USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 16
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The critical essayist Blair observes : "The marvellous, it must be admitted, has always a great charm for the bulk of readers. " There is, it must be confessed, a subtle, unex- plained, inherent clinging of old superstitions and strange fancies around our hearts. There are times when we not only allow such visitants unannounced, but bid them a glad wel- come - invite them into our best room and easy-chair, and gird ourselves to serve them. If we do not believe in these wayside ministrations we love to cherish them. It is a wayward love, wandering in high-fenced gardens, or far-away nooks. Sometimes -
Over the water I pass without ferry, Over the water I pass without wherry.
About the time of which we write, a wave of the marvel- lous swept over New England. Cotton Mather, in his Magnolia, tells a story of a ship that sailed out of New Haven Bay with a large number of returning pilgrims on board, and was never again heard of, although the form of it (the ship) was seen for many years afterwards hovering about the coasts, particularly in stormy weather. The novel writers of the day built their most popular sensations on this fascinating senti- ment. It was a day of signs and wonders, of dreams and visions. Perhaps the majority of the people believed directly or indirectly in ghosts and spirits seen and unseen. Fifty or sixty years ago the memory of these stirring themes was fresh in the minds of the old people, and they were delighted to talk them over.
The high-piled wood blazing in the huge, deep fireplaces, were favorable to winter evening tales. The preparatory process of the Elizabethan literature, dazzling the civilized world with its genius, was the early minstrelsy : tales told by the fireside in the long winter evenings, and songs sung as Shakespeare speaks of, by women as they sat spinning and knitting in the sun.
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While the merry fireblocks kindle, While the gudewife twirls her spindle, Hark the song which nigh the embers, Singeth yonder withered crone.
It was the custom in Truro, and to a considerable extent still prevails, for the neighbors to drop into each other's houses without ceremony. Every neighborhood was sure to have some favorite resort where a room full would be found most every winter evening. Here would be reiterated for
SPINNING AND KNITTING IN THE SUN.
the hundredth time possibly, but always to some new wonder- eyed and open-eared boy, the old stories. Some families enjoyed the reputation of accepting all stories at sight. When a boy I heard a young man tell an evening's experience which is still fresh in my memory. He is now " well on " to three- score and ten, a most respectable citizen of Truro, measuring out the sands of life in peace and comfort. He may recog- nize in this recital his experience of sixty years ago. He had a great relish for stories, and his grandfather's was a wonder- ful place for story-telling. Many an evening found him stowed away in the chimney corner, a mighty listener. One night in his favorite place, the stories turned on ghosts, and were unusually exciting. Although he knew he had to go home alone, yet he felt chained in the chimney corner,
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HOW THEY WORSHIPED.
afraid to go, and afraid to stay. At last he mustered courage to start. The distance was not far, but it was a dark, misty, scarish night, when common objects wear fantastic shapes, and the air is full of half-shadowy forms, without the dim- twinkling stars.
A heterogeneous crew, There were imps of every shape and hue, And some looked black and some looked blue,- They twisted themselves about.
When half-way home, where the road was narrow, with a steep bank on the right and a high fence on the left, he saw a coffin lying directly across the road. As he could not readily climb the bank or fence, he followed his first impulse, to jump with might and main. A ten-year-old Cape Cod boy can jump like a grasshopper, but instead of clearing the coffin as intended, when well-poised, his foot was grasped by a strong grip, and he dragged into the coffin, where he lay scared to death. After laying still a few seconds that seemed an age, he ventured to use his lungs and heels, when presto ! the coffin became a two-bushel corn basket, that acci- dentally had rolled from a neighbor's cart, and which his excited imagination had conjured to a real coffin. The strong hand that grabbed his foot was the basket handle, which he did not clear in his leap for life. Had it not been for the obtrusive handle, this boy would have taken oath that he jumped a coffin lying across the road.
It is related of "Old Chapman," the British Captain who lived at East Harbor, and would sometimes get high, that one night returning home with some hale, mettlesome fellows, as they approached the meeting-house, Chapman ran ahead, but in the darkness was not missed. He stationed himself at a point in the graveyard, where he knew his companions would pass, and when they came fully abreast, he roared with a voice that shook the hills, " Arise ye dead and come to judg- ment." Nobody arose, but tradition says there was some of the fastest running that night ever known in East Harbor Village.
