Cape Disappointment

“ But being satisfied of the peril, and seeing no hope of honour or profit, they left off the attempt. For, said the mariners, this much is clear, that beyond this Cape there is no race of men nor place of inhabitants: nor is the land less sandy than the deserts of Libya, where there is no water, no tree, no green herb—and the sea so shallow that a whole league from land it is only a fathom deep, while the currents are so terrible that no ship having once passed the Cape, will ever be able to return. ”

“ Even when you anchor in the bay, on this side of the Cape, you ride in fear and trembling, for you may be blown away from your anchor to sea or be driven on shore among the savages, before the men can well put on their clothing. But when once you’re well on the other side of the Cape, then the water dances to the beams of the sun as if it were merry, and you may sail for weeks with a cloudless sky and a following breeze, without starting tack or sheet, or having to take your pipe out of your mouth. ”

“ He cannot fix the cape, even when many hundred miles distant, better than on an ENE. bearing. He will be almost sure of a fair wind, as it seldom Mows from northeast any distance off shore. Cape Disappointment is in latitude 46 19' N., longitude 124 W. It is between six and seven hundred feet high, and can be seen in clear weather 30 miles. It juts prominently out into the sea, is a bold headland, and, if the weather be such as to allow an approach within 15 miles of it, cannot possibly be mistaken by persons at all experienced in adjusting a line of coast with the chart south of the Columbia. ”

“ Back from the other shore of the harbor, jutting out for some miles into Chedabucto Bay, lies the Cape. You get a view of it if you climb to the crest of the hill—a broad reach of barrens, fretted all day by the sea. Out there it is what the Acadians call a bad country. About the sluice-like coves that have been eaten into its rocky shore are scrambling groups of fishermen's houses ”

“ Out in front of all, like a giant sentinel, stands the island of Cape Clear, breasting with its defiant strength that vast ocean whose waves foam around it, lashing its shores, and rushing up its crannied bluffs, still and for ever to be flung back in shattered spray by those bold and rocky headlands. ”

“ I caught the guide at last. After a very rough journey we reached the village of Finisterra, and wound our way up the flinty sides of the huge bluff head which is called the Cape. Certainly in the whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan shore. There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in everything around, which strangely captivates the imagination. After gazing from the summit of the Cape for nearly an hour we descended to the village. On reaching the house where we had taken up our habitation, I flung myself on a rude and dirty bed, and was soon asleep. ”

“ Was the descent of Orpheus, Ulysses, or Dante into Hell, one whit more hardy and sublime than the first navigator’s weathering of that terrible Cape. Turned on her heel by a fierce west wind, many an outward-bound ship has been driven across the southern Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope—that way to seek a passage to the Pacific. And that stormy Cape, I doubt not, has sent many a fine craft to the bottom, and told no tales. At those ends of the earth are no chronicles. What signify the broken spars and shrouds that, day after day, are driven before the prows of more fortunate vessels? ”

“ Never did I meet with such servants as those at the Cape,—drunkards, thieves, and liars,—the petty annoyances these people give are enough to destroy the pleasure of living in this fine climate and beautiful country ”

“ Time seems to be of no more value to the Cape colonists than it is to the followers of Islam, and "letting things slide" is pretty generally the order of the day. One is rather puzzled at this weak point in otherwise active, energetic characters; and certainly, living as these people do in the splendid air of the Cape—exhilarating as champagne, and making all who inhale it feel glad to be alive—they cannot, like the limp, supine inhabitants of Eastern lands, plead the excuse of an enervating climate. Much of the discomfort in the houses is due to this frightful habit of procrastinating. ”

“ The oceans which this Cape for ever lave
While time shall last is that great sailor’s grave;
And Nature’s self proclaims his honours here,
By such a monument o’er such a bier.{104}
Along the coast they sail. With pleasured eyes
They view new shores—new hills, new plains, arise,
The Cape St. Blaise and Longkloof Mountains past,
The hoped-for, longed-for haven comes at last;
Then, ’midst the glories of an April day,
They cast their anchor in Algoa Bay,
Whose outstretched arms receive in their embrace
Those dauntless settlers of a Northern race. ”

“ If I could have dreamed of waiting here so long, I would have run up to Algoa Bay or East London by sea, and had a glimpse of Caffreland. Capetown makes me very languid—there is something depressing in the air—but my cough is much better. I can’t walk here without feeling knocked-up; and cab-hire is so dear; and somehow, nothing is worth while, when one is waiting from day to day. So I have spent more money than when I was most amused, in being bored. ”

“ It was treeless desolation manifest; and on our sea side, as far as the eye could reach, the water bobbed and winked with countless spars of ice.
"I will tell you at once, my friend,—we were brought to opposite an inhuman swamp on the coast of Siberia, fifty miles or more to the west of North-east Cape; and there what remained of the crew made shift to cast anchor; and for a day and night the ragged ship curtsied to the land, like a blind beggar to an empty street, and we only dozed in our corners and wondered at the silence. ”

“ In short, I am lazy and prefer to see some one else do it. This feeling generally passes away with the sheer joy of vacation days, days of freedom and fresh air; but I realize that the climate breeds a lack of ambition, to which I doubtless would succumb were I to live on without interruption amid the Cape-Codders.
And therefore I prefer to think of the Cape as a playground for the initiate, a wonderland for children, and a haven of rest for the tired of all ages, a land where lines and wrinkles quickly [9] disappear under the soothing softness of the tempered climate. ”

“ In dry weather at the Cape these spiteful little stings do not even wait for the newly arrived victim; but fly about, light as thistle down, ready to settle on any one who has not learned by experience to give the prickly-pear bushes a wide berth. ”

