present an obstinate front to the waves. Naturally,
therefore, they lasted long after the rest of the coast had been
swept smooth. The existence of the first of these, known as Webb’s
Island Point, is conjectural, but there is a stubborn local tradition,
supported by a certain amount of evidence, that such a body of land
once stretched southeast from Chatham several miles into the sea.
If it ever did exist, it had certainly been washed away before the
first European arrived on the coast. [See notes to Chapter I.] Of the
existence of the other headland, called ‘Île Nauset,’ there is no
doubt. It projected seaward from Eastham, and remained undemolished
long enough to play an important part in New England history, for it
was the surf breaking on this promontory that caused the Mayflower to
turn back to Provincetown, instead of continuing her voyage to the
Hudson. With the exception of these two tongues of land, however, the
sea made short work of the irregularities along the outer beach and
used the material it dislodged to lengthen the Cape by making the land
that is now Provincetown and the miles of barren sand hills that lie
behind it.
The process was simple. Every northeaster sent a tremendous surf
breaking against the new and loosely packed outer shore of the Cape all
the way from Chatham to its original limit at North Truro. The power of
these waves bit great pieces out of the invitingly irregular bluffs and
sent whole sections of them sliding down to be swept away by the next
roller.
‘Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink--’
Once dislodged, this loose sand and gravel was swept in both
directions, north and south, and as winter followed winter and century
followed century, that which was carried north formed shoals beyond
High Head in North Truro. By degrees these shoals were piled higher,
attached themselves to the mainland, and finally became dry land. In
this way the whole end of the Cape beyond North Truro was built by the
sea out of material that it had sliced away from the shores of Truro,
Wellfleet, and Eastham. The process still goes on. Every winter sees
more gravel and sand torn away from the sea front of these towns, and
carried north until it comes to anchor on Peaked Hill Bars. These
bars will eventually rise from the sea as a low island; the wind will
blow its sand into dunes; a beach will form along its outer edge; and
our great-grandchildren will see a neck of sand hills and beach grass
projecting northeast from the present shore line. Such, at any rate,
was the process that built Race Point, and left Race Run as a salt
creek splitting it from the mainland. Little by little this creek is
being filled with sand blown into it by the northeasters that howl over
Race Point. By and by the Run will be entirely obliterated, and Race
Point will have become throughout its whole length an integral part of
the mainland. And the same end, we may safely assume, awaits Peaked
Hill Bars, that embryonic strip of dune and beach that lies still
unborn beneath the sea.
Monomoy Point and the whole stretch of Nauset Beach were formed in
the same way by loose material washed from the coast of Chatham and
Orleans and swept south. Prophets delight in foretelling how long it
will take at this rate for the Cape to be demolished. One guess is
as good or as bad as another. A recent authority predicts that five
thousand years will suffice for the waves to eat through from the Clay
Pounds at Highland Light to the Bay. He may be right. But the accuracy
of such forecasts is interfered with by the whimsical way in which
the elements, though they rob Paul one winter, turn the plunder over
to Peter the next. Mr. Isaac Morton Small, who has watched the sea’s
activity at North Truro for seventy years, makes a statement that
should shake the assurance of the most robust seer: ‘Three years ago,’
he writes, ‘the ocean waves were pounding into the base of the cliffs
one half mile south of Highland Light, and tearing away great patches
of earth. To-day the beach is one hundred yards wide at that point, and
the highest tides do not reach to the foot of the bank.’ The British
vessel Somerset, which came ashore not far from this spot during the
Revolution, has been buried, unburied, and buried again in the century
and a half since she was wrecked.
[Illustration: EASTHAM, ORLEANS, AND NAUSET BEACH
Sketch showing how Nauset Beach protects the old irregular glacial
shore front of Eastham and Orleans. Nauset Harbor, so called, is
filled with marshes; so is Pochet Inlet; but they are not shown in
the sketch, because they did not appear until after the beaches had
formed.]
