USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 18
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· Barn yards that become like cellars, should be kept level by constant filling ; and a load dropped wherever moisture stands, would not only make a clean absorbent, but add to the product. Hygienically considered, sand freely distributed in low, damp, typus-breeding spots, would save doctors' bills, and perhaps preserve cherished lives. Nothing is so cheap and clean and perfect a protection from ice-falls.
On the south shores of Cornwall, may be seen at low water, long trains of carts, perhaps a hundred at a time, winding their way to the farms among the hills, laden with a fine dark sand washed up by the channel. This mixed with the hard, red, clayey soil, produces fine results. The money spent for fertilizing English farms would drive crazy an American farmer unacquainted with the process.
The established rental (1878) for good farm lands in Ire- land, is four pounds per acre. Twenty dollars a year for an
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acre of land, to be paid out of the soil! An amount that would purchase a Government Patent to a quarter section of land in our great West as fair as the sun blesses. The esti- mate in Ireland for acreage product is one steer, one cow and calf, three calves, or four or five sheep.
I am well persuaded that about our creeks, marshes and swamps, may be found deposit sufficient to make the light soil of the Cape more productive than average farm lands of Massachusetts. Could these be spread broadcast in the fall, receive the action of winter frost and snow, a little lime at ploughing, with usual fertilizers, a goodly harvest would fol. low. To a greater or less extent, all this is within reach, with- out, comparatively, money or price. If done at all, it would be at a time when man and beast neither toil nor spin. As I under- stand, geine is the most essential element for crop results. By referring to the analysis of the land that produced fifty bushels of corn per acre without manure, only 3.75 parts were geine. This shows quite conclusively, how small a pro- portion our soil requires of the right food supply, to produce crops, and may suggest some systematic or scientific appli- cation of feeding our land.
The doctor who gives but one kind of medicine for all dis- eases, would be no more an empiric than the farmer who gives one kind of medicine for all diseases of land. Unques- tionably, our soil, though light, originally was quite fertile, and being fed with rich atmospheric supply, bore excellent crops ; but the bond-masters required brick without straw. I speak advisedly, saying there is not a spot in New Eng- land that gives better returns for the outlay. I have seen corn growing in the sandy soil of Truro at the rate of a hun- dred bushels per acre. This was a small lot, under high cul- ture, but it demonstrates the possibilities. I have travelled in, and am somewhat familiar with, all the great corn States of this country. The average acreage product of any Statc, would probably fall below our ideas.
The Western farmer can now afford to raise our corn at a profit, because he works the rich virgin prairies at a nominal cost, free of fertilizers. But Western lands are under nat-
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ural laws, and will in time wear out; they must be restored or abandoned. I have seen millions of acres in Missis- sippi and Alabama, once valuable cotton plantations, liter- ally starved to death and turned out of doors.
A traveller observes, that where the over-cultivated fields of Truro were exhausted of geine, large patches of Hudsonia, H Ericoides, or false heath-plant, and of the H Tomentosa, or poverty grass, so well known, were frequent. They grow a thick mat upon the soil, and, he thinks, cannot fail to collect some vegetable and animal nutriment.
Thoreau, with sharper eyes, notices that while the north and east side of these patches, exposed to the rough winds, are sere and dead, the leaward or sunny sides are flourishing in bright green, and smiling with delicate yellow flowers. In a field of Sableaux, he thought it should be the coat-of-arms of Barnstable County, and he should be proud of it.
Wherever this plant strikes its roots, the surface is fast, for it casts a thousand anchors out of the stern, and every other part of the ship, and holds on. Being an air-feeder, it mats the ground with its roots like clover, and wherever ploughed under, a tall hill of corn or extraordinary ruta- bagas are sure to flourish on the turn of their fortunes.
Called by a better name, the poverty grass might be regarded almost a beautiful plant; it is ten thousand times handsomer than the cactus, often cultivated, and possibly may be put to some practical use.
