USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 19
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 19
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 19
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Another small pond of interest is Little Cliff Pond at South Orleans. It is estimated that the area is approximately twenty acres and soundings have been made which show the extreme depth is not less than fifty-four feet. Cobb's Pond at Brewster and Fresh Pond at South Dennis are dark colored, due to the steeping of peat bogs and swampy material in general. The former is eleven feet in depth in some places and is a trifle larger than Little Cliff Pond. Fresh Pond is a little larger than either but has a depth of less than ten feet.
There are several Long Ponds, the principal ones having that name being located in Harwich, the largest of the group; Wellfleet, Centre- ville, and South Yarmouth. The Wellfleet pond contains thirty-four acres, and has a depth of forty-four feet. The Centreville pond has sixty-nine acres and a depth of twenty-three feet. From all of these ponds there is a development of other ponds, Greenland Pond, Small's Pond, Mill Pond and Bushy Beach Pond, all belonging to Long Pond in Harwich as the beginning of a chain. Bushy Beach Pond contains many bushes and the pond bottom is completely covered with vegeta- tion, including bladderworts, the yellow cow lily, the reddish leaves of
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the watershield, the floating heart, so called because of the heart-shaped leaves ; water pennywort, water lobelia, loosestrife, hedge hyssop and other pond flora, not forgetting the sweet-scented white water lilies which are found in abundance, the most desirable of all the floating growth. This is an abundant floating treasure on most of the Cape Cod ponds and thousands of them are pulled by early-risers among the boys and girls and offered to passing motorists who are glad to pay a fair price for such a sweet messenger of "Good Morning," saying it not only with flowers but with a delightful fragrance.
Mingling with these samples of water flora are turtles, water snakes, frogs and fish, while the shores of the ponds are overgrown with rushes, sedges and lobelia.
Gull Pond at Wellfleet and Cliff Pond at Brewster are good exam- ples of ponds of glacial formation, catch basins formed in the gravel when ancient blocks of ice melted and left "kettle holes" or "punch bowls" which easily fill with water to a considerable depth. Most of the ponds of glacial formation have wide shelving sides or shores but no outlets. When they become low it is because of evaporation and lack of rainfalls.
There are deep, cool ponds in which are found red and white perch, pickerel, and occasionally bass. There are in most of them "kivers" or "roaches," sometimes called "pumpkin seed," the fish being the same but the name differing with the locality. They are not very large and hardly worth catching, while their carelessness about flirting with the fisherman's bait is proverbial. One catching a "kiver," as it is called on the Upper Cape, hesitates about throwing it back for fear he will catch the same fish over again and have to repeat the process unprofit- ably. Some of the deeper ponds have a temperature in August, the hottest month on the Cape, of about fifty-three degrees in the quiet water beneath the surface. This is usually the case where the water is more than fifty feet deep, such as Cliff Pond and Baker's Pond at East Brewster, Long Pond at Harwich, White Pond at Chatham, Scar- go Lake at Dennis, Peter's Pond at Sandwich, and Mashpee Pond at Mashpee, where the Indians live.
The majority of Cape ponds are less than fifty feet in depth and are suitable for bathing, for those who care for fresh water bathing when there is an abundance of salt water bathing privileges available. Most of the shallower ponds have an August temperature of about sixty-five or seventy-five degrees. One hears of ponds with "no bottom," or so deep that no one has ever been able to find the bottom with the longest fish line, but these stories are myths. Drop a line with a sinker into the deepest part of Cliff Pond at Brewster and the sinker will strike bottom after a little over eighty feet of line has been let loose. This
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will be line enough to find the bottom of any other Cape Cod pond. Mashpee Pond, one of the largest on Cape Cod, has a depth of sixty- eight feet. It contains three hundred and ninety-five acres and is very popular with the Indians, as it always has been, and doubtless was be- fore the landing of the Pilgrims.