CHAPTER XI.
GEOLOGICALLY AND OTHERWISE CONSIDERED.
Clams and Clamming. Scollops and Pilgrims. Ocean Flora. Fertility of the Ocean. Planet Sinking. Salt-water Lawns. English Hay. Ah Sin. Pond Acreage. French Alchemy. Rev. Mr. Ward and Professor Shaler. Geological Specu- lation. Physical Structure. Bart. Gosnold. Lost Territory. Points Care and Gilbert. Gosnold's Geography. Georges Bank. Nantucket Shoals. Matthias Rich. Captain Eldredge's Chart. Loss of the Byron. The Sparrow Hawk. Deacon Doane. Marvellous Changes. Amos Otis. Professor Agassiz. Map. New Eng- land Storms. Amputation. Driving Stakes. Science. Song of the Carbons. High Head. Hitchcock. Pretty Landscape. Coombs. Merrivale. English Weather. Clay Pounds. Highland Light. Diluvial Elevations. Mountain Waves. Lagoons. The Question settled. Corn hills. Tashmuit. A Deserted Village. English Cannon Balls. East Harbor. Old Lewis Cameron. A lonely Grave. Good Farms. Bank Dividends. Land Empirics. Barnstable Coat of Arms. What Ireland Deserves. Kendall. A Green Old Age. Solid Knowledge.
A S happy as a clam, " is an old proverb ; we have no good reason to regard the saying a slander on the molluscan. There is nothing in the world festive about the clam; on the contrary, he is a sober, plain, every-day home-body. As Charles Lamb said of the snail, "knock when you will, he's sure to be at home. " Judging by his habits, we should say he was quite content with his lot, and indulges in no ambitious day dreams. If he does but little, he has but little to do, and should not be charged with shirking. The clam has been a great friend in many trying times. The Pilgrims and Puri- tans particularly, were under lasting obligations to them, for honoring all drafts upon their bank at sight. He is a valua- ble acquisition to our tide-washed territory, and makes the unsightly margins of shore and creek more valuable than the rich alluvial lands of the Miami, that shake like Lebanon with
188
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
an annual crop of corn. . Somebody that pretends to know, says : " The most productive land in the State is the clam-flats. They cost nothing for fencing or top-dressing ; they are self- planting and self-supporting, and the more the soil is turned, the faster the crop matures, and the greater its abundance." \ It is not true that the more the soil is turned the faster the crop matures, nor is it true that where the Cape farmers plant potatoes they will dig clams in autumn. Captain John Smith wrote in 1616, "You shall scarce find any bay, or shallow shore, or cove of sand, where you may not take many clampes or lobsters, or both at your pleasure. " Could Smith "go a-clamming " on some of the old places he mentions, he would make exceptions. Many of the shores and coves have been over-cultivated, and require a long rest to become again a fruitful soil. A genuine Cape Coder is never in love with lakes and rivers that have no tide and no clams.
These soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria) are the most valuable of all the conchiferous family, the oyster excepted. They are now scarce in Truro, and becoming so in all the Cape towns. Cape Cod clams, Cape Cod cranberries, and Cape Cod eggs always command the highest market price. Clams were once a considerable winter industry ; one hundred dollars or more were not unfrequently earned during the winter months, dig- ging them for salt bait. Their consumption for food has rapidly increased with railroads ; they are extensively shipped, besides being canned for export. The large or giant sea-clam ( Mactra Solidissima ), sometimes called the sea hen, grows in the soft sand near the coast, and is caught by raking ; at ex- treme low ebbs are often found on the bars ; within a few years have been used as bait by the winter bank fishermen, which has created a large demand, and employed hundreds of men. Mesodesma arctaca is a very small clam of the giant species which is washed ashore along the Cape. The quahaug (Indian ) is a round, thick-shelled clam, tight as an oyster; will live a long time out of water. The mussel ( Mytilus edulis ), abundant around the marshes, and washed up in large clusters from the ocean, is not caten on the Cape : in France and many other countries are largely culti-
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TRURO- CAPE COD.
vated for food. Poles are planted, on which the mussels come like chickens to roost. The scollop shell (Pectren concentricus ) often used for pincushions, which is plentiful, was the pil- grim's crest - his badge of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They are abundant on the shores of Palestine. We conclude our list with the cockles: the Natica heros is the most prominent, but are found in considerable variety.
