Cape Wrath

“ On this coast, as on every other in the old isolated days, a wreck was treasure trove, a free gift of the sea; even to-day, the usable parts of a wreck are liable to melt away in a curious manner. There is no real looting; in fact, public opinion on the Cape is decidedly against such a practice, for it offends the local sense of decency. The gathering of the Montclair’s laths during the wreck really upset many people. They did not like it here. When men are lost on the beach, the whole Cape takes it very much to heart, talks about it, mulls over it ”

“ So excited were the troops by this victory over the enemy—more than two hundred savages being killed, and an immense number carried off wounded—that they galloped back to Fort Peddie with the news, and without refreshing themselves or their horses. Had the enemy been a few minutes earlier in leaving their bivouac, or had the troops been a few minutes later in reaching theirs, the parties would never have met. Only one man fell on our side, a Cape Corps soldier, who had often been reproved for his rashness. ”

“ One early Saturday in November I reached the Nauset Coast Guard Beach just as the peak of the high tide reached the shore and the unleashed fury of an angry Atlantic beat against the land to create one of the Cape’s most terrifying and awesome sights. The wind had shifted to the southwest and the sun was trying to break through the overcast but the seas piled higher and higher, as if through their own momentum. The whole surface of the sea was a menacing mass of tortured white breakers which threw their spume in smokey clouds a hundred feet into the air. ”

“ Provincetown was a long time afterwards started, and began with a few fishermen's huts, which grew in the eighteenth century to a small village with extensive fish-drying flakes. The people top-dressed the soft sands with clay, shells and pebble, thus making the streets. There are relics of wrecks all about the extremity of the Cape, and it has had a sad history, though now, being better lighted and having life-saving stations, these terrible disasters are rare. ”

“ The plain of Cape François, that might have rivaled the fabled garden of the Hesperides, both in richness and beauty, was soon in one universal conflagration, the gleams of which painted the sky in lurid horror, while the smoke enveloped the whole country in uncertain gloom. The ranks of the rebels were increased at every step of their progress, and along their march of devastation they murdered every white who fell into their power, without distinction of age or sex, viewing with fiendish delight the agonies and groans of those whom so lately they had not dared to look in the face. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Towards mid-day on Thursday the gale broke a little, that is to say, there were longer intervals between the squalls, but it was an anxious time, for we were off Cape Karempi, and the most dangerous part of the Black Sea navigation lies between this point and Cape Aia on the northern coast. Nearly half the wrecks take place near this cape. The currents are numerous and very strong, and for more than a hundred miles not a harbour nor place of refuge is to be found. Alas! for the luckless vessel which may be driven too near these cruel rocks! ”

“ 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. ”

“ A struggle ensues between the billows lashed into fury by the winds, and the angry current which is opposing them. The ground-swell contributes to the turmoil of the elements, and the stoutest mariner sometimes stands appalled at the spectacle of seas with nearly perpendicular walls, battering his ship like so many battering-rams, and threatening her with instant destruction. Hence the name of the “stormy cape,” applied to the Cape of Good Hope. ”

“ As was natural, fishermen and sailors, when they could, enlisted in the infant navy. But the call for men pressed until even Joseph Otis protested: “We have more men in the land and sea service than our proportion,” and “there is scarcely a day that the enemy is not within gun-shot of some part of our coast. It is like dragging men from home when their houses are on fire, but I will do my best to comply.” An additional grievance lay in the fact that the Cape troops seem to have been sent largely to Rhode Island. ”

“ So to us in the midst of occasional tempests, and selfish cliques, appear the intimations of the promised land, fruitful of all good, to which we are hastening; and we only need to remind one another of these pleasant omens, which are too full of the promised triumph to allow the spirit of the Cape to either depress or destroy. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Cape tradition, however, is no half-real, half-mystical fancy, but the truth itself. Great waves do indeed approach this beach by threes. Again and again have I watched three giants roll in one after the other out of the Atlantic, cross the outer bar, break, form again, and follow each other in to fulfilment and destruction on this solitary beach. Coast guard crews are all well aware of this triple rhythm and take advantage of the lull that follows the last wave to launch their boats.
It is true that there are single giants as well. ”

“ At the conclusion of hostilities they returned to their ruined homes and valiantly set to work to regain their former prosperity. In this they succeeded. The straggling town near the tip-end of the Cape was once more a hive of industry, notable for its hardy and venturesome seamen, when the proclamation of the embargo by President Jefferson again set back the hands of the clock. ”

“ His huge war tomahawk in his hand, Manshope strode away without a word from the camp, the wails [42] of the sorrowing squaws and the war shrieks of the braves echoing in his ears. The war drums beat their relentless rhythm of death for the Devil Bird. With giant strides that took him across the breadth of the Cape, Manshope plunged thigh deep through the deepest streams, pushed trees aside in forests he had no time to skirt, and came at length to the low treacherous swamplands that lay at the edge of the Southern Sea, the last barrier to the Unknown Place. ”

“ 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 ”

“ If the Cape Ministry had begun at once by employing the splendid Colonial forces at its disposal, not for purposes of defiance, but of defence, the tale of raid and rebellion, which has been as harassing as the tale of war, would never have been told. ”

“ Cape Hatteras, the most remarkable and dangerous cape on the coast of North American, is situated in latitude thirty-five degrees and twelve minutes, and has occasioned the destruction of many a fine vessel, and the loss of hundreds of valuable lives. The water is very shoal at a great distance from the cape, which is remarkable for sudden and violent squalls of wind, and for the most severe storms of thunder, lightning, and rain, which happen almost every day for one half the year. ”

“ A notable blockade runner called the Virginia was bought by the Confederate Government during the war and renamed the Cape Fear. She was put under the command of Captain Guthrie, a Cape Fear pilot of recognized ability, who was succeeded by an English gentleman, a fine sailor, Captain Wise, who cast his lot with our people and ran the Cape Fear up and down the river for several years as a Confederate transport. She was destroyed in the river when the Federals captured Fort Fisher. Captain Wise married a Miss Flora McCaleb, of Wilmington, and for years after the war conducted a lumberyard here. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened himself, amid polar snows, with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And wrathfully did he shake his fist, as he related how a party of Cape Cod men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoil, and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood who are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails, to mislead the mariner along the dangerous shores of the Cape. ”

“ Gentlemen,—Familiar as I am with Cape names and Cape men, I have, from the first, felt assured that the wreck exhibited by you on the Common was what it purports to be; for the testimony of well-known citizens of Cape Cod came simultaneously with the discovery which they made. Amos Otis, Esq., Cashier of the Barnstable Bank, I have long known as a sterling, sound, matter-of-fact man, whose judgment in what falls under his own observation is not easily misled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now the irruptions we have had into the Caffre and Bechuana country bordering upon the colony have been wholly brought about by the devastations committed by Chaka. Of course I refer to those irruptions which have taken place since our knowledge and possession of the Cape. I have no doubt but that such irruptions have been continued, and that they have occurred once in every century for ages. They have been brought about by a population increasing beyond the means of subsistence, and have taken place as soon as the overplus has required it. ”