USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 20
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 20
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 20
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The State fish and game commission encourages a system of shell fish culture to develop the latent wealth of the tidal waters, and such sub-marine farms are a source worthy to be included in the material wealth of the Cape. When the tide goes out the water goes down from ten to fifteen feet, according to location on the Cape, and these farms are brought to view and in condition for planting and harvesting, where the irrigation is done by Nature and the duration of time that one can work can easily be determined before hand.
Small seed clams can be procured from other localities and planted on the grants and much of this seeding has been done in Wellfleet and other towns.
One of the pioneers in marine farming is Marcus H. Howes of Barn- stable and it was largely through his influence that the bill of 1911 was passed, and he was one of the first to have a grant set apart for his experimentation and development. He took a plat where clams had never been found within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. In a year and a half he was harvesting clams and still continues to find a yield. This proved his contention that the quality of the soil had to be reckoned with and, if the right conditions were found and young clams planted, they would grow and become profitable to the owner. In order to make the right conditions, Mr. Howes spread six inches of marsh material over the barren flats, taking the material in scows at high tide and dumping it into the water, to settle where he wanted it. At low tide he saw that it was spread evenly. Then the clam spawn is set upon the ground and there is a time of waiting, which Mr. Howes found was about eighteen months before his first crop was ready for
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harvesting. Upon three acres of flats Mr. Howes harvested from two to three thousand barrels of clams annually.
Many thousands of barrels of clams are shipped from Barnstable each year and nearly all Cape Cod towns supply the market more or less, with this food which supplies its own salt.
Seeing Cape Cod While Standing on It-Of course one can see Cape Cod from the windows of a motor car moving over the smooth black roads for which the Cape has been justly famous since it was previously justly famous for its oyster shell roads, decidedly Cape Coddish. He can see Cape Cod from his vehicle, traveling from forty to sixty miles an hour, and derive much pleasure from it and catch the scent of the wild beech plums, pines and bay berries, mingled with the tang of the sea. He can see Cape Cod in that way much as the Englishman can come to the United States for two or three weeks and go back and write a book upon the bally Americans, doncher know. It has been done and will be done again. But no one has really seen Cape Cod so that he knows it unless he has left his motor car behind and traveled on foot over the undulating sand dunes, into which one's feet slip and sink, until he becomes breathless with the experience, whether he has traveled up hill or down dale.
No one has seen Cape Cod until he knows the scrub oak and cob pines from Falmouth forests to Chatham hills, and over the province lands visited by the Pilgrim explorers before ever Plymouth was or any washing was done on Clark's Island.
In seeing Cape Cod no one can afford to miss inspecting the old pic- turesque doorways of the early Cape Cod houses. To ride past and get a fleeting glance is not sufficient. They will bear close inspection and the closer the inspection the more beauty they will be found to pos- sess.
Many people think they have seen Cape Cod but few have labored so hard to see it as did Thoreau, in 1849. When others were seeking gold in California, the sage of Waldron Pond made a trip by stagecoach from Boston to Provincetown in search of natural treasures such as are found on the "bared and bended arm of Massachusetts; the shoulder at Buzzards Bay; the elbow, or crazy bone, at Cape Mallebarre (Chat- ham) ; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown, boxing with the northwest winds." Surely if General James Wolfe would rather have written "Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" than to have been the conqueror of Quebec, there are those who would rather have written that description of Cape Cod, which has been quoted ever since, than to have amassed a quantity of gold dust.
Thoreau found "the most modern and picturesque structures on the Cape to an inlander, not excepting the salt works, are the windmills,
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gray-looking octagonal towers with long timbers slanting to the ground in the rear, and those resting on a cart wheel by which their fans are turned around to the wind-sailors making land commonly steer by them, or by the meeting-houses. In the country we are obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone."
One can still see these windmills, the same ones which met the gaze of the Concord philosopher when he really made an effort to see Cape Cod before writing a book about it. As a consequence, he had to write two volumes and then didn't begin to tell the whole story.