The unsightly furze or gorse of England and Ireland, that until lately has been supposed of no use but a shelter for foxes in the chase, when cut young and mashed has been found a valuable feed for cattle. Many of the mines of Corn- wall that have supported and improved that country, are now partially idle. Distant colonies have divided their bread. It is now determined to cultivate large tracts of furze and heather lands, heretofore regarded wild and worthless. There are this day in volcanic Ireland, millions of acres of fever- breeding bogs - an acre nearly for every inhabitant - that if wisely administered, would employ every idle man in Ireland, whose name is legion, and ultimately do more for the Green
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Isle than all the terrorism on the one side, and cobweb leg- islature on the other, from the days of O'Connell down to that prince of demagogues, Parnell. Labor, and a wise improvement of the soil, are the checks and balances; the political economy written in the first law to man.
Kendell wrote in 1807 : " The surface of Truro is in a great part hilly, with a soil of gravelly loam, supporting lofty wood, and hollowed into verdant and well-watered vales, but with tracts of sand near the inlets to the sea, either drifting in the wind or supporting a thick growth of beach-grass. Several rivulets and ponds present themselves, and the whole landscape has much that is romantic."
Where stood the " lofty wood " which Kendell saw seventy years ago, is now barren hills. The most imperative duty to every citizen on the Cape, is to plant trees. Let every waste spot be covered. It is no longer an experiment, but a profit- able investment, as has been proved over and over. A pleasant old gentleman said to me : " I was sixty-five year old when I fust planted pine seed. My neighbors said, 'What on 'arth are you planting pine seed for ? You don't never expect to raise pine-trees ?' but I have cut with my own hands and enjoyed burning them trees for years. If I was younger, I would cover every foot of old land I own or could buy." I have measured symmetrical trees twenty-five inches girth, in a flourishing forest, where twenty-five years ago was a bleak, wasted, sandy hilltop. In some parts of France, par- ticularly Bayonne, vast acres of land once a drifting sand desert, now constitute the wealth of the inhabitants.
Cover the barren, sand-scarred hills, and the deep sheltered valleys, with the ever-verdant, healthful pine. Bring back the birds, and the beast, and most to be desired of all, the summer showers, that are now driven away by the heated atmosphere. Let them fall on the just and the unjust. The Cape has need of the old Cornish adage, " A shower every day, and two on Sunday." Let them come.
It has many advantages over heavy lands. It needs no drying up; and as soon as the frost is out, ploughing and planting may begin. Since early vegetables have been in
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demand for the Provincetown market, more attention has been given to early planting. I have seen peas up and looking well, while the farmers around Boston were waiting for their lands to dry for ploughing. More attention to land in shel- tered sunny exposures would perhaps be advantageous.
We frankly admit that some of these observations and con- clusions are somewhat speculative and open to objections. Plato said mathematics alone was solid knowledge. Who in this world of speculative philosophy, shall lay the line and plummet ? Is it not better to grasp here and there a fact, or follow here and there an open door, hoping thereby to find a great truth, or to be led into a broader light, than to shut our eyes and grope eternally like blind men in prison houses ?
Nature's time-table is not graduated by human observation. "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thou- sand years as a day." We live under laws belonging to the great universe of matter, or spirit, of which our little planet is a fraction, but of which this sandy little promontory is as important as the sun, and governed by laws as eternal and unchanging.
If it has taken a good while to do some things in this world. there has always been just time enough. Nature has time for all her work in her own way. Amen.
CHAPTER XII.
1715-GENERAL HISTORY OF THE TOWN-1750.
Destruction of the Forest. Lawless Sojourners. Increase of Fishing Ships. Importance of Cape Cod Harbor. Drifting Sands. Government Jobs. Stout's Creek. Hog Island. Parran Porth. St. Patrick and St. Andrew. St. Prian and His Tomb. Schools. Schoolmaster Spear. Doncastor. Office a-begging. Economy. High Sense of Honor. Samuel Winter. The Humane Man. Bellamy the Pirate. The " Whidah." Cob Money. Haley's Island House. Captain Kidd. Schoolhouses. Value of Land. Province Treasury. Storms of 1723 and 1635. Richard Mather. Hector the last Slave. Bill of Sale. Manumitted. The General Court. The Minority hold the Fort. The Majority Appeal. Proprietors of 1730. Petition for a New County. Dr. Dyer. Records of 1733. Ice Punch in July. Memorial. Longnook. Land Bank Scheme. Sam Adams. Judge Solomon Lombard. Legisla- tion. Deacon Joshua Freeman. Severe Drought.