When President Grover Cleveland and Joseph Jefferson of "Rip Van Winkle" fame, were residents on Buzzards Bay, they were fond of fresh water fishing in Peter's Pond at Sandwich, with its clear, cool water reaching a depth of forty-eight feet, and containing one hundred and seventy-six acres of aquatic life, twenty-five acres larger than Spec- tacle Pond, another in Sandwich, and about ten feet deeper. Peter's Pond is surrounded by a wide sandy beach and contains practically no plant life. President Cleveland may have used his famous expression to his actor friend, "it is a condition and not a theory which confronts us," as he dropped his baited line into Peter's, as there are fish there for good fishermen, and the president and the actor were surely entitled to be called good fishermen.
Experienced and observant fishermen have a way of telling by the looks of a pond whether it contains fish and what varieties of fish may be expected to bite. Where there are white water lilies, the depth is usually about five feet and there is an accumulation of mud. These plants have large rootstalks, the lily pads make the surface calm and pickerel are apt to be found near them. The cow lily usually is found in the same locations, and pickerel weed offers a good place for fishing, as pickerel hide in the shade of these weeds.
These plants are found in Spectacle Pond, Sandwich; Walker's Pond, Harwich; Big Sandy Pond, West Yarmouth; Israel's Pond, Yarmouth ; Great Pond, Provincetown; Robbin's Pond, Harwich; and Shallow Pond, Barnstable, among others; and in them the fleeting fishes play.
Flat Pond, East Brewster; John Joseph's Pond, Harwich; and Eagle Pond, South Dennis; have the surface covered at times with floating heart. This is the first aquatic with floating leaves and frequently comes ahead of the white water lilies, or where there is not sufficient mud to give good rooting ground for the fragrant, uplifted white and yellow faces which greet the morning sun.
A peculiarity about the Cape ponds is that most of them have no out- let, so one finds them surrounded by wide beaches, instead of having their edges overgrown with bushes. Being clear and still they mirror the sky and neighboring trees, the fine white sand surrounding them like a natural glistening frame enclosing an enchanting picture of earth and sky and tree-tops. There should be poems and songs writ- ten about the ponds of the Cape, for surely they furnish as much in- spiration, born of real beauty and ever-changing. colors and art, as the
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lakes of Killarney, and are much clearer and more picturesque than the waters of Minnetonka or any of the others which have become pop- ularized in song and poetic story.
There are one hundred and seventy-five lakes on the Cape to choose from, not to mention those which do not contain fifteen or more square miles. The number of the small ponds is beyond computation. The whole area of the ponds is said to exceed 37,000 acres, and to contain more fish to the acre than any other lakes in New England, with the exception of Maine. Of course this is one of the statements which is frequently disputed because no two people ever agree when a fish story is told. There are surely enough pickerel, black bass and perch, white and red, to make fishing a promising part of one's vacation, and streams abound in trout, if one finds the right streams.
One thing about Cape Cod which stands out prominently is that it has never been over-advertised. Some super-heated and high-powered salesmen, fresh from the mirages of Florida, showing in their talents a hold-over from the ancestry of native sons of California, perhaps, at- tempted to foist upon Cape Cod recently some Cape Cod houses which were of a type that never was, and to paint the lily, in an attempt to sell land to one crowd to sell to another and the devil take the hindermost. It was a method of sugar-coating something which tasted good in the first place, and real lovers of life as it is lived on the Cape became gun- shy and waited till the real estate sharpers and their maps faded out of the picture, so they could buy what they wanted and build upon it and abide with it.
So it is with the bodies of water. The Cape Codder calls them ponds, the same as he knows his potatoes and little about the meaning of pommes de terre. Undoubtedly they could better be sold to the present generation if the name were changed to lake. There is Scargo Lake in North Dennis, Wequaquet Lake in Centreville, Shawme and Wakeby Lakes in Sandwich, Pleasant Lake in Harwich, Lake Manomet in Bourne and others in Barnstable, Falmouth, Yarmouth and all along the Cape which have become so called largely because of the visitors who have seen, admired and insisted upon calling them lakes. What is there at Saranac and Lake George to be given the preference, whether it be fishing, camping, boating, canoeing or bathing?
