USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 17
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
shoals lately discovered by Captains Eldredge and Rogers, and that they thereby have conferred a great benefit upon our coast marine."
STORY OF THE SPARROW-HAWK.
There has always been a tradition handed down, that old Ship Harbor received its name from the ship Sparrow-Hawk, cast away there in the early days of the Colony, and that she had long been buried by the sand somewhere in Orleans. The sixth of May, 1863, Solomon Linnell second, and Alfred Rogers of Orleans, discovered on Nauset beach an old wreck that had been uncovered within two days. When first discov- ered it was embedded in mud, over which had rested for many years a high sea beach that the encroachments of the ocean had removed. The rudder found a few feet distant, is now deposited in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth.
The timbers of oak were sound and clean, and with the keel and stern-post, were sent to the well-known ship-carpen- ters, Doliver & Sleeper, who revived or re-constructed the old ship, and wrote an interesting letter referring to her model, etc., which was published in a pamphlet, with a history of the Sparrow-Hawk, called "The ancient Wreck," giving an account of "one of the greatest curiosities of the age." Sub- stantially, this is the story : The Sparrow-Hawk sailed from England in the fall of 1626, was run ashore in the night, and beat over the bar into Polanumaquut Harbor in good condi- tion. This was the origin of old Ship Harbor, then in Orleans or Eastham. A subsequent storm drove her high up, where she was abandoned. Owing to other changes of tide and wind she sunk in the beach and was covered by the shifting sand. Another change brought still water, always favorable to the rapid formation of salt marsh, which spread its matted roots like thongs of steel over the sand, and the Sparrow-Hawk was entombed.
Old Deacon Doane and his sturdy sons and grandsons for generations, not to say hundreds of years, had struck their broad swathes and piled here their ample stacks of hay, all
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TRURO-CAPE COD.
unconscious of the ocean relic beneath their feet. In the meantime, old Ship Harbor moved to Chatham, drifting sands cover the Doane meadows, and a solid beach is formed, against which the broad ocean frets and scours for another hundred years. Inch by inch its restless jaws, crying like the horseleach's daughter, "Give! give !" steal away the high-piled sandbank till, after two hundred and thirty-seven years the Puritan ship, sticking fast in the same old marsh, is disentombed, becoming an object of historic interest.
If asked why the records of Bradford and Morton and Prince and the old mariner Gosnold have not been better interpreted, the answer is ready. If the configuration to-day agreed with 1626, nothing would be easier ; but they are as unlike our present coast and harbor lines as are the descrip- tions of Sinbad the Sailor, or Genghis Khan.
Well does Mr. Amos Otis say : " Where Monamoick Bay was, there is a straight line of seacoast ; where an open sea then was, now the beaches meet the eye; and where were navigable waters now we see sandy wastes and salt meadows."
Better than any written description, I here present a copy of the map published in 1865, by Mr. Otis in his Discovery of an ancient Ship, from which I mostly gather this history. The general configuration of the Cape is delineated, and the sup- posed boundaries of Isle Nauset and Point Gilbert outlined. Mr. Otis remarks that Professor Agassiz is the author of the geological theory which the accompanying map delineates, and quotes the Professor as saying to his statements after repeated visits and careful examination : " I found it as satis- factory as any geological evidence can be."
Hoping that new discoveries may be made and new history brought to light, I most respectfully encourage a careful study of these outlined eastern headlands of 1602, and all the facts herewith submitted referring to the extraordinary changes of the past, as known in the history of Cape Cod. Also that in every town, the physical changes constantly taking place should be noted with accuracy. Since 1865 a portion of Chatham has been washed away, necessitating the removal of the lighthouses and several dwellings.
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
PROVINCETOWN
TRURO
WELLFLE
EASTHAM
NAMSRAKETT
CREEK
ORLEANS
S TERROR
BREWSTER
ILE NAWSET
Pr. CARI
YARMOUTH
DENNIS
HARWICH
CHATHAM
2
3
QT.GILBERT
1
PART OF CAPE COD .- POINT CARF AND POINT GILBERT OF 1602.
I have seen another map, now in the hands of Mr. David Pulsifer, in the Secretary's office at the State House. It is not my fault that I am not able to place that valuable map in this history. It is called " The Sea of New England ; " was made by Captain Cyprian Southack in 1717, while in the dis- charge of his duties as a government agent, sent out to look after the pirate ship Whidah wrecked on the back side of
TUCKERS
5
1
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TRURO- CAPE COD.