A T a meeting of the proprietors of Truro convened April 26, 1715, land was sold to Michal Atwood, Beriah Smith, Josiah Cook, Francis Small, Ebenezer Hurd, William Dyer, Samuel Small, Samuel Young, Thomas Paine Jr., Jonathan Paine, Edward Covell, Joseph Young, Ebenezer Smith, and Jonathan Dyer. A further division of land to the proprietors was ordered. At the same meeting "the proprietors have taken into consideration the great waste and destruction that is made upon the common and undivided land, within said proprietie, by cutting down much wood, and letting of it lye and rot upon the ground, to the great damage of the pro- prietors. "
Cape Cod, being well known as the best harbor on the coast, with abundance of wood and water, it early became a general resort for many of the European fleet, especially the fishermen. These last rapidly increased. "In 1620 there
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went six or seven ships from the west of England, to fish on the northeastern coast of New England. In 1621 ten or twelve; in 1622 thirty-eight ; in 1623 forty ; in 1624 about fifty." A safe harbor to wood and water, and for outfitting, without tax or supervision, was a great boon to the fishermen. Dr. James Freeman says :
Certain portions of the Cape were, in earlier times, the resort at certain seasons, of not only fishermen from abroad, who came because of the peculiar facilities here afforded of prosecuting their business, but of traders having fishermen in their employ, or being desirous of securing shipment.
We should not blame the proprietors for the desolation of the land, as we see they used every effort to protect the timber, but in vain. The trees gone, and the cattle running at large, the light soil soon became disturbed, or if cultivated, soon exhausted. The exposed position and sweeping winds soon wrought the finish. Nature is an exacting task-master ; she demands an honest equivalent. No bribes, no extortions, no corruptions are known in her court. Whether on the thin wasted soil of Cape Cod, where the oak and pine struggle to fulfil their highest destiny, or -
Those sunny Isles, that laugh beside the sea; Where the bright orange and the citron grow,
the same inexorable law abides.
The sand, once cut adrift from its fibrous moorings, moves with the high dry winds like driven snow, and in its wild free- dom assumes a thousand shapes. Now little wavelets like a summer lake; now a wild billowy sea. On the right, a cone built with geometric precision ; on the left, a giant's grave, scooped out like the grave of Moses, without hands. To-day, it may seem a desert plain ; to-morrow, the home of the mound-builders.
In Provincetown, the glass on the northerly exposed ends of the houses has been ground as handsomely as if placed on an artist's wheel.
The moving of the sand, and threatened danger to the har-
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bor, was early carried to the Legislature, and has received various appropriations. The defect, like much other legisla- tion, has not been in want of appropriations, but the want of a general supervision by a practical commission, and moderate appropriations from time to time as needed. Under wise and systematic management, the work could be continued at a moderate expense.
Some years ago while driving over Beach Point, where a "Government Job" was being done, in company with one of those practical common sense men who are not hard to find on the Cape, he remarked : "There's a ten-thousand-dollar job that when done will not be worth ten cents. I will take a contract to make all they want for one thousand dollars." I passed the same point in less than six months, and there was not ten cents' worth left of this whole work. It is amus- ing, if not instructive, to hear the home thrusts made by these every-day men to the scientific method, as they term it, by which government work is sometimes not done.
Stout's Creek, before mentioned, was a few rods east of the East Harbor Bridge landing. Not only is every trace oblit- erated, but the smooth rim of shore rises abruptly twenty feet high. The current now cuts the bank, and has laid bare a swamp with oak and cedar stumps in good preservation, show- ing that here stood heavy timber.
Less than fifty years ago a large lagoon penetrated several rods into the beach. The changes made by the shifting sands can best be told by the record of October 17, 1718 :-
A record of the division of the meadow at Cape Cod within the township of 'T'ruro, commonly called Stout's Creek Meadow: One lot fell to Thomas Paine that is eight pole wide clear across the meadow ; another lot that fell to Captain Edward Bangs ten poles in breadth clear across ; and another to Constant Free- man sixteen pole wide across the meadow; other divisions amounting to ten lots are enumerated, running from eight to sixteen pole.
