Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 36

[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 shiftings 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 ships 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.

Bradford, under date of 1620, writes thus in his journal: "A word or two by ye way of this Cape: it was thus first named (Cape Cod) by Captain Gosnold and his company, Ano:1602, and after by Capten Smith was caled Cape James; but it retains ye former name amongst seamen. Also yt pointe which first shewed those dangerous shoulds unto them, they called Point Care, and Tucker's Terrour;[216] but ye French and Dutch, to this day, call it Malabarr, by reason of those perilous shoulds, and ye losses they have suffered their."

Notwithstanding what Bradford says, the name of Mallebarre is affixed to the extreme point of Cape Cod on early French maps. In Smith's "New England" is the following description:

"Cape Cod is the next presents itselfe, which is onely a headland of high hills of sand, overgrowne with shrubbie pines, hurts, and such trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers. The Cape is made by the maine sea on the one side and a great Bay on the other, in forme of a sickle; on it doth inhabit the people of Pawmet; and in the bottome of the Bay, the people of Chawum. Towards the south and south-west of this Cape is found a long and dangerous shoale of sands and rocks. But so farre as I encircled it, I found thirtie fadom water aboard the sh.o.r.e and a strong current, which makes mee thinke there is a channel about this Shoale, where is the best and greatest fish to be had, Winter and Summer, in all that Countrie. But the Salvages say there is no channel, but that the shoales beginne from the maine at Pawmet to the ile of Nausit, and so extends beyond their knowledge into the sea."

The historical outcome of the Cape is in the early navigations, and in the fact that Provincetown was the harbor entered by the Forefathers.

The first land they saw, after Devon and Cornwall had sunk in the sea, was this sand-bar, for it is nothing else. It appeared to their eager eyes, as it will probably never again be seen, wooded down to the sh.o.r.e.

Whales, that they had not the means of taking, disported around them.

They dropped anchor three-quarters of a mile from sh.o.r.e, and, in order to land, were forced to wade a "bow shoot," by which many coughs and colds were caught, and a foundation for the winter's sickness laid. The first landing was probably on Long Point. The men set about discovery; for the master had told them, with a sailor's bluntness, he would be rid of them as soon as possible. The women went also to sh.o.r.e to wash, thus initiating on Monday, November 23d, the great New England washing-day.

Were there to be a day of general observance in New England commemorative of the landing of the Pilgrims, it should be that on which they first set foot on her soil at Cape Cod; the day, too, on which the compact was signed.[217] Whatever of sentiment attached to the event should, it would seem, be consecrated to the very spot their feet first pressed. There is yet time to rescue the day from unaccountable and unmerited neglect.

On the map of Cyprian Southack a thoroughfare is delineated from Ma.s.sachusetts Bay to the ocean at Eastham, near Sandy Point. His words are: "The place where I came through with a whale-boat, April 26th, 1717, to look after Bellame the pirate." I have never seen this map, which Dougla.s.s p.r.o.nounces "a false and pernicious sea-chart."

From its barring their farther progress, Cape Cod was well known to the discoverers of the early part of the seventeenth century. According to Lescarbot, Poutrincourt spent fifteen days in a port on the south side.

It had been formally taken possession of in the name of the French king.

The first conflict between the whites and natives occurred there; and in its sands were interred the remains of the first Christian who died within the ancient limits of New England.[218]

The a.s.sault of the natives on De Poutrincourt is believed to have occurred at Chatham, ironically named by the French Port Fortune, in remembrance of their mishaps there. It was the very first collision recorded between Europeans and savages in New England. Five of De Poutrincourt's men having slept on sh.o.r.e contrary to orders, and without keeping any watch, the Indians fell on them at day-break, October 15th, 1606, killing two outright. The rest, who were shot through and through with arrows, ran down to the sh.o.r.e, crying out, "Help! they are murdering us!" the savages pursuing with frightful whoopings.

Hearing these outcries and the appeal for help, the sentinel on board the bark gave the alarm: "_Aux armes!_ they are killing our people!"

Roused by the signal, those on board seized their arms, and ran on deck, without taking time to dress themselves. Fifteen or sixteen threw themselves into the shallop, without stopping to light their matches, and pushed for the sh.o.r.e. Finding they could not reach it on account of an intervening sand-bank, they leaped into the water and waded a musket-shot to land. De Poutrincourt, Champlain, Daniel Hay, Robert Grave the younger, son of Du Pont Grave, and the younger Poutrincourt, with their trumpeter and apothecary, were of the party that rushed pell-mell, almost stark naked, upon the savages.