With such a wealth of scenery on such a stretch of shore, where the waves roll in with a temperature which is always warm, and the mag- nificent views over the ocean, it is not strange that the summer settle- ments have first grown up about the salt water. But the lakes are too beautiful to be overlooked and Cape Cod is destined, and is already on the way, to having hundreds of pretentious summer homes on the waters of the inland lakes.
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Saving the Woods from the Fire Demon-Strangers expect to find in the vicinity of Plymouth and Cape Cod "A stern and rock-bound coast," because Felicia Hemans brought that phrase into the descrip- tion of the scene at the landing of the Pilgrims. They also are carried away with the fancy, often times, that the Cape is a narrow stretch of sandy shore and are much surprised to learn that it has an interior of forests, as well as lakes, all adding much charm to the arm of Massachu- setts. It is quite a problem to guard these forests against fires. Every summer a shameful toll has been exacted through carelessness on the part of those who roam about or camp in the Cape Cod woods. An experiment was conducted in the summer of 1927 in Barnstable, Bourne, Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich and Yarmouth, considered the worst forest fire hazards in the United States. The experiment will be con- tinued another year, prevention, instead of suppression, being the meth- od employed. Careful figures are being kept to prove that it pays. The area consists of about three hundred square miles of sandy soil, with a type of forest growth and climatic conditions which increase the natural fire hazard.
It is a serious problem all over the State to prevent forest fires but is an especially hard problem to deal with on Cape Cod, because such a large percentage of people come here for vacation purposes and they have to camp, picnic, walk and mingle with the sweet-scented Cape woods to get full value of the delights wrapped up in a vacation exper- ience. Human beings are careless and carelessness causes many fires. Annually Cape Cod had been swept over by woodland fires which have caused great damage. Nature heals its own scars to a wonderful de- gree, but forest fires not only cause great property damage to the in- dividual owners of the tracts burned over, but the burnt lots detract much from the handsome appearance of the Cape as a whole.
In 1913 a wooden observatory was erected at Barnstable as the first effort on the part of the State to check Cape Cod woods fires. The fol- lowing year there was the observatory on Shoot Flying Hill in Barn- stable, one in the cupola of the largest building on the Cape at Harwich, and one at the top of a forty-foot steel tower at Bourne. These three observatories are supposed to cover the forests in an area seventy-five miles long and varying in width from two to three miles, for that is the Cape Cod area between Buzzards Bay and Race Point, Province- town. Pine and oak are the principal trees and with pine needles and oak leaves and the underbrush they afford good fuel for the flames. However heavy the rains, the light soil of the Cape enables the water to sink into the ground readily, and so the woods are dry most of the time in the spring and summer months when other localities may have more natural protection from standing water.
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There are those who will tell you that a burning cigarette cannot start a blaze and that a burning cigar butt seldom does, but don't tell it to a fire warden, because the enthusiasm and deep-seated conviction, born of experience, with which he replies will force you to agree with him that what you said was a joke.
Picnic parties and campers, fishing parties and mayflower and huckle- berry seekers have all contributed to the toll of mischief, but sparks from the railroad locomotives have probably caused more fires than all the others mentioned put together. Some years ago an experiment was tried of having the locomotives over the Cape Cod railroad burn oil in- stead of coal, but the experiment was not considered a success, and smokestacks continue to emit sparks as they travel up the slopes and around the curves. It is possible and probable that a locomotive travel- ing a score of miles has set a score of fires in some dry seasons, and State and town fire officials have done the best they could, assisted by volunteer helpers, to prevent the threatening damage. Many such fires burn until they reach broad highways which they cannot cross.
When a train passes over the railroad three pairs of eyes follow it anxiously with field glasses and when smoke is seen in the wake of the train the telephone is used to notify the fire warden or a deputy warden, as there is a warden in every town and a deputy in nearly every vil- lage. These watchmen and the alert wardens, deputies and volunteers have checked hundreds of fires every year, and their work being largely preventive, it is impossible to give any adequate figures to describe the property loss which has been prevented.
The railroad officials have cooperated in fire prevention by having fire patrols and by keeping the bushes, leaves and grass cut along the tracks.
