Part 36 (1/2)
[203] Saquish is the Indian for clams. They are of extraordinary size in Plymouth and Duxbury.
[204] An anchorage near Clark's Island, so called from a cow-whale having been taken there.
[205] The following account of what straits light-keepers have been subjected to in coast-harbors during the past winter will perhaps be read with some surprise by those acquainted with Plymouth only in its summer aspect: ”On Tuesday evening, February 9th, 1875, the United States revenue steamer _Gallatin_ put into Plymouth harbor for the night, to avoid a north-west gale blowing outside. On the morning of the 10th, at daylight, when getting under way, Captain Selden discovered a signal of distress flying on Duxbury Pier Light. The light-house was so surrounded by ice that he was utterly unable to reach the pier with a boat; the captain, therefore, steamed the vessel through the ice near enough to converse with the keeper, and found that he had had no communication with any one outside of the light since December 22d, 1874; that his fuel and water were out; and that they had been on an allowance of a pint of water a day since February 6th, 1875. The steamer forced her way to within some fifty or seventy-five yards of the pier, when Lieutenants Weston and Clayton, with the boats, succeeded, after two hours' hard work cutting through the ice, in reaching the pier, and furnished the keeper and his wife with plenty of wood and water.”
[206] There is tradition for it that Edward Dotey, the fighting serving-man, was the first who attempted to land on Clark's Island, but was checked for his presumption. Elkanah Watson was one of the three original grantees of the island, which has remained in the family since 1690. Previous to that time it belonged to the town. The other proprietors were Samuel Lucas and George Morton.
[207] Sat.u.r.day, December 9th, Old Style.
[208] No reasonable doubt can be entertained that the Pilgrims' first religious services were held in Provincetown Harbor, either on board the _Mayflower_ or on sh.o.r.e. They were not the men and women to permit several Sabbaths to pa.s.s by without devotional exercises.
[209] The first substance discovered was a quant.i.ty of barley, charred and wrapped in a blanket. Ashes, as fresh as if the fire had just been extinguished, were found in the chimney-place, with pieces of an andiron, iron pot, and other articles. There were discovered, also, a gun-lock, sickle, hammer, whetstone, and fragments of stone and earthen ware. A sword-buckle, tomahawk, bra.s.s kettle, etc., with gla.s.s beads, showing the action of intense heat, likewise came to light.
[210] I find that a Captain Standish, who is called a great commander, a captain of foot, was killed in an attack by Lord Strange on Manchester, England, dining the Civil War, 1642.
[211] This house has been stated to have been built in part of materials from the house of Captain Miles Standish.
[212] Baylies's ”New Plymouth.”
[213] ”Ma.s.sachusetts Archives.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: PROVINCETOWN FROM THE HILLS.]
CHAPTER XIX.
PROVINCETOWN.
”A man may stand there and put all America behind him.”--Th.o.r.eAU.
As it was already dark when I arrived in Provincetown, I saw only the glare from the lantern of Highland Light in pa.s.sing through Truro, and the gleaming from those at Long Point and Wood End, before the train drew up at the station. It having been a rather busy day with me (I had embarked at Nantucket in the morning, idled away a few hours at Vineyard Haven, and rested as many at Coha.s.set Narrows), it will be easily understood why I left the investigation of my whereabouts to the morrow.
My wants were at this moment reduced to a bed, a pair of clean sheets, and plenty of blankets; for though the almanac said it was July in Provincetown, the night breeze blowing freshly was strongly suggestive of November.
It was Swift, I think, who said he never knew a man reach eminence who was not an early riser. Doubtless the good doctor was right. But, then, if he had lodged as I lodged, and had risen as I did, two mortal hours before breakfast-time, he might have allowed his precept to have its exceptions. I devoted these hours to rambling about the town.
Though not more than half a hundred miles from Boston, as the crow flies, Cape Cod is regarded as a sort of _terra incognita_ by fully half of New England. It has always been considered a good place to emigrate from, rather than as offering inducements for its young men and women to remain at home; though no cla.s.s of New Englanders, I should add, are more warmly attached to the place of their nativity. The ride throughout the Cape affords the most impressive example of the tenacity with which a population clings to locality that has ever come under my observation.
To one accustomed to the fertile sh.o.r.es of Narraganset Bay or the valley of the Connecticut, the region between Sandwich, where you enter upon the Cape, and Orleans, where you reach the bend of the fore-arm, is bad enough, though no desert. Beyond this is simply a wilderness of sand.
The surface of the country about Brewster and Orleans is rolling prairie, barren, yet thinly covered with an appearance of soil. Stone walls divide the fields, but from here down the Cape you will seldom see a stone of any size in going thirty miles. My faith in Pilgrim testimony began to diminish as I looked on all sides, and in vain, for a ”spit's-depth of excellent black earth,” such as they tell of. It has, perchance, been blown away, or buried out of sight in the s.h.i.+ftings constantly going on here. Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro grow more and more forbidding, as you approach the _Ultima Thule_, or land's end.[214]
[Ill.u.s.tration: COHa.s.sET NARROWS.]
Mr. Th.o.r.eau, who has embodied the results of several excursions to the Cape in some admirable sketches, calls it the bared and bended arm of Ma.s.sachusetts. Mr. Everett had already used the same figure. To me it looks like a skinny, attenuated arm thrust within a stocking for mending--the bony elbow at Chatham, the wrist at Truro, and the half-closed fingers at Provincetown. It seems quite down at the heel about Orleans, and as if much darning would be needed to make it as good as new. It was something to conceive, and more to execute, such a tramp as Th.o.r.eau's, for no one ought to attempt it who can not rise superior to his surroundings, and shake off the gloom the weird and wide-spread desolateness of the landscape inspires. I would as lief have marched with Napoleon from Acre, by Mount Carmel, through the moving sands of Tentoura.
The resemblance of the Cape to a hook appears to have struck navigators quite early. On old Dutch maps it is delineated with tolerable accuracy, and named ”Staaten Hoeck,” and the bay inclosed within the bend of it ”Staaten Bay.” Ma.s.sachusetts Bay is ”Noord Zee,” and Cape Malabar ”Vlacke Hoeck.” Milford Haven appears about where Eastham is now located. On the earliest map of Champlain the extremity of the Cape is called ”C. Blanc,” or the White Cape.[215] Mather says of Cape Cod, he supposes it will never lose the name ”till swarms of cod-fish be seen swimming on the highest hills.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: HIGHLAND LIGHT, CAPE COD.]
This hook, though a sandy one, caught many a school of migratory fish, and even whales found themselves often embayed in the bight of it, on their way south, until, from being so long hunted down, they learned to keep a good offing. It also caught all the southerly drift along sh.o.r.e, such as stray s.h.i.+ps from France and England. Bartholomew Gosnold and John Brereton were the first white men to land on it. De Monts, Champlain, De Poutrincourt, Smith, and finally the Forefathers, were brought up and turned back by it.