“ The ship is then ready for the worst; and if, in reeling round the headland, she receives a broadside, it generally goes well with her. If ill, all hands go to the bottom with quiet consciences.
Among sea-captains, there are some who seem to regard the genius of the Cape as a wilful, capricious jade, that must be courted and coaxed into complaisance. ”

“ Every night in the year, when darkness has fallen on the Cape and the sombre thunder of ocean is heard in the pitch pines and the moors, lights are to be seen moving along these fifty miles of sand, some going north, some south, (129) twinkles and points of light solitary and mysterious. These lights gleam from the lanterns and electric torches of the coast guardsmen of the Cape walking the night patrols. ”

“ Another unpleasant feature of life in Capetown is the misfortune, not the fault, of the inhabitants in being frequently exposed to the full fury of the south-east wind. Sometimes for whole days together the Cape is swept by tremendous blasts, which tear up the sea into white foam and raise clouds of blinding dust along the streets of the town. ”

“ No envious southerly gale battered us back from the Cape we were striving to get round, and presently we found ourselves in the embrace of the great Agulhas current that for ever sets steadily round the Cape westward. Homeward bounders have reason to rejoice when they enter the limits of this mighty marine river, for, in spite of contrary winds or calms, they are irresistibly carried on the way they would go at a rate that is the same for the bluff-bowed sea-waggon as for the ocean-flyer. ”

“ Their rain-makers and doctors cut a conspicuous and grotesque figure, with their strange fantastic head-dresses of jackal’s and monkey’s tails. The mischief these wretches do I have already described.
Presently, the quiet of the scene was disturbed; the trumpet of the Cape Corps gave forth its brazen signal to upsaddle; men and horses were soon in their ranks; few waggons were were in the train of this corps, so accustomed to the field, and so fitted to its duties ”

“ To the traveller coming home to the Cape there is no other landmark as welcome a sight as the old, gilded weather cock which perches above the West Parish Meeting House at West Barnstable. When, from the new Mid-Cape Highway, you first catch sight of this grand bird shining, golden and bright and triumphant above the trees you know that you are really on the Cape and that an old friend is keeping the same watchful eye over land and sea of today as in the days of the American Revolution and before. ”

“ Fate, that capricious ruler of the tides that governs our lives, arranged a meeting on the wild, windswept Hill of Storms in Truro on Cape Cod; a meeting so strange that, for the sake of credulity, I must withhold the name of the earthly being who took part in it. For it was on a dark Fall night, long ago, that a Cape Cod boy, with nothing in his pockets but his dreams and a burning ambition, met and talked with a live skeleton, and, caught up on the crest of Fate’s precarious wave, was swept high to Fame and Fortune. ”

“ The impressive scenery and bold picturesqueness all about attract many artists, who haunt the rocks and sea views of Cape Ann. The whole district is full of summer-homes, with flower-gardens and shrubbery amid the rocks and boulders, and the cliffs and ocean presenting an endless variety of changing scenery. The outer extremity of the Cape, long called Halibut Point, has been modernized into the Land's End, thus being rightly named as the termination of the great Massachusetts granite ridge, which falls away sharply into the sea. ”

“ The people of the Cape became in colonial times clever traders in various pursuits. Although in one sense they were as isolated as islanders, their adventurous life on the sea gave them breadth of view. By their thrift and in innumerable shrewd and persistent ways they amassed competencies and estates for their families. ”

“ The fame of the “British Pirate” had preceded her. Every ship which had touched at the Cape, had had more or less to say of the Alabama. Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams, Lord Russell and the “London Times” had made her famous, and the people manifested great curiosity to see her. We were, in a measure, too, among our own kinsmen. The Cape of Good Hope, as all the world knows, had been a Dutch colony, and was now inhabited by a mixed population of Dutch and English. The African had met the usual fate of the savage, when he comes in contact with civilized man. ”

“ Not that I am at all a courageous person, as a rule.
I believe we were somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cape when the most noteworthy of our experiences befell us. We were struggling with the chronic "dirty" weather—absurd adjective for a thing so majestic and inspiring!—and I was on deck, firmly tied to my chair, and my chair to the mast, dry under oilskins, and only my face exposed to wind and spray, which threatened to take the skin off. I could hardly see the length of the ship through the spindrift of the gale, and the way it shrieked in the rigging was like fiends let loose. ”

“ As there were no hills, but only here and there a dry hollow in the midst of the waste, and the distant horizon was concealed by mist, we did not know whether it was high or low. A solitary traveller whom we saw perambulating in the distance loomed like a giant. He appeared to walk slouchingly, as if held up from above by straps under his shoulders, as much as supported by the plain below. Men and boys would have appeared alike at a little distance, there being no object by which to measure them. Indeed, to an inlander, the Cape landscape is a constant mirage. ”

“ Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare,
Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer.
Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the spectres round the wall,
But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all,--
Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish! Never after mortal man
Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann. ”

“ Although we who have been out here for months may hate the very mention of the veldt, yet if we live to go home we shall live to regret that we ever left it. We may curse its boundless wastes—curse that endless rise which so often has lain between our tired bodies and the evening bivouac; but the curses will die over the rail of an ocean steamer and with the fading lights of Cape Town, while the memory of the exhilarating air, the freedom, the [52] stirring adventure lurking in every dip and donga of that wind-swept, sun-dried, war-racked expanse of steppe, will live with us for ever. ”

“ The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere: for one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago on the north of Provincetown whose "bones" (this was his word) are still visible many rods within the present line of the beach, half buried in sand. Perchance they lie along-side the timbers of a whale. The general statement of the inhabitants is, that the Cape is wasting on both sides, but extending itself on particular points on the south and west, as at Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long, and Race Points. ”