Wellfleet, near the tableland of Nauset, in the memorable gale of April 26, 1717.
THE FIRST CAPE COD CANAL.
The map shows an open channel from the bay to the ocean, following nearly the present boundaries of Eastham and Orleans. On the channel, as made in this map, a whale boat is drawn, with this notice:
The place where I came through with a whale boat, being ordered by ye Gov- ernm't to look after ye Pirate Ship Whida, Bellame, Command'r, cast away ye 26th of April, 1717, where I buried one Hundred and Two Men Drowned.
It is generally accepted that this channel was made by that gale. How long it remained in a navigable condition is inti- mated by the following record referring to the same storm :
The sea forced a passage through, making the Cape and island, and a whale boat passed through the channel. It required a general turnout of the people, and great efforts to close it up.
As late as 1804 committees were appointed by Eastham and Orleans to report upon the practicability of uniting Town Cove and Boat River Meadow by a navigable canal. Appli- cation was made to the legislature for authority to raise funds through a lottery. A connection was made, but owing to too much or too little current, the channel could not be kept open.
There is also described a channel from Nauset Harbor in Orleans to Chatham, cutting off Monomoy Point, which is here called Webb's Island, the extreme southern end being Monomoy Point. In this last description the old captain evi- dently was tangled in his geography, as all authorities agree that Webb's Island was east of Chatham. The only towns mentioned on the map are Truro, Eastham, Yarmouth, Barn- stable and Sandwich.
During the long, terrible northeast storms that not unfre- quently visit our coast, surprising, and almost incredible
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
changes take place, suggestive of the results of thousands of years. A North Truro correspondent of the Provincetown Advocate, writing from the Highland, says: "There was an upper beach between the bank and highwater of some eight or ten rods, upon which the tide never came. This was a pleasant resort, to see the sea roll in ; and, in storms, to wit- ness its fury to the best advantage. The whole of this upper beach has been cut down nearly twenty feet during the late storms."
Surprising changes are constantly going on in the physical world. Witness the coral islands of the Pacific, and the sand islands of the Arabian Sea. I believe the changes referred to are of quite modern date, but will not venture further. The science of geology is rich in years of relative, if not of abso- lute time, which she applies with royal freedom. Under her broad wing, I should not hesitate to be more definite, say to locate the time in the tertiary period, as it is understood that in this single æon, between the Eocene and Recent period, not more than five hundred millions of years are claimed ; that is to say, not ten hundred millions of years. On this basis, not over four hundred millions of years are deemed necessary to place the crust of our planet in a condi- tion for the support of animal and vegetable life.
Millions of æons have rolled away, In the grand chorale which the stars rehearse, Since the note, so sweet in our song to-day, Was struck in the chord of the universe.
We feel but the pulse of that viewless Hand Which ever has been, and still shall be, In the stellar orb and the grain of sand, Through Nature's endless paternity.
We send our greeting through breathless space, To our distant cousins, the nebulæ, And catch, in the comet's misty trace, But a drifting leaf from the tribal tree.
- Song of the Carbons.
When visiting Truro from Provincetown, either by steam cars, milk wagon or stage coach, take a seat with the driver.
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TRURO - CAPE COD.
As you cross the bridge at Beach Point, fancy yourself upon the deck of a vessel, and imagine the long beach before you blue water with a short sea. If on the old stage coach, and the road bad, it would not require a vivid imagination. The well-rounded headland just a few points on your port bow will appear to you as it is, as natural a formation of old Mother Earth as any land you ever approached. If you have been a sailor it will impress you as have a score of solid old headlands stretching out in glad welcome to receive you. This headland, the "High Head" of Truro, is regarded by Hitchcock, and I think by all geologists, as the end of the diluvian foundation of Cape Cod. This formation, averaging from one hundred to possibly three hundred feet above the ocean level, extends south nearly the whole length of the Cape, Professor Hitchcock says : " averaging from two to three hundred feet." It is generally a tableland, cut longitudinally, with considerable regularity, into deep "hollows," or vast gulleys, from the ocean to the bay. Also abundance of irreg- ular depressions called valleys and "bottoms," which the traveller comes upon with as little warning as upon the wonderful cañons of Colorado.
