We were now fairly on the Cape, which extends from Sandwich eastward6 thirty-five miles, and thence north and northwest thirty more, in all sixty-five, and has an average breadth of about five miles. In the interior it rises to the height of two hundred, and sometimes perhaps three hundred feet above the level of the sea. According to Hitchcock, the geologist7 of the State, it is composed almost entirely8 of sand, even to the depth of three hundred feet in some places, though there is probably a concealed9 core of rock a little beneath the surface, and it is of diluvian origin, excepting a small portion at the extremity10 and elsewhere along the shores, which is alluvial11. For the first half of the Cape large blocks of stone are found, here and there, mixed with the sand, but for the last thirty miles boulders12, or even gravel13, are rarely met with. Hitchcock conjectures14 that the ocean has, in course of time, eaten out Boston, Harbor and other bays in the mainland, and that the minute fragments have been deposited by the currents at a distance from the shore, and formed this sand-bank. Above the sand, if the surface is subjected to agricultural tests, there is found to be a thin layer of soil gradually diminishing from Barnstable to Truro, where it ceases; but there are many holes and rents in this weather-beaten garment not likely to be stitched in time, which reveal the naked flesh of the Cape, and its extremity is completely bare.
I at once got out my book, the eighth volume of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, printed in 1802, which contains some short notices of the Cape towns, and began to read up to where I was, for in the cars I could not read as fast as I travelled. To those who came from the side of Plymouth, it said: “After riding through a body of woods, twelve miles in extent, interspersed16 with but few houses, the settlement of Sandwich appears, with a more agreeable effect, to the eye of the traveller.” Another writer speaks of this as a beautiful village. But I think that our villages will bear to be contrasted only with one another, not with Nature. I have no great respect for the writer’s taste, who talks easily about beautiful villages, embellished17, perchance, with a “fulling-mill,” “a handsome academy,” or meeting-house, and “a number of shops for the different mechanic arts”; where the green and white houses of the gentry18, drawn19 up in rows, front on a street of which it would be difficult to tell whether it is most like a desert or a long stable-yard. Such spots can be beautiful only to the weary traveller, or the returning native,—or, perchance, the repentant20 misanthrope21; not to him who, with unprejudiced senses, has just come out of the woods, and approaches one of them, by a bare road, through a succession of straggling homesteads where he cannot tell which is the alms-house. However, as for Sandwich, I cannot speak particularly. Ours was but half a Sandwich at most, and that must have fallen on the buttered side some time. I only saw that it was a closely built town for a small one, with glass-works to improve its sand, and narrow streets in which we turned round and round till we could not tell which way we were going, and the rain came in, first on this side, and then on that, and I saw that they in the houses were more comfortable than we in the coach. My book also said of this town, “The inhabitants, in general, are substantial livers.”—that is. I suppose, they do not live like philosophers: but, as the stage did not stop long enough for us to dine, we had no opportunity to test the truth of this statement. It may have referred, however, to the quantity “of oil they would yield.” It further said, “The inhabitants of Sandwich generally manifest a fond and steady adherence22 to the manners, employments, and modes of living which characterized their fathers”; which made me think that they were, after all, very much like all the rest of the world;—and it added that this was “a resemblance, which, at this day, will constitute no impeachment23 of either their virtue24 or taste”: which remark proves to me that the writer was one with the rest of them. No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them. But it must be confessed that ours was old authority, and probably they have changed all that now.
Our route was along the Bay side, through Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, and Brewster, to Orleans, with a range of low hills on our right, running down the Cape. The weather was not favorable for wayside views, but we made the most of such glimpses of land and water as we could get through the rain. The country was, for the most part, bare, or with only a little scrubby wood left on the hills. We noticed in Yarmouth—and, if I do not mistake, in Dennis—large tracts25 where pitch-pines were planted four or five years before. They were in rows, as they appeared when we were abreast26 of them, and, excepting that there were extensive vacant spaces, seemed to be doing remarkably27 well. This, we were told, was the only use to which such tracts could be profitably put. Every higher eminence28 had a pole set up on it, with an old storm-coat or sail tied to it, for a signal, that those on the south side of the Cape, for instance, might know when the Boston packets had arrived on the north. It appeared as if this use must absorb the greater part of the old clothes of the Cape, leaving but few rags for the pedlers. The wind-mills on the hills,—large weather-stained octagonal structures,—and the salt-works scattered29 all along the shore, with their long rows of vats30 resting on piles driven into the marsh31, their low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter wind-mills, were novel and interesting objects to an inlander. The sand by the road-side was partially32 covered with bunches of a moss-like plant, Hudsonia tomentosa, which a woman in the stage told us was called “poverty-grass,” because it grew where nothing else would.