Thoreau observed that "the whole coast is so free from rocks that we saw but one or two for twenty miles. .
"There I found it all out of door, large and real, Cape Cod, as it cannot be represented on the map, color it as you will. It was a very inspiring sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that is the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have the Atlantic Ocean to growl for the whole Cape."
The way to see Cape Cod is to do some walking, just as Thoreau walked. He stopped at "a lighthouse or a fisherman's hut, the true hotel." If one wants to see Cape Cod, standing on his own shoe leather, there are still the lighthouses and the fishermen's huts, and the same welcome and courtesy to be extended. Or one can keep in touch with his balloon tires and lunch at the wayside stands, where the "hot dog" beguiles and the clam fritter awaits to awaken a jaded appetite. There are hotels with all the comforts, conveniences and hospitality that can be desired or imagined, for it is, in these days, a real art to be a greeter and make one feel absolutely at home while away from home before he gets started for the next place. There is most assuredly a swift turn- over in hotel guests in these days of rampant motor cars on a field of ginger, but if there is any place where the tourists' perturbed spirit can be made to come to anchor long enough to see where he is and what it has to offer it is almost anywhere on Cape Cod.
Do you wish to live again "the good, old days" of simplicity, where you can "bide a wee" and let the rest of the world go by? Then steer for Cape Cod. It fills the prescription. Or do you want to walk into the last word of hostelry-life, with spacious halls, brilliant lights, a dining room delectable to the eye as well as the palate, porcelain baths with hot or cold fresh or salt water, an orchestra amidst the palms and a radio tuned in on all creation? Go to Cape Cod. It is the playground of America, where the sea gives its best, the woods contribute health and sylvan delights, the land is fragrant and a pleasant land, and the breezes blow directly from heaven, freighted with just the temperature and balsam the doctor ordered. Cape Cod has adapted itself to all
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classes who have the capacity for enjoyment and the appreciation for what makes life worth living, but it is an unspoiled island, and always will be, so long as endures that protection of that "sandy fist at Prov- incetown, boxing with the northwest storms."
Plym -- 53
CHAPTER XLI AS THOREAU, DWIGHT AND WEBSTER SAW IT
Sage of Walden Used Ancient Stagecoach and Shoe Leather and Saw and Thought and Walked-Dr. Dwight Much Impressed With Salt Works and Cape Cod Architecture-The Ancient Rocker and Other Chairs-Sandwich Glass Had "Substance as Well as Beauty"-Wind- mills and Elm Trees - Hon. Josiah Quincy's Pride in Descent From A Cape Cod Mother.
There have been many books written about Cape Cod, some of them quite out of date from the standpoint of many readers, but one written by Henry Thoreau will never lose its charm and beauty, any more than the Cape Cod of which he wrote. Thoreau did not whisk from Ware- ham over gleaming black roads in an effort to see how swiftly he could burn up the road and how soon he could reach Provincetown and think he had seen Cape Cod when he arrived at the "sandy fist." There is no intended criticism of those who make the trip in that way. It is one way, and a very modern and pleasant one, of getting pleasure on Cape Cod. But it was not Thoreau's way and it is no way for any person to really see Cape Cod. They must do as Thoreau did-walk, look and think.
When Thoreau took his Cape Cod trip the roads were sandy and the railroad stopped at Sandwich. From Sandwich to Orleans Thoreau traveled by stage, through Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis and Brewster. Concerning his conveyance, he wrote: the coach "was an exceedingly narrow one, but as there was a slight spherical excess over two on a seat, the driver waited till nine passengers had got in, without taking the measure of any of them, and then shut the door, after two or three ineffectual slams, as if the fault were all in the hinges or the latch- while we timed our inspirations and expirations so as to assist him." What ever became of the coach which carried Henry Thoreau from Sandwich to Orleans? It should be preserved, if still in existence, just as appropriately as the Lafayette coach which Henry Ford retains as a pensioner at the Wayside Inn.
