Cape Farewell

“ Cape Farewell, its southernmost point, is a small island divided from the shore by a narrow inlet.
The interior of the country is dreary and mountainous; and some of the mountains are so lofty, that they are visible to the distance of more than forty leagues. They are covered with perpetual snow; and ice and snow, like the glaciers of Switzerland, fill the elevated plains, and even many of the valleys. The lowlands, adjacent to the sea-coast, are clothed with verdure [Pg 341] during the summer season. The coast is indented with many bays and creeks, which extend far into the land ”

“ I came at last to the little wind-swept divide between Table Mountain and the Lion's Head. Here Capetown was lost to me, and I stood among sandy wastes where thin pines and whin-like bushes grow. And further still was the cold grey sea with the waves breaking on a rocky point and a little island all awash with white water.
Though beyond this divide the air was cold as death, the slopes of Table Mountain sweeping to the sea were full of colour; deep, strong, stern colour. When the sun shines and full summer rules upon the Cape Peninsula the place must be glorious. ”

“ The world outside appears like a series of pictures seen through an artist's finder. If your house tops a dune on the narrow part of the Cape, you may see the sails on the horizon of the Atlantic on the east, and the sails on the horizon of the Bay on the west; a clear view of the salt water straight across the Cape in both directions.
As you go down from Barnstable to Provincetown, in automobile or by train, you notice that there are more windows than you expect to see in the triangle under the slope of the roofs. ”

“ What a naked, spiritless coast scene! To the south of my position (at Long Beach,) the green headland of the Cape stands with its feet in the sea. Some large rocks and bowlders are scattered for a little distance above that, and then, nothing! Not a shell, or wading bird, not even a rope of kelp on the sands, or a bit of colored seaweed to catch the eye; only the ever-restless, but at this season unimpassioned, sea. Even the wind has ceased to buffet us, and only the free motion of our clean-limbed roadster makes a breeze to quicken the blood in our cheeks. ”

“ THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. FROM the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like span Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann. Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down, And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing town. Long has passed the summer morning, and its memory waxes old, When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled. Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool, And the golden-rod and aster bloom around thy grave, Rantoul! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our calls are cut short for the want of wind, and we lie becalmed on the low, broad swells, majestically rolling in upon the Cape, only a mile to the south-west. Captain Knight is evidently unquiet at this proximity. A powerful current is setting rapidly in, carrying us over depths too great for our cables, up to the very cliffs. If the adventurous mariner, who first sighted this bold and forward headland, was bent upon christening it by an apostolic name, why did he not call it Cape St. Peter? All in all, it is certainly the finest coast scenery I have ever seen ”

“ Between Boston Light and the tip of the Cape the voyager gets a taste of that same sea which Bradford and his friends breasted for two long months. If the sweet summer winds have been off shore for long enough there is little trouble, even for the landsman in this sea. It is likely to be smooth and smiling as an inland lake. If on the other hand the salt vigor of the east winds has shouldered it for a day or two the pilgrim of to-day may well hail the sight of the sand hills of the Cape with a joy as great and a hope of early relief as intense as did the lone voyagers of 1620. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This simple cenotaph will remain intact for generation after generation. The Esquimaux never disturb a grave.
Our stores deposited, it was our next office to erect a beacon, and intrust to it our tidings. We chose for this purpose the Western Cape of Littleton Island, as more conspicuous than Cape Hatherton; built our cairn; wedged a staff into the crevices of the rocks; and, spreading the American flag, hailed its folds with three cheers as they expanded in the cold midnight breeze. ”

“ The settlers came to church out of choice and necessity and as the land prospered the farmers and the tradesmen and the Captains came in humility and thanksgiving, giving generously to the support of the beautiful, white edifices that were the symbol of their devotion to Christianity. They have survived waves of free thought, of come-outers, Quakers, and bad times and good and they still stand, a monument sculptured in wood to man’s best dreams, their plain, dignified and honest lines a living testimony to the character of the Cape men who built them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Despite the depredations which the Cape has suffered at the hands of both natives and summer residents, its flavor has been maintained, and the very fact that it is largely inhabited serves well in these days of friendly intercourse and indulgent habits; for we all of us must live happily in summer, and to do so means comfort, food, and drink. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But life went on, and you thanked your God that it had been no worse, for, in a sea-going community, the sea had claimed so many, and brought about such tragedy, that Cape people stood up to the buffets of life as bravely as their stout vessels stood up to the angry seas of the world. This was part of the strength that I had felt in Aunt Alice from our first meeting. It was a strength that came from an abiding faith in God and in His sense of the fitness of things—in an era when the living was not easy, and only the strong survived. ”

“ Cape Trinity left behind, Cape Eternity began to loom up in lonely majesty beyond—its mighty mass partially clothed with verdure, and, like the other, idealized in the moonlight. The awesomeness of its grandeur oppressed them with an overpowering effect of dread sublimity, and it was almost a relief when the steamer at last glided away from those tremendous embodiments of nature’s savage grandeur, and saw rising before them vistas of a somewhat gentler, though still bold and picturesque type. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ It is a time to spend indoors, huddled up to the warmth of stove or open hearth, while the sturdy Cape houses settle down into the wind to weather it out. Above stairs the old houses yield gently to the wind in a motion that is reminiscent of the roll of a ship at sea. Like the ship, they will ride out this storm as they have many another throughout a long two centuries.
When a Nor’easter has passed, or settled down to a dull roar, it is a time for the Outer Beach, that magnificent stretch of shoreline that skirts the Cape from Provincetown to Chatham. ”

“ Leaving the beach to continue down Cape, you come suddenly upon the strangest scenery of all, where the moors of Wellfleet and Truro swell out of the Bay in fantastic shapes, and merely condescend to allow the old County Road to pass through them—which it does not do easily. The hills have been softly rounded by time and the wind, and they rise sometimes to great heights, only to fall off into sheltered valleys where the scrub pines grow. It is a crazy-quilt of topography and color, nearly smothered by a blanket of wild cranberry that is glossy-green in summer and scarlet in winter. ”

“ For two centuries countless visitors and vacationers have escaped the burdens and the routines of daily life for a day, a week, or a season of liberation, exploration, relaxation, and recreation along the Cape’s unsurpassed beaches, ponds, marshes, bays, pine [13] barrens, inlets, and dunes. Originally a summer resort for Bostonians and other New Englanders, the Cape now receives visitors from everywhere, at all seasons of the year. One of the favorite summer games for Cape children is to see how many different state license plates they can spot. ”

“ Then it was, as my friend and I stood on the bush-topped knoll, that the magnificence of our picnic fully impressed us, for, as we surveyed the long line of riders, and trundling carts, and gigs, and carriages, and heavy Cape wagons with their creeping teams winding over the plain, the head of the column was seen almost on the horizon before the rear-guard had left the scene of our festivities. This was altogether one of the pleasantest days I had spent in the colony; the people were so hearty and vigorous, so varied in appearance, character, and age, so full of life and fun and good-will. ”

“ Perhaps no single work of man enhances the beauty of a Cape village so much as the sparkling white churches whose spires point unerringly toward the blue heavens and serve as landmarks to Cape Codders at sea and ashore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”