The hollows of Truro are perhaps more regular than any other part of the Cape. They are delightfully sheltered from the bleak winds and storms. The soil is much more fertile, and here the trim, fast-anchored houses stand, fearless of wind or wave. Thoreau says : "Generally the old-fashioned and unpainted houses on the Cape looked more comfortable as well as picturesque than the modern and more pretentious ones, which were less in harmony with the scenery, and seemed less firmly planted."
Cape Cod houses, nicely painted, with their half-dozen typical, well-whitewashed outhouses and tight board fences, picturesquely dotted along the hillsides, fall pleasantly upon the eye, especially toward the sunsetting, and make a pretty landscape picture. They remind one of the little walled cities of Palestine that used to illustrate the Sunday-school books years ago.
Sometimes when the hollows are reposing in soft sunshine,
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
the bleak northwest winds are sweeping over the hills and plains requiring pea-jacket and mittens to keep comfortable. My father had sheltered valleys and little nooks here and there about his "farm" where he worked in shirt sleeves
CLAY POUNDS AND HIGHLAND LIGHTHOUSE FROM THE BEACH.
most every sunny day of the year. The same peculiarity of "longitudinal hollows " prevails in Cornwall, called there " Coombs," but with much greater fertility of soil and exub- erance of vegetation.
Bare, bleak and solitary as this northwestern county may be, it is enlivened by the numerous and beautiful coombs or valleys, which open into it, and which nearly all preserve an absolutely straight course east and west from their origin in the moorlands to the sea. Few scenes of the simpler kind remain better impressed on the memory than the prospect down one of these tranquil valleys .-- Merivale.
Gales from the west are violent, bending the trees nearly horizontal, setting the gravestones at angles, and carrying the salt from the ocean across the country ; yet the climate is generally mild. Snow and ice and the gloomy fogs of
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TRURO-CAPE COD.
London are unknown. Though lying between fifty and fifty-one degrees of latitude north of Newfoundland, invalids frequent Penzance and Truro, for the sub-tropical atmosphere. On New Year's Day geraniums, carnations, fuchsias, and all kinds of roses are found in abundance. Vegetables are found late and early.
The Clay Pounds of Truro are not only a great natural curi- osity, but as well an object of speculation to the geologist - another of those interrogation points suggested by Professor Shaler. Nearly surrounded on three sides by the sand hills, the other facing the ocean, a perpendicular wall. Here are several acres of pure blue clay, rising one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet above the ocean. When Isaac Small, the grandfather of Thomas Fields and I. Morton Small, sold government the lighthouse site, it embraced ten acres. Since then (1797) considerable of the bank has crumbled away. The clay vein runs across the Cape in a southwesterly direc- tion, cropping out on the bay side, just south of the Great Swamp. Detached projections have been washed by the fierce storms into sharp pinnacles and graceful Gothic points, as delicate as if done by a sculptor's chisel. These are the Highlands of Cape Cod, the most dangerous point on the Cape. No place, perhaps, has witnessed more shipwrecks, and nowhere does a northeast gale agonize with more terrific fury than against these clay cliffs. The writer's grandfather saw a vessel pitchpole into the surf, and not a wisp of her was seen after.
The Highland Light, with powerful Fresnel reflectors, two hundred feet above the ocean, crowns the Clay Pounds.
Like the great giant Christopher, it stands Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave.
Considerable comment has been made upon the associated word, pounds. The broken parts of the cliffs have many holes or pockets or pounds, into which the water lodges, mak- ing pools or wells, which the firm clay holds in pounds. I am quite persuaded this is the true idea of the name.
Professor Hitchcock says the pounds are the highest clay
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
cliffs he has ever seen, and that the layers are perfectly hori- zontal; but he is in doubt as to their extent. To quote his own words : " At present I rest in the opinion that probably the plastic clay may exist beneath a considerable portion of Nantucket and Cape Cod ; but it is concealed by a more recent
HIGHLAND LIGHTHOUSE.
tertiary or diluvial deposit." I have observed by the ocean shore, at a very low water level, and where the tide has cut out the sand, considerable ridges of clay, more mixed with nodules of hydrate of iron, than at the Clay Pounds. Some- times the surf casts up fragments of the same mixture.
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TRURO- CAPE COD.
