Cape Henry

“ Life in Nature is far more a matter of purest melodrama than the world believes.
There are dreaded nights when a certain north wind blows directly down the Cape carrying everything before it, flying sand, fragments of ancient wrecks, cobbles that have rolled out of the bank and been caught up by the wind as they fell, barrel staves, and stinging spume. ”

“ The party embarked in an open barge of less than three tons, and dropping down the James River, parted with the Phœnix off Cape Henry, and crossing over thence to the Eastern Shore, discovered and named, after their commander, "Smith's Isles." At Cape Charles they met some grim, athletic savages, with bone-headed spears in their hands, who directed them to the dwelling-place of the Werowance of Accomac, who was found courteous and friendly, and the handsomest native that they had yet seen. His country pleasant, fertile, and intersected by creeks, affording good harbors for small craft. ”

“ By this time we saw the little steamer Naushon entering the harbor, and heard the sound of her whistle, and came down from the hills to meet her at the wharf. So we took leave of Cape Cod and its inhabitants. We liked the manners of the last, what little we saw of them, very much. They were particularly downright and good-humored. The old people appeared remarkably well preserved, as if by the saltness of the atmosphere, and after having once mistaken, we could never be certain whether we were talking to a coeval of our grandparents, or to one of our own age. ”

“ The cape at the south is Cape Henry, in honor of our most noble prince. The land white hilly sands, like unto the Downes, and all along the shores great plentie of pines and firres.
“The north cape is called Cape Charles, in honor of the worthy Duke of Yorke; the isles before it, Smith’s Isles, by the name of the discoverer. Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places knowne, for large and pleasant navigable rivers; heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation. ”

“ The big ship just seemed nothing among them, as she now sunk down in the hollow, and then rose to the top of the smooth hill of water. To our right was seen Cape Horn itself; it is a high head of land, sticking out into the sea, all by itself. Very few people have ever been on shore there, and no one lives there, as there is no ground to grow anything, and the climate is cold and bleak. You know that the two ends of the earth, or poles, as they are called, the north and south, are very cold; ice and snow all the year round, and Cape Horn is near the south end. ”

“ At one time or another you might find his counterpart in any Cape village, and in a day when bad movies had not been replaced by bad talking movies, and when radio had not even suspicioned television, Henry’s latest escapades provided pretty good conversation during long winter evenings on the Cape. Certainly the celebration of Independence Day could not have been the same without him. ”

“ Thus we kept on along the gently curving shore, seeing two or three miles ahead at once,—along this ocean side-walk, where there was none to turn out for, with the middle of the road the highway of nations on our right, and the sand cliffs of the Cape on our left. We saw this forenoon a part of the wreck of a vessel, probably the Franklin, a large piece fifteen feet square, and still freshly painted. With a grapple and a line we could have saved it, for the waves repeatedly washed it within cast, but they as often took it back. ”

“ The single road which runs lengthwise the Cape, now winding over the plain, now through the shrubbery which scrapes the wheels of the stage, was a mere cart-track in the sand, commonly without any fences to confine it, and continually changing from this side to that, to harder ground, or sometimes to avoid the tide. But the inhabitants travel the waste here and there pilgrim-wise and staff in hand, by narrow footpaths, through which the sand flows out and reveals the nakedness of the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Looking southward from the light-house, the Cape appeared like an elevated plateau, sloping very regularly, though slightly, downward from the edge of the bank on the Atlantic side, about one hundred and fifty feet above the ocean, to that on the Bay side. On traversing this we found it to be interrupted by broad valleys or gullies, which become the hollows in the bank when the sea has worn up to them. They are commonly at right angles with the shore, and often extend quite across the Cape. ”

“ In the course of the afternoon I conferred with my officers as to the navigation of Cape Henry, the southernmost of the two headlands which form the entrance to the roadstead of Hampton Road and Chesapeake Bay.
My idea was to await daybreak at about ten knots out from the American territorial waters in order to discover whether any enemy measures had been taken. If by any chance news of our voyage had leaked out, we should certainly have to reckon with such enemy influences. ”

“ To the fisherman, the Cape itself is a sort of store-ship laden with supplies,—a safer and larger craft which carries the women and children, the old men and the sick, and indeed sea-phrases are as common on it as on board a vessel. Thus is it ever with a sea-going people. The old Northmen used to speak of the "keel-ridge" of the country, that is, the ridge of the Doffrafield Mountains, as if the land were a boat turned bottom up. I was frequently reminded of the Northmen here. The inhabitants of the Cape are often at once farmers and sea-rovers ”