Another geological phenomenon should give the prophets pause. The old
glacial shore line of Eastham, which lies well inland from the present
beach, has been perfectly protected, and the town has been given a
harbor of sorts, by the gradual formation of Nauset Beach, a low-lying
barrier of sand dunes built up from material washed away from the
bluffs to the north and swept south in perfect conformity with the
whole outer shore. Monomoy Point is in fact a prolongation of this
beach. The harbor with which Eastham was thus unexpectedly furnished
has had many entrances; the sea will break through the beach during a
storm, and sweep a channel into existence that in time is washed wide
and deep enough to serve small craft. The next storm will completely
block this entrance and open a new one somewhere else. In this way
the entrance to Nauset Harbor has been shifting from point to point,
usually in a southerly direction, until to-day it is not in Eastham at
all, but lies well south of it in Orleans. But through all the rains
and ruins of a thousand winters, the old original seacoast has lain
far inland, in unbattered serenity. In the same way the east shore
of Orleans has been protected by a continuation of Nauset Beach that
stretches south from the entrance of Nauset Harbor and continues all
alongshore.
The Bay shore has seen changes, too, though of a less spectacular
nature than those on the exposed Ocean side of the Cape. The most
important of these is Long Point, the long and incredibly narrow
sand spit that protects Provincetown Harbor on the west and south.
The material for this frail barrier was washed into place by waves
and currents set in motion by the northerly and northwesterly winds.
The powerful allies could not have done a better piece of work if
their sole object had been the creation of a perfect harbor. The same
southerly wash of sand and gravel appears at other points along the Bay
shore. To-day three large islands (Bound Brook, Griffith’s, and Great
Islands) stretch out in a northeast and southwest line to form the
western boundary of Wellfleet Bay. Originally these were true islands,
completely surrounded by the waters of Cape Cod Bay; but now, though
still called islands, they are joined with each other and with the
mainland by narrow strips of beach that have been washed up in the same
way as Long Point. Lest the process become too uniform, however, and
tempt us into laying down laws for wind and wave, the northwesters have
cut off Billingsgate from this chain of islands, leaving a wide stretch
of shoal water between it and Great Island, with which it was formerly
connected. By the same token, the waves first chopped off and then
obliterated a small island that was once a part of Billingsgate.
Proceeding farther south, we come to Sandy Neck--a seven-mile strip of
high and very old dunes that stretch east from the mainland at West
Barnstable and make Barnstable Harbor. Sandy Neck is a prolongation of
Spring Hill Beach, just as Monomoy is a prolongation of Nauset Beach,
and it protects the old glacial shore line of Barnstable in the same
way that Nauset Beach protects the high shore of Eastham. Though much
older than Monomoy and generously sprinkled with patches of trees, it
was formed in the same way from débris washed south and east from the
bluffs of Manomet. Like Monomoy it is growing longer year by year,
reaching out easterly across the entrance to the harbor toward the
Dennis shore; whether or not it will ever reach this goal no one can
say. It is true, however, that while the Neck is stretching farther and
farther east, the bar across the mouth of Barnstable Harbor is at the
same time growing wider and higher, and the channel through it is fast
silting up. There is nothing to counteract this combination of forces
except the tide, which, as the channel narrows, sweeps in and out of
the harbor with terrific and annually increasing force. Perhaps this
tremendous scour will be sufficient to keep a channel of some sort open
forever; perhaps not. Another thousand years will write the answer.
The marshes which invariably lie between these barrier beaches and the
mainland are comparatively recent additions to the Cape scenery. As
soon as a beach has grown long enough to provide calm water inside,
marshes begin to make their appearance and spread fast or slowly,
depending on the proportions of mud and sand that are washed into the
embryonic harbor: the more mud, the faster the growth. So it happens
that there are as many salt marshes on the Cape as there are sandy
necks.
In brief, Cape Cod was created rough-hewn in something like its present
shape when the continent emerged out of chaos; later, two or three
glaciers gave it a covering of gravel and sand; and wind and tide have
been busy ever since putting on the finishing touches--some of them
rather extensive and none of them yet complete.
Inland, changes equally extensive but less varied have taken place.