It would indicate that large deposits of clay, different from the pounds, are contiguous, if not underlying the prom- ontory. Professor Hitchcock further observes : "The hills of Truro are the most striking examples of diluvial elevations and depressions in the State - the surface of an agitated ocean, or rather what is called a 'chopped sea.' It is worth a journey the whole length of the Cape to see such remark- able efforts of diluvial action." The especial location re- ferred to is in the neighborhood and southwesterly of the Soutlı Truro graveyard. I have secured a drawing from the striking example referred to by Professor Hitchcock, taken more than fifty years ago, which I here present.
Comparing the " elevations and depressions," hundreds of feet high, to a chopped sea may provoke a smile to a Cape
EXAMPLE OF DILUVIAL DEPRESSIONS AND ELEVATIONS. - Hitchcock's Geology ..
Codman, who knows that mountain waves have a mean low altitude, the highest waves known in the North Atlantic being about forty feet, or less than twenty feet mean.
All north of High Head, with all the beaches and the whole of Provincetown, where there is scarcely found a rock large as a gull's egg, is considered alluvial ; has been at sometime cast up by winds, waves, and currents ..
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
From various causes scant vegetation gains a foothold on some tide-tost bar or rift, which collects other moving sand and drift, till ultimately by this process, hills are slowly piled, covered with verdure and perhaps trees. By natural phenom- ena these may be again stripped, and again blown into the sea. I have seen a bank of sand five or six feet high, cast up by a single tide, and removed by perhaps the next. Beautiful little ponds called "lagoons," the most perfect bathing estab- lishments in the world, are often formed on the Atlantic beach in a day. Sometimes they remain months, and some- times disappear in a night. All the steam engines in the world, and all the king's oxen, could not remove till Dooms- day, so much sand as the hungry currents swallow in a day. It being fairly established that the principal portion of Cape Cod is diluvial, the slanderous, oft-quoted remark, that "it is the last place the Lord made," falls to the ground. Hence- forth know ye "that when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy," then the founda- tions thereof were lain, and the work of his hands pronounced he good. Old travellers have noticed the little, conical, grass- grown hillocks, thick through the old fields and pastures of Truro. Dr. Freeman refers to them. Years ago these piles were quite noticeable, and gave the rolling surface an appear- ance of African ant villages, as described. It used to be the fashion to "half-hill" and "hill" the Indian corn, which meant to raise a monument to every hill as high as could be piled with a corn-hoe. The foolish fashion, the little mounds, and the laborious mound-builders, have all passed away, but many will recall the custom and remember the grassy little peaks.
From most any elevation in Truro, the Highland - the ancient Tashmuit -and Highland Lighthouse may be seen. The little hamlet, composed of the spacious and comfortable looking Highland house, the dismantled old grist-mill, which for more than a century did honest work, and the few neigh- boring houses, may also be seen near by. North of the Highland house a short distance, once stood the house of Josias Cook, the common ancestor of the numerous Cook
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TRURO - CAPE COD.
family now living in Provincetown. A few rods further north was the substantial two-story parsonage of Mr. Avery, before mentioned. Here was a considerable neighborhood. On the left still stands the house of the late Mrs. Paine, from whence went the youthful husband to the wrecked Charlotte and an ocean grave. This house was once owned by Dr. Young, a practising physician. He said Truro was too healthy for a doctor to make a living, so he sold out and moved to Wellfleet. Houses once stood both sides of the road to the Head-of -the- Meadow. The widow Annis and the Job Avery houses have been re- moved almost within the pres- ent generation. The house of Mr. Bowley, the grand- father of the Provincetown stock, stood near the present Life Saving Station. It was while smoking his pipe at the DISMANTLED GRIST-MILL .- HIGHLANDS. cool of the day, under the shadow of nis own apple-trees, that the cannon balls from the English man-of-war, disturbed the old gentleman's medita- tions, by ploughing up the ground around him.
From the Head-of-the-Meadow to High Head, was uni- formly the best land in town, perhaps originally, in the county. A loamy soil everywhere thick with shells as the shores of Lake Ponchartrain. Dwellings of good dimensions and long corn houses, and ample barns for hay and stock, stood in all these valleys. The names of the owners may be inferred from "Paul Dyer's Bank," " Ridler's Bank," " Stev- en's Bank," etc. I suppose all these settlements came under the general name of East Harbor, although in later years East Harbor was understood as the little cluster of houses where lived Captain Ebenezer Atkins.