“ ACROSS THE CAPE
When we have returned from the seaside, we sometimes ask ourselves why we did not spend more time in gazing at the sea; but very soon the traveller does not look as the sea more than at the heavens. As for the interior, if the elevated sand-bar in the midst of the ocean can be said to have any interior, it was an exceedingly desolate landscape, with rarely a cultivated or cultivable field in sight. We saw no villages, and seldom a house, for these are generally on the Bay side. It was a succession of shrubby hills and valleys, now wearing an autumnal tint. ”

“ We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen rods long, between Orleans and Eastham, called Jeremiah’s Gutter. The Atlantic is said sometimes to meet the Bay here, and isolate the northern part of the Cape. The streams of the Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale, since there is no room for them to run, without tumbling immediately into the sea; and beside, we found it difficult to run ourselves in that sand, when there was no want of room. Hence, the least channel where water runs, or may run, is important, and is dignified with a name. ”

“ 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 alongside 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. ”

“ For the first four or five miles we followed the road, which here turns to the north on the elbow,—the narrowest part of the Cape,—that we might clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, on our right. We found the travelling good enough for walkers on the sides of the roads, though it was "heavy" for horses in the middle. We walked with our umbrellas behind us, since it blowed hard as well as rained, with driving mists, as the day before, and the wind helped us over the sand at a rapid rate. ”

“ Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as well as picturesque, than the modern and more pretending ones, which were less in harmony with the scenery, and less firmly planted.
These houses were on the shores of a chain of ponds, seven in number, the source of a small stream called Herring River, which empties into the Bay, There are many Herring Rivers on the Cape; they will, perhaps, be more numerous than herrings soon. ”

“ To one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along the Cape, the only "white, sandy, and very bold shore" that appears is in these towns, though the bank is not so high there as on the eastern side. At a distance of four or five miles the sandy cliffs there look like a long fort of yellow sandstone, they are so level and regular, especially in Wellfleet,—the fort of the land defending itself against the encroachments of the Ocean. They are streaked here and there with a reddish sand as if painted. ”

“ In Crantz’s account of Greenland, he says: “They (the foxes) live upon birds and their eggs, and, when they can’t get them, upon crowberries, mussels, crabs, and what the sea casts out.”
Just before reaching the light-house, we saw the sun set in the Bay,—for standing on that narrow Cape was, as I have said, like being on the deck of a vessel, or rather at the masthead of a man-of-war, thirty miles at sea, though we knew that at the same moment the sun was setting behind our native hills, which were just below the horizon in that direction. ”

“ The inhabitants of the Cape are often at once farmers and sea-rovers; they are more than vikings or kings of the bays, for their sway extends over the open sea also. A farmer in Wellfleet, at whose house I afterward spent a night, who had raised fifty bushels of potatoes the previous year, which is a large crop for the Cape, and had extensive salt-works, pointed to his schooner, which lay in sight, in which he and his man and boy occasionally ran down the coast a-trading as far as the Capes of Virginia. ”

“ The most foreign and picturesque structures on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the salt-works, are the wind-mills,—gray-looking octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to the ground in the rear, and there resting on a cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned round to face the wind. ”

“ Some saddle-horses that passed the hotel in the evening merely made the sand fly with a rustling sound like a writer sanding his paper copiously, but there was no sound of their tread. No doubt there are more horses and carts there at present. A sleigh is never seen, or at least is a great novelty on the Cape, the snow being either absorbed by the sand or blown into drifts.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on. ”

“ The dust, which sprinkles everybody and everything with red, and the strong winds, which blow ships on shore, and commit other species of damage, are the things most objected to in Cape Town.
Having introduced them, I hope that I may be considered to have given a fair picture of the place as it appeared to me when, the day after our arrival, I went on shore in the afternoon with Mr Henley. All the passengers who were to remain at the Cape had disembarked, and the rest, who were going on to Natal and the Mauritius, had gone on shore to live till the ship again sailed. ”

“ The stations on the Cape stand on an average some six miles apart, and house a crew of eight men together with the life boat and life line cannon used in case of a wreck. The men upon patrol, however, do not walk from station to station, but to a halfway house built in some more or less sheltered nook upon the bank. A man going south from the Highland station for example, leaves a kind of brass ticket to be collected at his southern halfway house by a man coming north from Pamet River; a man going north from the Highland exchanges tokens with a man coming south from Peaked Hill. ”

“ On studying the map, I saw that there must be an uninterrupted beach on the east or outside of the forearm of the Cape, more than thirty miles from the general line of the coast, which would afford a good sea view, but that, on account of an opening in the beach, forming the entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must strike it in Eastham, if I approached it by land, and probably I could walk thence straight to Race Point, about twenty-eight miles, and not meet with any obstruction. ”

“ 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 ”