I was struck by the pleasant equality which reigned33 among the stage company, and their broad and invulnerable good-humor. They were what is called free and easy, and met one another to advantage, as men who had at length learned how to live. They appeared to know each other when they were strangers, they were so simple and downright. They were well met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met as well as they could meet, and did not seem to be troubled with any impediment. They were not afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were contented34 to make just such a company as the ingredients allowed. It was evident that the same foolish respect was not here claimed for mere35 wealth and station that is in many parts of New England; yet some of them were the “first people,” as they are called, of the various towns through which we passed. Retired36 sea-captains, in easy circumstances, who talked of farming as sea-captains are wont37; an erect38, respectable, and trustworthy-looking man, in his wrapper, some of the salt of the earth, who had formerly39 been the salt of the sea; or a more courtly gentleman, who, per-chance, had been a representative to the General Court in his day; or a broad, red-faced Cape Cod man, who had seen too many storms to be easily irritated; or a fisherman’s wife, who had been waiting a week for a coaster to leave Boston, and had at length come by the cars.
A strict regard for truth obliges us to say that the few women whom we saw that day looked exceedingly pinched up. They had prominent chins and noses, having lost all their teeth, and a sharp W would represent their profile. They were not so well preserved as their husbands; or perchance they were well preserved as dried specimens40. (Their husbands, however, were pickled.) But we respect them not the less for all that; our own dental system is far from perfect.
Still we kept on in the rain, or, if we stopped, it was commonly at a post-office, and we thought that writing letters, and sorting them against our arrival, must be the principal employment of the inhabitants of the Cape this rainy day. The post-office appeared a singularly domestic institution here. Ever and anon the stage stopped before some low shop or dwelling41, and a wheelwright or shoemaker appeared in his shirt sleeves and leather apron42, with spectacles newly donned, holding up Uncle Sam’s bag, as if it were a slice of home-made cake, for the travellers, while he retailed43 some piece of gossip to the driver, really as indifferent to the presence of the former as if they were so much baggage. In one instance we understood that a woman was the postmistress, and they said that she made the best one on the road; but we suspected that the letters must be subjected to a very close scrutiny44 there. While we were stopping for this purpose at Dennis, we ventured to put our heads out of the windows, to see where we were going, and saw rising before us, through the mist, singular barren hills, all stricken with poverty-grass, looming45 up as if they were in the horizon, though they were close to us, and we seemed to have got to the end of the land on that side, notwithstanding that the horses were still headed that way. Indeed, that part of Dennis which we saw was an exceedingly barren and desolate47 country, of a character which I can find no name for; such a surface, perhaps, as the bottom of the sea made dry land day before yesterday. It was covered with poverty-grass, and there was hardly a tree in sight, but here and there a little weather-stained, one-storied house, with a red roof,—for often the roof was painted, though the rest of the house was not,—standing46 bleak48 and cheerless, yet with a broad foundation to the land, where the comfort must have been all inside. Yet we read in the Gazetteer49—for we carried that too with us—that, in 1837, one hundred and fifty masters of vessels50, belonging to this town, sailed from the various ports of the union. There must be many more houses in the south part of the town, else we cannot imagine where they all lodge51 when they are at home, if ever they are there; but the truth is, their houses are floating ones, and their home is on the ocean. There were almost no trees at all in this part of Dennis, nor could I learn that they talked of setting out any. It is true, there was a meeting-house, set round with Lombardy poplars, in a hollow square, the rows fully52 as straight as the studs of a building, and the corners as square; but, if I do not mistake, every one of them was dead. I could not help thinking that they needed a revival53 here. Our book said that, in 1795, there was erected54 in Dennis “an elegant meeting-house, with a steeple.” Perhaps this was the one; though whether it had a steeple, or had died down so far from sympathy with the poplars, I do not remember. Another meeting-house in this town was described as a “neat building”; but of the meeting-house in Chatham, a neigh-boring town, for there was then but one, nothing is said, except that it “is in good repair,”—both which remarks, I trust, may be understood as applying to the churches spiritual as well as material. However, “elegant meeting-houses,” from that Trinity one on Broadway, to this at Nobscusset, in my estimation, belong to the same category with “beautiful villages.” I was never in season to see one. Handsome is that handsome does. What they did for shade here, in warm weather, we did not know, though we read that “fogs are more frequent in Chatham than in any other part of the country; and they serve in summer, instead of trees, to shelter the houses against the heat of the sun. To those who delight in extensive vision,”—is it to be inferred that the inhabitants of Chatham do not?—“they are unpleasant, but they are not found to be unhealthful.” Probably, also, the unobstructed sea-breeze answers the purpose of a fan. The historian of Chatham says further, that “in many families there is no difference between the breakfast and supper; cheese, cakes, and pies being as common at the one as at the other.” But that leaves us still uncertain whether they were really common at either.