The experiment referred to has the cooperation of the United States Forest Service, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation, the Massachusetts Forestry Association and the selectmen, forest ward- ens and residents of each of the towns in the experimental area. Hardly a year passes without a fire on Cape Cod, averaging $10,000 in losses, with an annual devastation of more than 8,500 acres of wood- land. There have been cases where fires have been deliberately started by those who wished to have an area burned over on which blueberries would grow another year.
The Federal and State governments appropriated $2,000 each and the six towns from $200 to $500 each. The Massachusetts Forestry As- sociation matched each appropriation, making $8,400 in the fund for a three years' experiment. Forest wardens and other officials are also supplied by the cooperating organizations and public educational work is being carried on.
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Two special fire wardens have specially built automobiles, a com- bination of coupé and fire truck, for putting out small roadside fires, and the automobile enables them to police their area to a certain de- gree and give advice and warnings to strangers passing their way. They have authority to arrest, without a warrant, anyone they find starting a fire without a permit.
Lectures are delivered, pamphlets given away, abandoned roads made passable for fire apparatus. The latter precaution proved valu- able in April, 1927, when a fire started on the shore of Snake Pond in Sandwich, in a heavily wooded section, with a strong wind blowing. An area of 2,000 acres would probably have been burned over if the abandoned woods roads had not previously been cleared of brush. The Sandwich Fire Department was able to drive within two hundred feet of the head of the fire and stop it before six acres had been burned over.
By virtue of the prevention work there was much less fire loss in the six towns in 1927 than in previous years. The largest fire, which burned over 2,700 acres in Falmouth, was of incendiary origin.
It has cost the railroad company considerable money to adjust some of the claims made for destruction of forest fires, started by sparks emitted from the locomotives, but not all the amounts claimed have been paid. James H. French, when superintendent of the Old Colony Railroad's Cape Cod Division, told of the following claim :
"One extensive fire covered many acres and burned grass and wood- land and cord wood. . . . There appeared a claim from one man for $12,000 damage. We could not see how a place that had just been bought for $2,500 could have so quickly advanced in value until the owner explained that the fire had burned all the nitrogen out of the earth. The incredulity of the railroad employee was well expressed by the remark, 'Yes, and I suppose all the oxygen was burned out of the · atmosphere, too.' "
An attempt at reforestation was made by a farmer in one of the Cape towns beside the railroad some years ago and he had some young white pines growing, when a spark from a locomotive started a blaze in those little trees which was disastrous. White pines won't grow on the Cape anyhow, unless Wareham is included in Cape territory, but fire puts an end to them anywhere. The farmer made his claim and the ad- juster made a satisfactory settlement.
The following year the farmer set out some more white pines on the same lot and again sparks from the locomotive and an adjustment by the railroad representative were included in repeated history. The ad- juster was taking his departure when the farmer remarked casually: "Do you think it is too late to set out white pines this year?"
"Say, what do you take us for, a permanent income?" demanded the
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adjuster. "For heaven's sake don't set out any more white pines until we have a chance to recover from the shock."
Exit Billboards and Sandy Roads-There is a growing sentiment throughout Massachusetts to remove unsightly billboards. The reason so many boards still remain is that some of those in the billboard busi- ness have taken pains to make their boards less unsightly and, as a mat- ter of fact, almost attractive, when they are new or kept in good re- pair, well painted and showing good treatment. Some of them tell the motorist, some miles before they reach the next town on a journey, what the town is and something of its historical significance. There are well painted scenes and an appearance of neatness which makes them tolerable to many and so the sentiment has not reached the point where billboards of all kinds are taboo. There is, however, one sec- tion of Cape Cod where the landscape is unvexed by the glaring type and brilliantly colored pictures, and there are predictions by prophets that "The Pilgrim Highway" will be a scenic highway, glorified by na- ture's painting and not horrified by the spirit of commercialism which is too much with us.
Cape Cod's sandy roads in days gone by were not inviting to the travelers by horse and buggy, unless they knew the delights of the Cape were well worth the struggle. One visitor of that conviction was Daniel Webster who frequently sought the trout streams and the fish- ing ponds on Cape Cod, making the trips by means of his chaise, drawn by a faithful equine, to which the "expounder of the constitution" fre- quently rehearsed his eloquent speeches. In fact it was on the return trip from Cape Cod that Daniel Webster and Mrs. Webster, in the family chaise, with Fletcher Webster riding on a pony, turned aside and first saw the Thomas farm in Marshfield, which later became their home.
