USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 36
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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
The cob wharves were then not as frequent or long as now, and travel passed under and around them. Washing fish is one of the cherished institutions of Provincetown. It might not inappropriately be adopted as her coat of arms. The division of the United States surplus revenue was the begin-
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ning of a new era in Provincetown. When the question of appropriating the money for laying out a road and building a sidewalk through the town was being discussed, a citizen in town meeting said : " As this money has proved a bone of con- tention in most places, I think the best place for bones is under our feet ; I am therefore in favor of appropriating this fund to a sidewalk throughout the town." Like all great im- provements, it met with bitter opposition. The old were wed to old ways and content. They had known no inconveniences. Houses, stores, saltworks, fish flakes and mills were to be removed, wells to be filled, and rough places made smooth, before
WASHING OUT FISH ON PROVINCETOWN SHORE.
the road could be laid out and sidewalks built. All of which was done, and the five-plank walk on one side of the street, the whole length of the town, substantially as now, was opened for travel in February, 1838, at a cost of two thousand dollars.
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LAND MARKS AND SEA MARKS.
Tradition says that some of the old people, particularly the ladies, who had strenuously opposed the project, declared they would never walk on it, and were as good as their word, walking slip-shod through the sand as long as they lived. In some of the old pictures the people are represented without feet, it being understood so much was covered by the sand.
The railroad did not find its way to Provincetown by forced marches. The Old Colony first opened their road to Plym- outh with an understanding it would be pushed on to Barn- stable at an early day. After a long rest, the Cape Cod Branch, by a coup d'état, struck Sandwich, leaving Plymouth a terminus ; they next opened to Yarmouth, with a branch to Hyannis. The next hitch was to Orleans. At each exten- sion a celebration was held, magnifying the enterprising directors and urging on the work. The road was opened to Wellfleet October 28, 1869, on which occasion Rev. A. J. Church sung an original song. We quote the first verse : -
The great Atlantic Railroad for old Cape Cod; all hail ! Bring on the locomotive, lay down the iron rail ; Across the Eastham prairies, by steam we're bound to go, The railroad cars are coming, let's all get up and crow. The little dogs in Dogtown will wag their little tails, They'll think that something's coming, a-riding on the rails.
Provincetown Harbor has often been mentioned as among the finest on the coast. In the fall of the year it is some- times almost crowded with mackerel fishermen. When com- ing in or getting under way to go out, they present an ani- mated scene.
From a short history of Dennis, published in about 1800, we find reference to the first manufacturing of salt on the Cape, once a valuable industry, and on account of its exten- sive use in curing fish, always an item of importance to fish- ermen. The amount of salt consumed in this country is pro- digious and well-nigh challenges belief. A hogshead can now be bought for almost the price of a bushel a hundred years ago. It is one of the great blessings of civilization entering into every family and most every department of business. Previous to the Revolution, all the salt made in America was
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by the crude and slow process of boiling sea water in kettles. It was this method that made such havoc with the forests at Pamet and Cape Cod, stripping the hills, as we have noticed. London fish-mongers built salt works in connection with fish- ing, at Dover Neck, in 1623. It will be noticed that our salt works were a development of Cape Cod.
" The only person who has been completely successful in obtaining pure marine salt by the rays of the sun alone, is Captain John Sears of Suet, Dennis. In 1776 he constructed a vat one hundred feet long and ten wide. Rafters were fixed over, and shutters so contrived that the vat might be covered when it rained, and exposed to the heat of the sun in fair
MACKEREL FLEET GETTING UNDER WAY. - PROVINCETOWN HARBOR.
weather. At length, to his inexpressible joy, Captain Sears perceived the salt beginning to crystallize. His works leaked, and the first year he had only eight bushels of salt. He was exposed to the ridicule of his neighbors, who as usual scoffed at his invention, styling it "Sears' folly." The second year he obtained thirty bushels of salt. In the fourth year a pump was introduced instead of a bucket. In 1785, at the sugges- tion of Major Nathaniel Freeman of Harwich, who had in some other country seen a pump worked by wind, the application was made with success. In 1793 Reuben Sears, a carpenter of Harwich, invented the "gable roof" cover, to run on wheels, which brought the system about to perfection. Other covers were used, but the " gable " became the uniform stan- dard, I think, on the Cape. Salt was then worth one dollar
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per bushel. Captain Sears obtained a patent in 1799, though it has been charged that he did not make a new discovery."
