F Mitchell

“ You come upon them everywhere. The smaller ones are much alike, except as nature loves to give to each some shy, peculiar grace. They lie for the most part in an amphitheater, and have neither inlet nor outlet. The bottom and the shore are commonly of white sand, and the water is as clear as crystal and singularly pure.
These ponds are, of course, spring-fed, and there must be an overflow through the loose upper soil by percolation. Many of them are wooded all about and to the very beach, and the trees throw out long branches over the water, and fling their shadows far on its surface. ”

“ It is so bold that one can sit within a few feet of it, while it hunts for its food like the chickadees, often head down, clinging to some twig, now and then pausing to chirp. At dusk, the night-heron wings its way out over the salt-marshes to relieve the kingfisher, who has been sounding his rattle all day long from some favorite post; and as the deeper shadows gather, whip-poor-wills and owls come out from the deepest recesses of the woods. ”

“ One of the chief attractions in summer of the shore of Cape Cod, both on Buzzard’s Bay and on the outer southern coast, is the exquisite climate, not particularly bracing, but cool, and remarkably equable. The prevailing breeze is from the south-west, from off the Vineyard Sound, and the harshness of east winds is seldom felt. The water, too, is warmer by some twenty degrees than at Swampscott or Manchester, for example, and the sea-bathing, on that account, attracts a good many people. ”

“ They form one of the most characteristic features of the landscape. You see them from the car windows, spreading out over level acres, or skirting, with varying width, the running streams; you see them in winding valleys, far below the carriage road; you come upon them suddenly in the woods,—strangely trim, rectangular clearings, darkly shut in by a dense swamp growth. The culture of the cranberry has been reduced to a science. A swamp is cleared of its wild growth of trees and bushes and leveled like a floor; six inches of clear sand are carted on, to cover the heavy bog soil ”

“ With all the grandeur of wildness that has seized upon a great part of the outer coast, from Provincetown to Chatham, speaking in every line of storms, of surf, of wrecks, of bodies heaved up by the sea, a quiet inland beauty nestles still in the shelter of Cape Cod. There are woods and farms; there are elm trees overhanging village streets; there are blue ponds and still, dark flumes and wild flowers.
COMMERCIAL STREET, PROVINCETOWN.
Two hundred and sixty years ago, and more, the Mayflower anchored in Cape Cod harbor, off what is now Provincetown. ”

“ No one who travels through Cape Cod and visits the people in their houses can fail to notice an almost universal thrift and comfort. No other section of the State, perhaps, shows more general independence and average prosperity. There are large villages, with streets of handsome houses and bearing signs of wealth. But, to a considerable extent, the houses are in hamlets, or stand apart in lonely situations. To city people they often seem forbidding. You see a cottage, with an L extravagantly long, standing by itself upon a hill-side, by a pond, or near the beach. ”

“ When the Pilgrims entered Cape Cod harbor, this stretch of country was all covered with soil, and bore a forest growth of oak and pine. Woods and soil, like the Indians, have given way before civilization, and, under the white man’s rule, sand has beaten in and swamped the vegetation. Even now, in Provincetown, one can see the process of desolation going on. In every violent gale, the looser sand is drifted about, and after the storm is over, here and there peep out the tops of newly submerged bushes. ”

“ The outside, very likely, has never been painted; but if you enter, you are pretty sure to find substantial comfort. And if you find a welcome, it is no more than you have a right to expect in the little county which, in King Philip’s war, invited to its hospitality the people of three whole towns exposed to Indian ravages. And it is a barren house that does not display some foreign treasures. No mean museum could be filled from the houses of Cape Cod. Everywhere, too, you see signs of familiarity with the sea. ”

“ Where there are woods immediately on the bluff, trees are often seen lying along the beach, with their uptorn roots exposed in the bank where they were undermined in a winter’s gale. Sometimes, on the other hand, a storm makes beach, by throwing thousands of tons of sand upon a low stretch of coast and burying out of sight the marsh-bank. ”

“ Birds which follow the shore in their migrations consult the nature of the coast. In Eastern Massachusetts, more plainly than anywhere else, is seen the change from the low, sandy shore which marks the South to the high and rocky coast-line of the North. Such a change is sure to be noticed by birds on their migrations, for on the character of the coast depends their food. Cape Cod is, therefore, particularly fitted for a resting-place of the thousands of shore birds on their southward journey, and acts, moreover, as a barrier to Southern species wandering North in the late summer. ”

“ One of the most interesting things with regard to the relations between the whites and the Indians is the occasional appearance, to this day, in the Massachusetts law reports, among street-widening cases and controversies turning on steam and electricity, of suits relating to Indian titles.
The descendants of the Indians have fallen into the sea-faring ways of their white neighbors, and you will find in almost every house in Mashpee a man who can tell you of voyages. ”

“ You all know Captain ——, the father of the victim of this assault; you know what our young friend, with all his learning, has plainly never discovered, that a man is not master of a ship for thirty years without learning how to deal with wounds, and you know well that there is no doctor on Cape Cod who can heal cuts and bruises better than the captain can. ”