In 1840 Gould discovered of mollusca one hundred and ninety-seven species in Massachusetts, showing how much more prolific with life is water than land. Among his list many belong exclusively to the North Shore; others to the South. Among the crustacea are the lobster, crabs, and horseshoe, or horse-foot, sometimes called the king crab (Limulus Poly- phæmus), the tails of which the Indians used for arrow-heads. A paper in a late number of the Popular Science Review, made upon a report of Prof. Farlow, of the United States Fish Commission, makes Cape Cod a dividing line between the Arc- tic and Adriatic flow. Upon this theory the Gulf Stream, that wonderful factor in physical geography, loses its force at Cape Cod, and strikes toward the European coast. Above this line marine vegetation is of an arctic flora, distinct in many features from that of the Long Island. The difference between the flora of Massachusetts Bay and Buzzard's Bay is greater than between Massachusetts Bay and the Bay of Fundy, or Nantucket and Norfolk.
The United States Fish Commission is now in its infancy, and deserves especially the fostering hand of Government. Prof. Baird is accomplishing an important work in the in- terests of science. We hope he will push his discoveries and investigations not only in this inviting field, but by giving practical encouragement to our fisheries. If some branch could be developed in more southern waters for winter, it would be a great benefit. We are glad to know that the professor has the cooperation of the fishermen, which must result in great good.
Quite valuable portions of the Cape are the extensive salt marshes which are always flooded twice a day at high course tides, and when fairly green, are as handsome as the most
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
fertilized meadows or well-kept lawns. When favorably situ- ated, they spread over the sandy flats with surprising rapidity. First appears a tall coarse sedge; this in a few years becomes thick and rank. When mown and carted on the uplands, after a few good showers and October suns, it becomes Vexcellent hay. The cattle eat it with great relish without salt, leaving scarcely one of the coarse quills. Cape Cod cattle need no salting. The air and food furnishes all the condiment required. In Nauset, from 1800 to 1840, it was estimated that flats had grown to meadow capable of cutting three hundred tons of hay. In process of time as the marsh gathers, it becomes higher and firmer, and the sedge shorter and finer, till perhaps ultimately short grass may come in. When deep ditches are dug for draining or channels, branches of trees, leaves and acorns, in good state of preservation, are often found ten feet or more below the surface. First the thick matted sod, a foot or more of solid fibre imperishable by sun or frost; then black mud or sand, and finally the old soil. These indications determine that in some not very dis- tant past, a continuous tidal wave has submerged the deeper valleys, or else that this part of our planet is sinking, which has let in the ocean. Without being able to prove such a theory, my judgment and observation incline to the latter horn of the dilemma. The boundaries of the marshes are made by the creeks; when the creeks change their course, the owners are left without a title. Forty years since very little English hay was cut in Truro. Within fifty years extensive diking has shut out the ocean; swamps and low places have been filled, so that now more than half the hay cut is fresh.
According to the lamented Anson Burlingame, our late Envoy Extraordinary to the Flowery Kingdom, an acre of water, well situated, is more valuable in China than an acre of rich land. We have yet much to learn from Ah Sin. By the report of the Fish Commissioner, there are in the State of Massachusetts 196,342 acres of lakes and ponds well adapted to fish culture. Barnstable County has a domain of 37,892 acres, as follows : - Provincetown, 320; Truro, 1265 ; Well-
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TRURO-CAPE COD.
fleet 4868 ; Eastham, 880; Orleans, 2748; Brewster, 1400; Dennis, 979; Yarmouth, 3100; Chatham, 5960; Harwich, 1974; Barnstable, 8140; Falmouth, 4838; Sandwich, 1600. Barnstable County has one fifth of the fresh water acreage of the whole State. Her salt water acreage not yet reported. It should be remembered in this showing that an acre of fresh water is even more valuable surrounded with the clean scant soil or sillicate of Cape Cod, than if rich as the banks of the Nile. France has 493,750 acres of lakes and ponds, from which she receives an annual rental of ten million of francs - two millions of dollars. The revenue from the Cape acre- age, at the same ratio, would be eighty thousand dollars per annum.
Before referring to the geology of the Cape, of which we know so little, we introduce the correspondence of Rev. Mr. Ward and Prof. Shaler, who seem to be in the same boat with ourselves as to a satisfactory theory :
CAPE COD FOSSILS.