The Cape was wonderfully well situated, and all the condi- tions were remarkably favorable for salt-making by the new process. The water was pure from the ocean, and the salt of superior quality, weighing eighty pounds to the bushel, besides producing large quantities of Glauber's and Epsom salt and magnesia, all of excellent quality.
The practical demonstrations of making salt - of turning the ocean to gold -awakened new enterprise. Here was alchemy more to be desired by the toiling people than the Philosopher's stone. The transmutations began in earnest. In 1800 the business was in embryo. In 1832 there was in the county of Barnstable 1,425,000 feet of works, producing 258,250 bushels. It continued a large and moderately profit- able industry for many years. The process was slow, and de- pended upon the weather. Every man living near the salt water had his patch of salt works, if it took his last patch of cornfield or potato yard. Building and repairing the works gave employment to a large number of mechanics, and mak- ing the salt gave employment to the elderly men and boys.
The reduction of the salt duty was a death-blow to this business, while the repeal of the bounty allowed to the fishermen by Government, which should never have been repealed, did not half compensate for the reduction on salt, which was the ostensible object of the friends of this mea- sure. Both these changes were great disasters to the prosperity of the Cape, from which it will never recover. Truro was well situated for salt-works, and was a ready market for all that could be made. All along the shores and the banks of Pamet, its arms and coves and points were well covered, and every breezy summit was crowned with a pic- turesque windmill. As soon as the law went into effect the dismantling began. For years the work went on. Barns and out-houses, and sometimes dwellings, were constructed from the old covers and floors ; the latter being saturated with salt, will last perhaps as long as Cape Cod. The peculiar appearance of the buildings if not covered, interested visitors
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till weather-worn. Salt manufactory on Cape Cod has had its day. The business was at its highest state of prosperity in about 1832. In 1837, there were thirty-nine establish- ments in Truro.
All the trees mentioned by Bradford are indigenous to the Cape. To Mr. Dexter's valuable notes in his reprint of Mourt's Relation, I am indebted in part for the following list :
Oaks (white), quercus alba ; (red ) quercus rubra; (black ) quercus tinctoria ; (scrub) quercus regida. Pine (pitch), pinus rigida. Sassafras, sassafras officinale. Juniper (red cedar), juniperus virginiana. Birch (white), betula populi- folia. Holly (evergreen), ilex opaca. Ash (white), fraxinus acuminata. Walnut (mockernut hickory), carya tomentosa. Vines (wild grape), vitis labrusca ; (green brier) smilax rotun- difolia ; (Virginian creeper) ampelopsis quinquefolia ; (hairy honeysuckle) lonicera hirsuta ; (poison ivy) rhus toxicodeni- dron. To the above list may be added : Pine (white), pinus strobus, found rarely on the lower part of the Cape, consid- erably in Sandwich, in Plymouth County, is the common forest tree. Maple, acer spicatum. Locust (honey), gledits- chia triacanthus. Birch (black), B. lentā.
Since salt water has been cut off from East Harbor and Eagle Neck Marshes by building causeways for the railroad, black-birch have sprung up quite freely, and promise a finc growth. How the seed found its way to these salt marshes, and when, is open for discussion. That it was deposited among the drift by the tides, seems the only reasonable solu- tion. How long it may have been waiting a convenient season, it is impossible to tell. Wheat and other seed taken from the Egyptian tombs and mummy pits, deposited before Romulus and Remus, come as readily to harvest as if planted on the banks of the Nile during Joseph's years of plenty.
Oaks in all the varieties mentioned, pine, sassafras and ash, are still abundant. The red cedar or savin, called by Bradford "juniper," once so plentiful, is sometimes found in our woods and pastures isolated, mostly growing from old stumps. Gos-
LAND MARKS AND SEA MARKS.
nold and Smith called it " cyprus." Rev. Mr. De Costa men- tions having seen juniper berries in Truro ; I have seen them but rarely. The real cypress grows only in swamps and in standing water ; absorbs and contains more water than any other wood, and will never rot. The natural trunk of a cyprus-tree, as it grows in its native bayou, is a perfect pattern of a spreading, clustering column.