“ Even in Truro there is good farming, and in the upper towns fine crops are often raised. On the inner side of the Cape, the soil is generally better than on the outer; but there are some marked instances of profitable farming on the outer shore. The lighter soil is warm, and being free from stones it is easily worked, and there are many crops which flourish in it. The yield of English hay, by the last State census, was four thousand one hundred and seventy tons from three thousand eight hundred and fifteen acres. ”

“ Among the most common birds are the meadow-lark or marsh quail, the sharp-tailed finch, the red-wing blackbird, the grassfinch, the green heron, the tern or mackerel-gull, and the shore birds. They are all independent of the woods. From the peculiar position of Cape Cod, and the equalizing effect necessarily produced on the climate by the ceaseless sweep of ocean breezes, many stragglers of northern and southern species, never seen in other parts of Massachusetts, find their way here, and some which usually pass further south have even been known to winter here. ”

“ Monomoy Island also seems to be a favorite winter resort for this owl. Hawk-owls are sometimes seen along the shore, where they often alight in the beach-grass or sea-weed. The Carolina or turtle-dove is common on the Cape, and flocks of from half a dozen to twenty may often be seen in the fields of stubble. Its nest has been found in a grove of stunted pines on the edge of the Great Marshes in Barnstable. Eagles are quite often seen on the Cape.
OLD MILL AT BREWSTER, FROM THE STAGE.
There may still be found between Buzzard’s Bay and Provincetown the mink, rabbit, fox, raccoon, and deer. ”

“ It has been proposed, at different times, to dike-in the vast salt-marshes and convert them into dry land. The soil is deep and rich, and there is little doubt that, if they could be so protected, heavy crops of English hay or of grain could be raised upon them, and, as they are level and of great extent, they could, by coöperation, be tilled by machinery, like prairie farms of the West. If other avenues of activity were not freely open, it is more than likely that these meadows would be reclaimed.
The great feature in Cape Cod agriculture is cranberry raising. ”

“ The feeling at Boston and Philadelphia as to tea, in 1775, ran high upon Cape Cod. A vessel loaded with tea went ashore at Provincetown, and for some service or other a Wellfleet man received and undertook to sell a chest or two of tea, saying that, as it had not paid duty, there was no harm in his accepting it. Public spirit has always been strong upon Cape Cod, and the general indignation rose to such a pitch that he finally felt obliged to present a written apology in town-meeting. ”

“ Another year, a feeble crop of grass comes stealing in; another summer, unless the land is fated to remain as an “old field,” you will see miniature pitch-pines all over it; another summer yet, and they are bushes; and before you can realize it, the whole field is rejoicing in a vigorous growth. Even in many of the roads you hardly leave the woods. It seems as if a chief business on Cape Cod from the time of Noah had been the making of roads. The village streets and the county highways are often wide ”

“ In Eastham, large stumps may be discovered nearly a mile from land, and ancient peat-meadows now lie under water. At another place in that town is a peat-meadow which was buried in remote times by sand, but has been washed out again by the waves, and fuel has been taken from it.
While there is much barren country on Cape Cod, there are in tillage, including hay lands of all kinds, eleven thousand acres, and of woodland there are some thirty thousand acres. There is good land in almost every section, and in many places there is productive soil. ”

“ Every mariner knows something of farming, and every farmer is more or less of a sailor. They tell of an action against a town for injuries from a defect in a highway, in which the distance of a certain hole in the road from the traveled path was in question. ”

“ A farmer dies; his sons have all left home to follow the seas, to keep store in Boston, or to practice law in San Francisco. The first year, the fields are neglected: withered stubble of the year before alone remains to tell of cultivation. ”

“ But a man who has passed a score of years or more in riding up and down high-rolling waves thinks nothing of urging a wagon, loaded with cord-wood or oysters, up the steepest bank, or of driving over saplings six feet high, to make a circuit. ”

“ Schools are often closed, and the boys and girls, with many of their elders, turn to gathering the crop; rakes are seldom used, for fear of damage to the berries, which are best picked by hand. The price of picking is not included in the figures given above, and on the whole a substantial amount of ready money is distributed in a thousand tiny rivulets from this industry.
There is more forest on Cape Cod, it is said, than there was fifty years ago. ”

“ Vines are set out at regular intervals, and spreading, they mat the ground. It costs on the average perhaps $400 an acre to transform a rough swamp into a cranberry meadow in bearing condition. One marsh in Barnstable cost $30,000. The profits, however, are large. One meadow, of two or three acres, has repaid six weeks’ annual labor with $1000 a year for twenty years. ”

“ Others are surrounded by pastures divided from each other by rail fences, which project out to deep water to keep the cows of different farms separate. Often a farmhouse, with its barn and sheds, stands on the bank above the pond. ”

“ The winter is so much milder on Cape Cod than further North, that the Wilson’s snipe sometimes stay all winter around the upper, fresh portions of the marshes. Snowy owls are probably more abundant during the winter on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, than in any other places of the same area in New England. ”