Prof. Shaler, Harvard College : -
DEAR SIR: I send you by express a small piece of quartz rock found in a Harwich field the other day by one of our townsmen. It attracted his attention as it lay on the ground, as something peculiar and strange; and he picked it up and brought it into Dr. Munsell's office, for examination.
All who have seen it at once pronounce it a petrifaction of some animal's head. As our sandy Cape does not produce such things, we have had many conjectures in regard to its origin, where it came from, how it got here, and what it might betoken. We are told by scientists that away back in primordial times, when the icebergs were the only ships that sailed the ocean, they brought us down from the regions of eternal frosts the heavy boulders that are strewn over the Cape, as ballast for our shifting sands; and this suggests to us that some Arctic fellow may have slipped in this specimen I send you as a hint of the existence of something more than icebergs in that unknown country the Great Bear watches over and guards so jealously against all approach. Perhaps the solution of the vexed Polar Question, that has so long baffled our exploring expeditions, may be wrapped up in this little piece of quartz rock. At any rate it is not our intention to trifle with your feelings, and we most sincerely trust that we do not give you a geological stone when you are hungry and asking for geological bread.
Anxiously awaiting a reply, I remain,
Yours respectfully, B. C. WARD, Pastor Cong. Church.
1875.
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., October, 1875.
DEAR SIR: I am very much obliged to you for the chance to see the quartz pebble which, with your favor, is just at hand. I am sorry to say that the speci- men, despite its curious form, is only a quartz pebble. Not that I mean to speak disrespectfully of quartz pebbles; this I should regard as great a breach of decency as did Sidney's Smith's friend the "speaking disrespectfully of the equator."
The pebble was probably formed as part of a dyke or vein, and took its shape from the adjacent walls where it was deposited ; the softer matter which imbed- ded it has since broken away, leaving the mass in the grip of the glacier.
I spent some time last Spring looking over your Cape gravels, and trying to read the riddle which is written there. Your Cape is a great interrogation point, but its questions are hard to answer.
Thanking you again for your consideration, believe me
Very respectfully yours, N. S. SHALER.
REV. B. C. WARD, Harwich.
The topography of the Cape and the well-known coast changes constantly going on, opens a broad field for geologi- cal speculation. What we shall say is generally accepted theory and our own observations, making no pretensions to scientific knowledge.
There seems reasonable ground for the opinion that the shoals and bars lying between Nantucket and Cape Cod were once terra firma, and the uniting territory of these now sepa- rate counties. This admitted, and we are forced to the con- clusion that Great South Shoal, the terror of mariners, and other shoals interjacent, including Georges Bank, all carefully described hereafter, were either connected or groups of islands. All the territory referred to is physically of the same structure.
When Bart. Gosnold made his first observations of Cape Cod in 1602, so accurately described by Archer, after doubling Cape Cod, by proceeding twelve leagues from the harbor, he discovered a point "a good distance off," with breakers near it. These he called Tucker's Terror, and the point, Point Carc. . He " kept his luff," doubled Point Care, and "bore up again " with the land, where he anchored. He saw many shoals near, and "another point that lay in his course " six nautical miles south of Point Care. This he named for his mate, Point Gilbert. The next day he sailed
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round Point Gilbert, and found an open sea, where he anchored a league beyond, in Lat. 41º 40'. Evidently there was then no point or shoal where now is Monomoy Point, or such a careful observer as Archer would have recorded it. He continued on to the Vineyard Islands, where he began an " abode."
Point Care was the same north headland named " Ile Nawset," by Captain John Smith, in 1614. The old people of Eastham and Orleans, within the memory of men living in this generation, knew about the island, and of a rocky place about the middle of the isle called Slut's Bush. From the best-connected facts, the north side of Isle Nauset was in Eastham, near the Three Lights. Vessels now pass over Slut's Bush. On a calm day stumps and rocks may be seen at the bottom, and the fishermen not unfrequently get their nets and anchors entangled. During severe gales the stumps are sometimes washed ashore. As Slut's Bush was midway of the isle, Point Care must have extended several miles into the ocean.
Point Gilbert is better defined. When the English settled on the Cape, Webb's Island lay nine miles east by south from Chatham, containing about twenty acres covered with savin. The Nantucketers used to cut wood there.