Dr. Freeman wrote in 1794 :
Stout's Creek, once several hundred yards wide, and where a number of tons of hay were annually cut, now scarcely exists, being almost entirely choked up with sand blown in from the beach.
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The bars at the east end of Provincetown harbor, known as " Hog Island," because hogs were there pastured till an extra- ordinary high tide overflowed the island, were once covered by trees, as evidenced by large stumps still to be seen.
Cape Cod is not the only sandy place. The honor must be divided with others better known to fame. One of these is Parran Porth, or Parran Zabulœ (Parran in the sands). In early days Ireland was the home of saints, and her mission- aries invaded England and Scotland. During the Middle Ages they made great progress in Christianity. St. Prian, one of St. Patrick's bishops, came from Ireland on a mill- stone and landed at St. Ives in the fifth century. About the same time St. Andrew landed in Scotland, having made the passage in a basket. As was the custom of the missionaries of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, St. Prian built a cell for himself and attached a small stone oratory, or baptistry. His location was one of the sandy dunes of Cornwall, near the coast, about eight miles from Truro, and not far from Gwennap, the scene of Hereward the Wake, Charles Kings- ley's novel. This whole neighborhood is not lacking in mate- rial for romance.
After St. Prian had sufficiently mortified the deeds of the body with prayers and fastings many, and good works abun- dant, he also died and was buried in his oratory, which was a sepulchre as well. Over this tomb of St. Prian, tradition said a church was built. It was according to the custom of the age to build a church over the bones of the great saints. The church was built some two hundred years after his death, and religious rites were held for another two hundred years, when it was entirely submerged by sand blown from the shore through a narrow gorge in a rocky cliff, that a few rods of masonry could have saved from destruction. Years after, on this sandy spot, another church was built, that was also buried during the last century. The first church was tradition, the last history. In 1835, during a great shifting of the sand, this long-lost relic that had been buried a thousand years, and was regarded generally a myth, was again uncovered, with its little baptistry attached, and stood
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forth to the wondering gaze of the world almost as perfect as when swallowed by the devouring sands. Beside the altar was found the bones of St. Prian. Since 1835 it has suffered terribly by relic hunters and tourists, and is still visited by thousands to witness this and other sights with which the neighborhood abounds.
We infer that some kind of schools were maintained from the first, but the earliest reference is made in 1715, March 2Ist, when it was ordered, "That Mr. Avery and the select- men be a committee to procure a suitable person to keep a town school." The committee did not do their duty, for in 1716, "The town was presented the last year for its delin- quency in not providing a schoolmaster." "January 10, Jonathan Paine was appointed to appear in the town's behalf at the Court of General Sessions; and twenty pounds was appropriated to pay the schoolmaster for the present half year's schooling." An engagement was made with Mr. Samuel Spear, "For the entire year, commencing at the expiration of his present term for forty pounds and board himself." Mr. Spear, afterwards the Provincetown minister, graduated at Harvard College, 1715.
The committee now show a commendable spirit, by making a permanent engagement with a learned man. Two hundred dollars may seem a small salary for a Harvard graduate, but it was a day of small things, and does not suffer in comparison with other professors of the time. In Doncaster, England, during the time of George the Second, and perhaps to the present, -
Any persons refusing to accept the office of Mayor, Alderman, Capital bur- gess, or any other inferior office of the borough, except the recorder's, might be committed to the jail till they consented to serve, or fined at the discretion of the corporation, and held fast in the jail till the fine was paid.
By the law of the General Court, every town was entitled to a representative, but were not obliged to send one. In 1717, the town voted not to send a representative to the Gen- eral Court, and affixed to their resolution their reasons : "First, because we are not obliged by law to send one ;
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Second, because the Court has rated us so high, that we are not able to pay one for going,." But the school under the learned schoolmaster went on.
Much depended upon a wise expenditure of their limited revenue. While they aimed at carrying light burdens, the highest sense of justice and equity is shown in all their administration. This especially applies to the Indians, who then as now were regarded by many as proper subjects to be defrauded of their rights, or as having no rights that white men were bound to respect. Perhaps the modern doctrine, " There is no good Indian but a dead Indian, " was in that dawning period recognized in fact. On a certain occasion they corrected an error and left on record this sentiment : " We are not willing that any Indian shall suffer any wrong through our means or mistake. "
At a town meeting in 1718-
Thomas Paine Jr., was chosen town treasurer, but inasmuch as said town and said Paine could not agree upon a price for said Paine's salary, said town proceeded to a new choice and Samuel Treat was chosen Town Treasurer, and said town then agreed with said Treat to give him four pence per pound for receiving and paying out said town's money.