Oyster shells, crushed, and mixed with Cape Cod sand, composed road material which made the Cape Cod roads inviting, instead of re- pelling, at the end of the nineteenth century. It was from hard roads such as those that the country folk turned aside, to travel on the sand, "to save horse-shoeing," but with the coming of the automobile traffic, the shell roads were a delight. Cape Cod had something in road build- ing, distinctive and enjoyable. Even oyster shells were not impervious to the traffic which motoring occasioned and the concrete or cement roads of today are "standard equipment" on Cape Cod and constitute one of its best investments.
Several years ago the Research Club of Provincetown was a leader in placing suitable markers on historic sites in that delightful town, which is in a class by itself. Bronze tablets have supplanted the wooden
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markers, to a large extent, and the work began in Provincetown has extended to many parts of the Cape. This is an historic land, and, while its present-day delights are sufficient to fill every visitor with an unconquerable desire to come again and repeat the vacation experiences, the historic lore and lure are not to be despised. "The past, at least, is secure," and furthermore it is interesting. No one should consider himself educated or dealing justly with his mental equipment until he had mastered some of the treasure trove of Cape Cod sagas and cer- tainties.
It did not require the offer of $7,500 in prizes for the most artistic roadside stand, made by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in May, 1927, to get these outdoor markets started in front of many Cape Cod farms. Cape Cod may have witnessed the birth of the roadside stand, at least Cape Codders had the inspiration and placed them on the road before they heard of them elsewhere. Today they furnish an outlet for thou- sands of dollars' worth of fruits, flowers, vegetables, honey, poultry, berries, windmills, ships' models and every other conceivable thing in the name of souvenir and novelty all through the marketing season. The distinctive Cape product, sea food, is exposed for sale all along every arterial highway from the Buzzards Bay bridge to where the wreck of the rum runner lies grinding itself to pieces against the Cape Cod sand at the tip end of Provincetown. Lobsters, oysters and clams, the spoils of the sea, even the descendants of the multitude of fishes which inspired Bartholomew Gosnold to give us the name Cape Cod, are exchanged for the coin of the realm representing industry of every kind from every State, every day, after the blustering March gales have newly coated the sand dunes and, rushing through the leafless branches of the scrub oaks, harkening to the admonishing whisperings of the pitch pines, have performed their task of cleaning for the summer folk.
Eating clams, like olives, is an acquired taste, unless one was "to the manor born." It may have been, as Thackeray is reputed once to have said to a friend at dinner, as they contemplated the first course, "it must have been a very brave man who first ventured to swallow one of these," but the satisfied men who have since laid down their oyster forks have been legion. Some rude imitator of Lord Byron is said to have written on a bill of fare, as he waited to be served :
With the succulent oyster I would revel and royster, But as for a clam, Sir, I don't give a d-n, Sir.
One needs, however, to become initiated into the peculiar flavor of a quahaug chowder, or take the third degree by mastering a quahaug pie, as constructed and served on its native heath, before he can feel
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the inner satisfaction of being a true Cape Codder. Then there is the razor fish and scallops, which are salt water delicacies, the mollusk dain- ties salvaged from the tidal waters, sought and found by traveling on the Cape Cod roads.
In 1911 a bill was passed by the Legislature permitting the Cape Cod towns to set aside grants for the propagation of quahaugs and clams, as well as oysters. Oyster grants had been commonly set aside under certain conditions for many years and oyster raising had become quite an industry. There are many miles of flats uncovered when the tide goes out and these flats have been naturally seeded with oysters, clams, razor fish, scallops and quahaugs. The inhabitants have secured valu- able food from the flats in this way from the time of the coming of the Pilgrims. Since the law of 1911, with permission of the selectmen of the several towns, inhabitants making application may receive grants of flats not exceeding five acres in area, upon which they may have the exclusive privilege of planting and digging clams and quahaugs.
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