One great transformation, indeed, covers them all: to-day no timber of
any account grows on the Cape. Formerly it was heavily wooded from end
to end with a wide variety of trees. The old records are unanimous on
this point. Provincetown itself--the most barren region of all--was
once covered with a thick mantle of woods. Mourt’s ‘Relation’ describes
the shore front as it looked to the Pilgrims when they saw it for the
first time from the deck of the Mayflower: ‘It is comaspsed about,
to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras and other sweet
woods.’ Bradford says ‘the whole countrie full of woods and thickets,
represented a wild and savage heiw.’ Even the sand hills of Long Point
were covered with a layer of good soil that supported considerable
vegetation: ‘They found ... the ground or earth sand hills much like
the Downes in Holland, but much better all wooded with oaks, pines,
sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, some ash, walnut, the wood for the
most part open and without underwood, fit to go or ride in.’ Obviously
the name ‘Wood End,’ given to a part of this Point, used to mean
something.
Not content with these bits of indisputable testimony,
tradition--persistent as tradition will always be while men remain
greedy for marvels--tradition perseveres in the assertion that large
trees once stood well out in what is now Provincetown Harbor, and
vanished when the shore line of those days was washed back to its
present position. Stranger things have happened in the history of Cape
Cod; but the evidence for this theory, consisting of the stumps of a
few trees that formerly appeared on the flats in front of Provincetown
at low tide, is hardly convincing, particularly when we reflect that
the tide--the only agent that could have performed this feat--has acted
in quite a different way only a mile or so up the shore, and, instead
of washing anything away, has built up a solid bar in front of the
entrance to East Harbor. However, tides have ways past finding out, and
anything is possible on a sea coast. Furthermore, the local historians
of Eastham and Dennis, not to be outdone, have reported similar stumps
on the flats off the Bay side of their towns.
There were trees enough on the Cape, anyhow, without going to sea for
them. Kendall in his travels took a trip down the Cape in 1807-08,
and, on reaching Truro, was sufficiently impressed with its forests to
call them ‘lofty.’ It was in Truro, too, that the Pilgrims became lost
in one stretch of woods and were torn to pieces by briars in another.
Clearly, then, its trees in those times bore small resemblance to the
scrub pine and oak that to-day comprise Truro’s ‘lofty’ forests.
The same story is repeated a little farther up the Cape at Wellfleet,
where, until the middle of the nineteenth century, the local
shipbuilder found plenty of oak and pine growing ready to hand. Many
of the fishing vessels and whalers that hailed from this town were
made of timber that once covered its present scrubby barrens. Bound
Brook Island, which now boasts hardly a tree, was well wooded a hundred
years ago. Eastham had all the woods its inhabitants could use for both
building and fuel until the end of the seventeenth century, when the
town fathers began to show signs of uneasiness at the dwindling supply.
It is in Eastham too that the crumbling outer shore has laid bare the
edge of a peat bog which for years supplemented its inhabitants’ supply
of fuel. There must have been woods enough there once, then.
Champlain reports that Chatham, except for the clearings where the
Indians had their villages, was overgrown with walnut, oak, and cedar.
Some fifty years later, when William Nickerson arrived there as its
first white settler, he found its hills still covered with forests of
oak, and the swamps filled with gigantic cedars. Dennis and Yarmouth,
like Wellfleet, built their own fishing vessels and packets, as well
as some crafts for neighboring towns, from lumber produced on the
premises. When the first settlers arrived in Barnstable in 1639, they
found, in the words of Amos Otis, ‘almost an unbroken wilderness’;
and more than a century later, in 1762, Deacon John Hinckley cut
timber for the East Parish Meeting-House at Barnstable in the woods
behind the village. Until 1711 there were enough pines on the common
lands to allow them to be boxed and milked. The surplus wood from the
Shootflying Hill region was exported to Boston by water. The Reverend
Timothy Dwight, traveling down the Cape about 1820, makes the startling
assertion that thirty vessels in Sandwich were likewise engaged in
this traffic. These items, covering most of the early settlements from
Provincetown to Sandwich, are enough to show that in its day the Cape
boasted a fair share of forests. But with a wanton extravagance that
ill accords with their frugality in other respects, the first settlers
demolished the timber wholesale. This ruthless conduct, strangely
enough, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for by ruining the
soil, it drove the Cape Cod farmer to sea for a livelihood; and
there he won fame such as no farmer can ever hope for. But this is
trespassing on topics that belong to other chapters.