Evidently Thoreau was glad, upon reaching Orleans, to walk. That means of locomotion at least had one redeeming quality, there was room enough to breathe when one traveled on his own power. He en- joyed his walk towards Eastham, as he wrote: "Every landscape which is dreary enough has a certain beauty to my eyes, and in this instance
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its permanent qualities were enhanced by the weather. Everything told of the sea, even when we did not see its waste or hear its roar. For birds there were gulls, and for carts in the fields, boats turned bottom upwards against the houses, and sometimes the rib of a whale was woven into the fence by the roadside. The trees were, if possible, rarer than the houses, excepting apple trees, of which there were a few small orchards in the hollows."
The route taken by Thoreau from Eastham was across to the Atlantic coast and northward. In the fields of Eastham and Wellfleet and on Nauset Plain it was all naked sand but it all had a compelling beauty to this man who thought as he saw as he walked. After walking through Truro, where the Pilgrims first trod, he crossed to the bay side of the Cape "to spend the noon on the shrubby sand-hill in (Prov- incetown, called Mount Ararat, which rises one hundred feet above the ocean."
Thoreau saw "naked Nature-inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man." He examined the kelp and whittled it with his jackknife 'that I might become more intimately acquainted with it, see how it cut, and if it were hollow all the way through. . ..... When we con- sider in what meadows it grew, and how it was raked, and if what kind of hay weather got in or out, we may well be curious about it." He came to the conclusion: "The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous place from which to contemplate the world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far- traveled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we too are the product of sea-slime. ... The stranger and the inhabitant view the shore with very different eyes. The former may have come to see and admire the ocean in a storm; but the latter looks on it as the scene where his nearest relatives were wrecked."
Thoreau got his greatest delight from viewing Cape Cod from the shore, not from the highway. He wrote :
Though the prospect was so extensive, and the country for the most part destitute of trees, a house was rarely visible-we never saw one from the beach -- and the solitude was that of the ocean and the desert combined. A thousand men could not have seriously interrupted it, but would have been lost in the vastness of the scenery as their footsteps in the sand .... All the aspects of the deserts are beautiful, whether you behold it in fair weather or foul, or when the sun is just breaking out after a storm, and shining on its moist surface in the distance, it is so white, and pure, and level, and each slight inequality and track is so distinctly revealed; and when your eyes slide off this, they fall on the ocean. In summer the mackerel gulls-which here have their nests among the neighboring sandhills-pursue the traveler anxiously, now and then diving close to his head with a squeak, and he may see them, like swallows, chase some crow which has been feeding on the beach, almost across the Cape ....
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The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, and most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings. No creature could move slowly where there was so much life around. The few wreckers were either going or coming, and the ships and the sandpipers, and the screaming gulls overhead; nothing stood still but the shore. The little beach birds trotted past close to the water's edge, or paused but an instant to swallow their food, keeping time with the elements. I wondered how they ever got used to the sea, that they ventured so near the waves.
Provincetown is unique, fascinating, beautiful, in a class by itself, at least at the head of the class. With all its artist colony, the strut of glad clothing, funny hats, gaudy colors and artificial affectations, for- eign to its nature but tolerated for a season, there is still enough of the original about it to call it "unspoiled." There is enough of quaintness about it to find a joy in the description given by Henry Thoreau, al- though it is more than three quarters of a century since he visited the Cape and wrote the description: "The front yard plots appeared like what indeed they were, portions of the beach fenced in, with beach grass growing in them, as if they were sometimes covered by the tide. You might still pick up shells and pebbles there. ..... A great many of the houses were surrounded by fish-flakes close up to the sills on all sides, with only a narrow passage two or three feet wide, to the front door; so that instead of looking out into a flower or grass plot, you looked onto so many square rods of cod turned wrong side outward. These parterres were said to be at least like a flower garden in a good drying day in mid-summer."