At a meeting of the town of Truro, May 13, 1719 -
Captain Thomas Paine was chosen representative and agreed to give said Paine five shillings per day every day that he should spend in the town service.
At a meeting of the town of Truro, October 17, 1719, Jonathan Vickery was chosen moderator. At same meeting said town agreed with Mr. Samuel Winter to keep schools in said town the space of one whole year to learn children and youth to read and write, which work of service the said Mr. Samuel Winter is to begin on the eighth day of November next and continue in said work until the term of twelve months be fully ended. In consideration whereof the inhabitants of said town are to give and pay to the said Winter the sum of forty pounds in payable bills of credit, except in case the said Winter shall see cause to remove over sea to Old England before the above said time be expired, then said town is to give to him, the said Winter, for what time he shall serve said town in the above said work from and after the seventh day of November next, at the rate of forty pounds per annum.
At the same meeting the inhabitants of said town of Truro agreed where the school should be kept for the space of a year next after the seventh day of November next (viz.), the first quarter at the house of William Dyer Jr., the next half year at the house of Captain Constant Freeman, or somewhere thereabout
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in that neighborhood, and the last quarter somewhere near East Harbor, where the inhabitants of that neighborhood shall think fit.
In 1721 Mr. Winter was engaged to keep the town school one year and three months after his present term shall expire. Some dozen years later the school- master was represented by Mr. Gibson, a gentleman of more than a common share of the milk of human kindness, for which his name has been left on record in the following notice :
Voted to give Mr. Gibson for keeping school, after the rate of £55, in con- sideration of the charge he has been to in supporting the ancient people with whom he has lived the winter past.
Almost everybody born on the Cape has heard of the noto- rious pirate and freebooter, Sam Bellamy, whose cruel ex- ploits were told in song and story years ago, and whose fate is associated with the most remarkable shipwreck known on the Cape. Early in April, 1717, he took seven vessels near Cape Cod, which he made prizes. On one of these, he trans- ferred seven men, who, after drinking freely, all fell asleep. Not so the captain of the vessel, who, watching his chance, as a forlorn hope, ran the ship ashore near Truro, where the seven men were captured. Six of them were tried before a special court of admiralty in Boston, and executed Novem- ber 15, 1718.
On the 26th of April, only a week or two after taking the seven prizes, Bellamy's ship, the Whidah, was driven ashore in a terrible gale, on the backside of Wellfleet or Eastham ; and the whole crew, except one Englishman and one Indian, perished. Somewhere near the boundary line between East- ham and Orleans, near the old channel, Captain Southack buried "One Hundred and Two Men Drowned," as we have related in the last chapter. It was current talk on the Cape for years, that the Englishman, disguised, used to visit the scene of the shipwreck from time to time, to supply himself with money buried from the wreck. It is probably a part of the story of Captain Kidd's buried treasures. To this day, King William and Queen Mary's pennies are picked up. Thoreau says he found one. The late William De Costa of the Charlestown Advertiser, an old traveller in Truro and Wellfleet, which he visited thirty years with but one inter- ruption, picked up one on the bars at a very low ebb. The
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Wellfleet Oysterman (familiarly known as Uncle Jack New- comb) told Thoreau that he had seen the iron caboose of the Whidah on the bars at extreme low course of tides.
3
Possibly it was during this same gale, that a house on Haley's Island, Isles of Shoals, was washed from its founda- tions, and landed on Cape Cod, where it was found, and a box of linen, papers, etc., taken out, by which its history was
Ideal Pirate
SUPPOSED TO BE BELLAMY OF THE WHIDAH.
discovered. The family had just time to escape; though, unaccountable as it may seem, they might all have made the passage in safety. The old house spot is now shown on Haley's Island.
Captain William Kidd, not Robert as goes the old song, was another notorious pirate, whose name for more than a hundred years was synonym of blood and murder. Captain
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