This island has been washed away more than a century, but a large rock known to have been on the island has been sounded in six fathoms, and is now known as Crabb Ledge.
We will now for a moment study Gosnold's Geography. His ship lay anchored in a bay near the shore between East- ham and Chatham, as seen on the map, formed by land on the north, which he called Point Care, and on the south, Point Gilbert. The Captain does not state the length of these points, but he says the distance between them was six nauti- cal miles, which is a nautical form of description from head- land to headland; always being understood that the headlands are nearly of corresponding proportions : as the old English and American Treaty on the Fisheries, used to read, " from headland to headlond." We have shown that Webb's Island, which was evidently Point Gilbert, was nine miles east. We
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
have now the extent of this Bay and of the two points east of Cape Cod in 1602, where now a straight line of seacoast runs from Chatham to the Highlands of Truro.
Isle Nauset, embracing Point Care and Slut's Bush, and Point Gilbert and Webb's Island, have been removed to make Monomoy Point, now extending ten miles south of Chatham and the contiguous shoals and rips, where was an open sea when Gosnold anchored in 1602.
In the light of these facts our theory finds strong support, if not positive proof. Ships have sailed for a hundred years, where stood terra firma in 1602, nine miles from the present coast line. The distance from Chatham to southwest Georges is about sixty miles. One sixth nearly of this distance is here accounted for, which well sustains the opinion, that at no very distant day Georges Bank was connected with groups of islands, if not mainland, extending to Nantucket and the Cape. Old Skipper Joseph Wharf, the father of the late Joseph, used to say that he had played ball on Georges, and men were living fifty years ago, who said they had seen long strings of gulls sitting on the dry sandbars.
It used to be quoted as history that an Amsterdam Com- pany once proposed purchasing the right to build there a port. As my authorities are all long since dead, I make the record for what it is worth.
Matthias Rich of Boston, in connection with his experience of the October gale of 1841, which will appear in another place, has furnished me with a paper on this topic, from which I make what seem to me practical observations, and from which it will appear that shoals extend all the way from Georges Bank to Nantucket.
" The Great and Little Round Shoals lie southeast of Chatham in sight of land ; vessels going to the Vineyard by the South Ship Channel pass between them. The old South Shoal lies twelve miles south-southeast from Sancoty Head - the bottom hard fine sand ; a pole will rebound as from a rub- ber floor. The New South Shoal lies twenty-two miles south- southeast from the east end of Nantucket ; is soft sand. A lightship is now stationed here. This is a dangerous shoal,
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TRURO - CAPE COD.
out of sight of land. Captain Eldredge has lately published a new chart of Nantucket Shoals, the best extant.
He has discovered and surveyed a shoal about ten miles northeast of New South Shoal, on which is thirteen feet of water, called " Eldredge Shoal."
Captain Rogers has discovered another shoal, say five miles east of the Eldredge, with seventeen feet of water, which has been called " Rogers' Shòal."
In easterly gales the sea breaks fearfully on both these shoals, and the swift-running tide, always to the leeward, throws seamen out of their reckoning. Captain Eldredge and others who have studied the situation, now think the fishing fleet in the October gale of '41 were lost on these new shoals, as a careful examination of the chart shows that had they weathered these, they surely would have cleared the New South Shoal.
As partially corroborating this statement, I will here give my own experience. In the summer of 1845, while fishing in the South Channel in the schooner Waldemar, a southeast gale came on suddenly. We first lay to under double-reefed foresail, which we were soon obliged to take in, and lay nearly two hours under bare poles with lee rail under water. During this time we passed through what we called a tide rip. The waves seemed to leap on board from every quarter, threatening to swallow us up.
Soon after passing through this rip the gale moderated, when we were surprised to find sand in large quantities wherever it could lodge when the sea was washing over our vessel. The mortises high up aft were full of sand, and con- siderably washed into the furled sails.
"When the gale came on a vessel was near, which we expected to see, and looked for when it was over, but no ves- sel was in sight. The next day in working back we discov- ered considerable stuff belonging to some fisherman, and as the Byron of Gloucester was lost in that gale, I have no doubt she was the one near us, and was lost on the shoal which we passed over. I knew we were a long distance east of the South Shoal. It is my present conviction that these are the
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