The visitor of the present day can easily agree with Thoreau in his estimate of the wondrous beauty in "the shrubby hill and swamp coun- try" which surrounds Provincetown on the north. . . . "It was like the richest rug imaginable, spread over an uneven surface; no damask nor velvet, nor Tyrian dye nor stuffs, nor the work of any loom, could ever match it. There was the incredible bright red of the huckleberry, and the reddish brown of the bayberry, mingled with the bright and living green of the small pitch-pines, and also the duller green of the may- berry, boxberry, and plum, the yellowish green of the shrub-oaks, and the various golden and yellow fawn-colored tints of the birch and maple and aspen-each making its own figure, and, in the midst, a few yel- low sand-slides on the sides of the hills looked like the white floor seen through rents in the rug."
Dragging for Anchors-It was not very long ago that dragging for anchors was given up, if indeed it has been wholly given up. There is something about the task which savors of adventure, a game of chance and skill all in one, and Cape Codders believe there are still anchors awaiting lucky finders.
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"It is a singular employment, at which men are regularly hired and paid for their industry, to hunt today in pleasant weather for anchors which have been lost-the sunken faith and hope of mariners, to which they trusted in vain .... If the road- steads of the spiritual ocean could be thus dragged, what rusty flukes of hope deceived and parted chain cables of faith might again be windlassed aboard; enough to sink the finder's craft, or stock new navies to the end of time .... But that is not treasure for us which another man has lost; rather it is for us to seek what no other man has found or can find-not be Chatham men dragging for anchors," said the sage of Concord.
During his trip on Cape Cod, Thoreau lodged with the keeper of the Highland Lighthouse and also accepted the bounty from the Wellfleet oysterman. His chapter concerning the latter is one of the master- pieces in the book and should not be overlooked. The oysterman, like many other Cape Cod people, "had lived too long to be hurried." With him Thoreau passed the night, with the casements and fireboards rat- tling in the wind and in the morning watched the preparations for the early meal. He wrote:
The old woman got the breakfast with dispatch, and without noise or bustle; and meanwhile the old man resumed his stories, standing before us, who were sitting, with his back to the chimney, and ejecting his tobacco juice right and left in the fire behind him, without regard to the various dishes, which were' there preparing. At breakfast we had eels, buttermilk cake, cold bread, green beans, doughnuts, and tea .... I ate of the apple sauce and the doughnuts, which I thought had sustained the least detriment from the old man's shots, but my companion refused the apple sauce, and ate of the hot cakes and green beans, which had appeared to him to occupy the safest part of the hearth. But on comparing notes afterwards, I told him that the buttermilk cake was particularly exposed, and I saw how it suffered repeatedly, and therefore I avoided it; but he declared that, however that might be, he witnessed that the apple sauce was seriously injured and had therefore declined that.
But Thoreau was never squeamish. He tells elsewhere of the water once given him, "not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle," and how he drank it, for his host's sake, "shutting his eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent."
How many, after reading Thoreau's reference to beach grass see in it something interesting and poetical, instead of a general nuisance. He said of it:
Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens, as it were, by a myriad little cables of beach-grass, and, if they should fail, would become a total wreck, and ere long go to the bottom. Formerly, the cows were permitted to go at large, and they ate many strands of the cable by which the Cape is moored, and wellnigh set it adrift, as the bull did the boat which was moored with a grass rope; but now they are not permitted to wander.
Thoreau has been quoted in this chapter at considerable length be- cause he, of all the writers concerning the Cape Cod of the Fifties, gives
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the best description. He refers to the salt works and the windmills. There are still a few windmills on the Cape but they are more for looks than use in these days and several of them bear the legend: "Oldest windmill on Cape Cod." There was a time, however, when the winds which blew not only carried the vessels from Cape Cod to all parts of the world, contributing greatly to the prosperity of Barnstable County, but turned the wheels and ground the corn and assisted in the process of reclaiming salt from sea water.