The road, which was quite hilly, here ran near the Bay-shore, having the Bay on one side, and “the rough hill of Scargo,” said to be the highest land on the Cape, on the other. Of the wide prospect55 of the Bay afforded by the summit of this hill, our guide says: “The view has not much of the beautiful in it, but it communicates a strong emotion of the sublime56.” That is the kind of communication which we love to have made to us. We passed through the village of Suet, in Dennis, on Suet and Quivet Necks, of which it is said, “when compared with Nobscusset,”—we had a misty57 recollection of having passed through, or near to, the latter,—“it may be denominated a pleasant village; but, in comparison with the village of Sandwich, there is little or no beauty in it.” However, we liked Dennis well, better than any town we had seen on the Cape, it was so novel, and, in that stormy day, so sublimely58 dreary59.
Captain John Sears, of Suet, was the first per-son in this country who obtained pure marine60 salt by solar evaporation61 alone; though it had long been made in a similar way on the coast of France, and elsewhere. This was in the year 1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt was scarce and dear. The Historical Collections contain an interesting account of his experiments, which we read when we first saw the roofs of the salt-works. Barnstable county is the most favorable locality for these works on our northern coast,—there is so little fresh water here emptying into ocean. Quite recently there were about two millions of dollars invested in this business here. But now the Cape is unable to compete with the importers of salt and the manufacturers of it at the West, and, accordingly, her salt-works are fast going to decay. From making salt, they turn to fishing more than ever. The Gazetteer will uniformly tell you, under the head of each town, how many go a-fishing, and the value of the fish and oil taken, how much salt is made and used, how many are engaged in the coasting trade, how many in manufacturing palm-leaf hats, leather, boots, shoes, and tinware, and then it has done, and leaves you to imagine the more truly domestic manufactures which are nearly the same all the world over.
Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brewster, so named after Elder Brewster, for fear he would be forgotten else. Who has not heard of Elder Brewster? Who knows who he was? This appeared to be the modern-built town of the Cape, the favorite residence of retired sea-captains. It is said that “there are more masters and mates of vessels which sail on foreign voyages belonging to this place than to any other town in the country.” There were many of the modern American houses here, such as they turn out at Cambridgeport, standing on the sand; you could almost swear that they had been floated down Charles River, and drifted across the Bay. I call them American, because they are paid for by Americans, and “put up” by American carpenters; but they are little removed from lumber62; only Eastern stuff disguised with white paint, the least interesting kind of drift-wood to me. Perhaps we have reason to be proud of our naval63 architecture, and need not go to the Greeks, or the Goths, or the Italians, for the models of our vessels. Sea-captains do not employ a Cambridgeport carpenter to build their floating houses, and for their houses on shore, if they must copy any, it would be more agreeable to the imagination to see one of their vessels turned bottom upward, in the Numidian fashion. We read that, “at certain seasons, the reflection of the sun upon the windows of the houses in Well-fleet and Truro (across the inner side of the elbow of the Cape) is discernible with the naked eye, at a distance of eighteen miles and upward, on the county road.” This we were pleased to imagine, as we had not seen the sun for twenty-four hours.
The same author (the Rev15. John Simpkins) said of the inhabitants, a good while ago: “No persons appear to have a greater relish64 for the social circle and domestic pleasures. They are not in the habit of frequenting taverns65, unless on public occasions. I know not of a proper idler or tavern66-haunter in the place.” This is more than can be said of my townsmen.
At length we stopped for the night at Higgins’s tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not knowing whether we should see land or water ahead when the mist cleared away. We here overtook two Italian boys, who had waded67 thus far down the Cape through the sand, with their organs on their backs, and were going on to Provincetown. What a hard lot, we thought, if the Provincetown people should shut their doors against them! Whose yard would they go to next? Yet we concluded that they had chosen wisely to come here, where other music than that of the surf must be rare. Thus the great civilizer68 sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage69 there to surrender.
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1
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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cod
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| n.鳕鱼；v.愚弄；哄骗 | |
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obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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conveyance
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| n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具 | |
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spherical
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| adj.球形的；球面的 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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geologist
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| n.地质学家 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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alluvial
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| adj.冲积的；淤积的 | |
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boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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interspersed
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| adj.[医]散开的；点缀的v.intersperse的过去式和过去分词 | |
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embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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repentant
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| adj.对…感到悔恨的 | |
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misanthrope
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| n.恨人类的人；厌世者 | |
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adherence
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| n.信奉，依附，坚持，固着 | |
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impeachment
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| n.弹劾；控告；怀疑 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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eminence
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| n.卓越，显赫；高地，高处；名家 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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vats
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| varieties 变化，多样性，种类 | |
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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retailed
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| vt.零售（retail的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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gazetteer
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| n.地名索引 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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54
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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sublimely
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| 高尚地，卓越地 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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evaporation
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| n.蒸发，消失 | |
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lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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taverns
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| n.小旅馆，客栈，酒馆( tavern的名词复数 ) | |
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66
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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67
waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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68
civilizer
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| vt.使文明；使开化；教化；启发vi.变得文明 | |
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69
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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