The Indians, perceiving the rescuing band within a bow-shot of them, took to flight. It was idle to pursue those nimble-footed savages; so the Frenchmen brought their dead companions to the foot of the cross they had erected on the preceding day, and there buried them. While chanting the funeral prayers and orisons of the Church, the natives, from a safe distance, shouted derisively and danced to celebrate their treason. After their funeral rites were ended the French voyagers silently returned on board.

In a few hours, the tide being so low as to prevent the whites from landing, the natives again appeared on the sh.o.r.e. They threw down the cross, disinterred the bodies of the slain Frenchmen, and stripped them before the eyes of their exasperated comrades. Several shots were fired at them from the bronze gun on board, the natives at every discharge throwing themselves flat on their faces. As soon as the French could land, they again set up the cross, and reinterred the dead. The natives, for the second time, fled to a distance.[219]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WASHING FISH.]

Provincetown was originally part of Truro. Its etymology explains that its territory belonged to the province of Ma.s.sachusetts. The earliest inhabitants had no other t.i.tle than possession, and their conveyance is by quit-claim. For many years the place experienced the alternations of thrift and decay, being at times well-nigh deserted. In 1749, says Dougla.s.s, in his "Summary," the town consisted of only two or three settled families, two or three cows, and six to ten sheep. The houses formerly stood in one range, without regularity, along the beach, with the drying-flakes around them. Fishing vessels were run upon the soft sand, and their cargoes thrown into the water, where, after being washed free from salt, the fish were taken up and carried to the flakes in hand-barrows. Cape Cod Harbor, by which name it is also familiar to the readers of Pilgrim chronicles, was the earliest name of Provincetown.

The place has now lost the peculiar character it owed to the windmills on the sandy heights above the town and the salt-works on the beach before it. The streets, described by former writers as impa.s.sable, by reason of the deep sand, I found no difficulty in traversing. What with an admixture of clay, and a top-dressing of oyster-sh.e.l.ls and pebble, brought from a distance, they have managed to make their princ.i.p.al thoroughfares solid enough. Step aside from these, if you would know what Provincetown was like in the past.

If the streets were better than I had thought, the houses were far better. The great number of them were of wood, looking as most New England houses look--ready for the torch. They usually had underpinnings of brick, instead of being, as formerly, built on posts, in order that the sand might blow underneath them. There were willows, poplars, locusts, and balm of Gilead, standing about in odd corners, and of good size. I saw a few sickly fruit-trees that appeared dying for lack of moisture; and some enterprising citizens were able to make a show of lilacs, syringas, pinks, and geraniums in their front yards. I talked with them, and saw that the unremitting struggle for life that attended the growth of these few simple flowers seemed to increase their love for them, and enlarge their feeling for what was beautiful. All the earth they have is imported. I called to mind those Spanish vineyards, where the peasant carries a hamper of soil up the sunny slopes of the mountain-sides, and in some crevice of the rocks plants his vine.

There are two princ.i.p.al streets in Provincetown. One of them, I should imagine, more than a mile in length, runs along the harbor; the other follows an elevated ridge of the sand-hills, and is parallel with the first. A plank-walk is laid on one side of the avenue by the sh.o.r.e, the other side being occupied by stores, fish-houses, and wharves. No sinister meaning is attached to walking the plank in Provincetown; for what is the whole Cape if not a gang-plank pushed out over the side of the continent?

Where the street on the ridge is carried across gaps among the hills, the retaining walls were of bog-peat, which was also laid on the sides of those hills exposed to the force of the wind. Whortleberry, bayberry, and wild rose were growing out of the interstices. They flourish as well as when the Pilgrims were here, though all the primitive forest disappeared long ago. I ascended the hill on which the town-hall building stands. You must go up the town road, or break the law, as I saw, by the straggling foot-paths, the youngsters were in the habit of doing. Read sand for scoriae, and the fate of Herculaneum seems impending over Provincetown. The safeguards taken to prevent the hills blowing down upon it impresses the stranger with a sense of insecurity, though the inhabitants do not seem much to mind it. I have heard that in exposed situations on the Cape window-gla.s.s becomes opaque by reason of the frequent sand-blasts rattling against the panes.

On the hill was formerly a windmill, having the flyers inside, so resembling, say the town annalists, a lofty tower. It was a famous landmark for vessels making the port. The chart-makers have now replaced it with the town hall, and every mariner steering for Provincetown has an eye to it.

The harbor is completely landlocked. There is good anchorage for vessels of the largest cla.s.s. Ofttimes it is crowded with shipping seeking a haven of refuge. This morning there were perhaps fifty sail, of every kind of craft. An inward-bound vessel must steer around every point of the compa.s.s before the anchor is let go in safety. In the Revolution the port was made use of by the British squadrons, to refit, and procure water.[220] The tide flows on the bay side of the Cape about twenty feet, while at the back of it there is a flow of only five or six feet.