It was from these homes that came the thirty-two men who lived " north of the pond," and were killed or died in service
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
during the Revolutionary War. It can be well said of these green spots scattered among the deserted valleys, sites once of bustling life, now turned to pastures and pineries, whence came men of firm stride, of strong arm and stern purpose, as old Lewis Cameron said by Scotland, "Glens, that could once send out a hundred bayonets ; belonging now entirely to some lowland grazier." A large family of Paines, Benjamin, Elkanah, Joshua, Phineas and Elisha, were raised among these hills. Old Robert Newcomb, who used to try out dog-fish livers, by the light of which to "study the holy Scriptures," had a house here. Houses stood thick down the broad valley to the shore, where the railroad crosses, and near the crossing and bank. A grist-mill once stood on the high bluff by the shore.
A LONELY GRAVE.
About midway of East Harbor, near a dismal swamp, with not a habitation in sight or sound, with not a tree or rock or post or sign of life, where the hills rest tier on tier - Alps piled on Alps - and the valleys circle deeper and deeper, is the solitary grave of Thomas Ridley, who died of small-pox, 1776. One hundred and two years after, on the 28th of January, 1878, I stood by this forlorn spot. It was one of those mild winter days in January, that omen a dubious winter night. The sun at last struggled through portentous clouds and sunk in the distant waters in a blood-red chariot with wild black horses and purple-clad footmen.
And topples round the dreary west A looming bastion fringed with fire.
The dark slate headstone lay scattered in fragments about the grave. By careful matching, the name and date was made, though part of the stone was missing.
Professor Hitchcock's visit to Truro was fifty years ago. He expresses considerable surprise to find such productive farms as the Messrs. Small, at the north part of the town. " When one has proceeded so far toward the extremity of
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TRURO-CAPE COD.
Cape Cod as to judge from the landscape around him that he has got almost beyond the region of vegetation, his attention s suddenly arrested by excellent farms in the northern part of Truro. Three miles beyond his house (at East Harbor ) Mr. Small took me to a field of several acres, where the soil appeared of a dark color, and abounded with fragments of shells, particularly the round clam, or quahaug. Fifty bushels of Indian corn had been raised upon an acre without manure. An analysis of the soil showed the following proportions : - "
Carbonate and sulphate of lime 21.30
Phosphate of lime
.35
Soluable geine (humus)
3.75
Insoluble 1.50
Silicates
73.10
After the salt and lime, the residue, silicate (flint), nothing but the common white sand of Cape Cod. The above anal- ysis demonstrates how far our sand enters into productive soil. White sand is barren. Red sand has more life-is more likely to be mixed with loam. A little clay or loam mixed with red or dark sand produces a soil of superior char- acter. A larger share of silicate or sand is more desirable in farm lands than is generally understood.
There are on the Cape thousands of acres of valuable cranberry bogs, fine vegetable gardens, and patches of rich meadow, that have been redeemed from swamps and salt marshes. These improvements are in their infancy. More acres are still seething in their native sloughs, and millions of tons of virgin sand-banks waiting by their margin for strong hands and a wheelbarrow. These stagnant marshes and oozing bogs, are susceptible of the highest cultivation under the sun. With the labor and fertilizers that are devoted to other lands in the State, they would bud and blossom as the rose. For English grass, pears, quince, small fruits, all kinds of vegetables or corn, a large product is possible.
The income on well-managed cranberry bogs is sometimes quite fabulous. In 1874, a middle-aged man died in Harwich, who had for several years devoted his leisure time and some little money to cranberry bogs. His entire outlay was com-
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GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.
paratively small, as he had not made it a business. The year of his death, the net income to his family was nearly equal to one hundred thousand dollars of Government bonds. So these sand banks may pay respectable dividends. Over seven thou- sand barrels of cranberries were shipped from Harwich in 1882. All visitors at the Cape are surprised at the product of the soil. They wonder over and over how sand can bear a crop. There are many causes that enter into this apparent phenomena that need not here be fully explained, but as surely prove sand a fertilizer. When seasons of great whirlwinds, called sand showers, carry the sands from the desert of Gobi, in China, miles away over the country, these years are always marked as of unusual fertility and plenty. Who, familiar with a sandy soil, has not noticed how much greener grass grows where a little sand has overrun the surface. For cer- tain soils, it is well-known that a top-dressing of fine sand is more valuable than manure. It contains fertilizing agencies, and clearly shows chemical action, perhaps by absorbing gases and stagnant water, and loosening the soil to heat and air. For bedding cattle, especially in warm weather, a fine dry sand bank would be better than the hay or straw rick : for man, beast, and the compost heap.
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