Salt, Houses and Furnishings Described-Concerning the salt indus- try, Dr. Dwight, who visited the Cape in 1800, says :
A Mr. Kelly, having professedly made several improvements in the means of accomplishing this business, obtained a patent, about two years before this journey was taken, for making salt-works on the plan generally adopted in this region. Of these the following is a description: Vats, of a number suited to the owner's design, 20 feet square, and 10 or 12 inches in depth, are formed of pine planks, an inch and a half thick, and so nicely joined as to be water-tight. These are arranged into four classes. The first class, or that next to the ocean, is called the water room; the second, the pickle room; the third, the lime room; and the fourth, the salt room. Each of these rooms, except the first, is placed so much lower than the preceding, that the water flows readily from it to another, in the order specified. The water room is filled from the ocean by a pump furnished with vans or sails, and turned by the wind. Here it continues until of the proper strength to be drawn into the pickle room, and thus successively into those which remain. The lime, with which the water of the ocean abounds, is deposited in the lime room. The salt is formed into small crystals in the salt room, very white and pure, and weighs from 70 to 75 pounds a bushel. The process is carried on through the warm season. After the salt has ceased to crystallize, the remaining water is suffered to freeze. In this manner, a large quantity of Glauber's salt is obtained in crystals, which are clean and good. The residuum is a strong brine, and yields a great proportion of marine salt, like that already described. To shelter the vats from the dews and rains, each is furnished with a hipped roof, large enough to cover it entirely. The roofs of two vats are connected by a beam turning upon an upright post, set firmly in the ground, and are moved easily on this pivot by a child of fourteen or even twelve years. To cover and uncover them, is all the ordinary labor.
Dr. Dwight traveled through the whole length of Cape Cod, and thus described what he said "may be called with propriety Cape Cod houses."
These have one story, and four rooms on the lower floor; and are covered on the sides, as well as the roofs, with pine shingles, eighteen inches in length. The chimney is in the middle, immediately behind the front door, and on each side of the door are two windows. The roof is straight; under it are two chambers; and there are two larger and two smaller windows in the gable end. This is the general structure and appearance of the great body of houses from Yarmouth to Race Point. There are, however, several varieties, but of too little importance to be described. A great proportion of them are in good repair. Generally they exhibit a tidy, neat aspect in themselves and in their appendages, and furnish proofs of comfortable living, by which I was at once disappointed and gratified. The barns are usually neat, but always small.
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It was small wonder that Dr. Dwight found the barns "always small," because Cape Cod has been a fishing and industrial county and its pop- ulation "ship conscious" rather than given, or driven, to agricultural pursuits on such sandy and unpromising land. In recent years, how- ever, agricultural efforts have brought forth good results. Both Amer- ican and Portuguese farmers have made the light soil bring forth profit- ably. Many of the hazards encountered elsewhere do not disturb the Cape Cod farmer. Hurricanes, storms, swollen rivers, severe droughts are almost unknown. Cranberry culture has made Cape Cod as fa- mous for that dark red product as ever Milwaukee was made famous by its amber brew. The strawberry industry annually produces ship- ments of half a million quarts, in addition to the large local. demand and sales made at the roadside stands at the stores and delivered to houses and hotels for summer visitors.
Before the days of the "Cape Cod Rocker," so called; or the "Comb Back" with its place to rest one's weary head, if he could do so without running the danger of having the chair slip out from under him if he leaned back too far; the first rocking chair was invented and con- structed in Kingston. It was, perhaps, the only rocking chair ever custom-made, as its intention and satisfactory service was in contribut- ing to the comfort to an invalid in the Brewster family. More about this famous chair is related in the chapter concerning the town of Kingston, in the part of this history devoted to Plymouth County.
The "kitchen chair" was a real institution in the old days and was trotted out for the comfort of occasional visitors. This chair was be- side the fireplace and the Dutch oven and the most popular chair in the house. The "Governor Bradford" chair and others appeared in their time. Just before the Revolution, the "Windsor" chair was added to the home equipment. The "Cape Cod Rocker" developed from the "Windsor," having a curved seat, with high back, high arms, spreading legs, considerably larger at the bottom than the top. Most of the chairs were black, with stenciled flowers. The seats were of pine and the rest of the chair usually of maple or birch. The older the chair, the shorter the rockers. They were a trifle tricky when one leaned for- ward, until the rockers were made to project sufficiently to add a meas- ure of safety.
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