Brush, as used on the Cape, has a wide range; it embraces coppices of scrub-oak, called " live-oak," which attain their growth in a dozen or more years, rarely growing over ten feet high. They cover many of the hills, and are cut off smooth from time to time for summer fuel. A few acres of cheap brush land never fail a good brush pile, which the fishermen used to prepare during the winter, and stack them up near the kitchen, neat as a thatched cottage. Like many other old customs, the brush fire is disappearing - passing away with the ample chimney and fireplace. Brush also embraces brake and thicket, among which may be enumer - ated-wild rose, rosa lucida; bush whortleberry, vaccinium dumosam ; low blueberry, vaccinium pennsylvanicum ; beach plum, prunus maritima ; dogwood, cornus florida ; josh pear, June berry or shad bush (amalancier) (canadensis). From the low bush, mingling with the blueberry, to a graceful poplar-shaped tree, from ten to twenty feet high, scattered profusely among the sapling oak and branching pine, this tree or bush in its early white blossoms, is the beauty of spring, and the bright herald of dawning flower life, on the lower part of the Cape. It has spread rapidly the last forty years, is a most excellent fruit, and pronounced the most healthful of all the berry family.
The wild grape is abundant among the oaks, climbing thirty or forty feet, or to the top of the highest trees. They weave a network among the thick coverts, where hang the purple clusters, a feast for the birds and foxes. Blackberry vines abound in great variety, from the low creeper resembling the Southern dewberry, to the tall hedge-thorn or bramble. When corn was largely cultivated, the periodical ploughing of the fields was as good as cultivating blackberries. They
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could then be picked by the bushel from the stubbles. Wild gooseberry vines, or bushes, are also found through the wooded districts.
Among the smaller plants or vines are found noticeably, the far-famed Mayflower, or trailing arbutus, and ground laurel (cpigaea). The first smile of spring, with spicy breath, and rose-shaded blossoms, hiding under rough dry leaves. Check- erberry, boxberry, aromatic wintergreen or partridge berry, known on the Cape generally by the former, but quite gener- ally as wintergreen (Gaultheria). Abundant in the more open woods. The young plants are called drummers, and are eagerly sought for their pleasant aromatic taste. The plums or berries gain in flavor by lying all winter in a warm bed of snow. Bearberry, mountain berry, sometimes called hog cranberry (arctostaphylos uvar ursi). The better name is mountain berry. With its battledoor, evergreen leaves and bright crimson berries, it sometimes covers the ground for rods with a thick shining carpet beautiful to behold. It creeps into the graveyards, spreading the low mounds with a match- less twining and interweaving attractive at all seasons.
Golden astor (chrysopsis falcata) ; golden rod (genns solidago) ; Broom crowberry (oakesia conradi) ; pimpernel (anagàllis arvensis) ; or poor man's weather-grass; violet (viola pedata) ; bird-foot violet; smilax (S. rotuudifolia); azalia, flowering or false honeysuckle, perhaps (a viscòsa) ; poverty grass, before described, bayberry, or wax-myrtle (myrica cerifera), is the last we shall name of many varieties.
The bayberry, or wax-myrtle, is usually mentioned among the scrub-brush that make up the thickets and brakes indig- enous to the Cape. It takes kindly to the open, sandy soil, where it throws out abundance of huge crooked roots, filling the soft sand like eels in a basket. The trunk is smooth and crooked, usually growing two or three feet, but when in great clusters, favorably located, it often stands as high as a man's head. The leaf is thickish, with a tropical polish much resembling the rhododendron. The berry is of a light gray, or ash color, smaller than a pepper-corn, and clusters thick along the branches. The wood is brittle, cracking like
SUMMER HOME OF THE AUTHOR, AT LONGNOOK.
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pipestems when trod upon, and emitting an aromatic odor, which, mingling with the wild rose, sweet fern, and other sweet-scented shrubs, fairly loads the air.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.
Here it may be found with strong staff in hand, shod with stout boots, following the cuckoo's note up the valleys and over the hills, treading down the sweet blossoms and tender leaf, pushing aside the spreading bushes, making your own path, till some grassy plot or leafy covert offers a pleasant retreat. Here seated, say -
I solitary court The inspiring breeze, and meditate upon the book Of Nature ever open.
Now the narrow rim of sand that encircles the green hills, and the boundless ocean that encircles the rim of sand, becomes a matchless double-border, and the hills and valleys an emerald setting of wondrous beauty. Now the scrub-oaks in scarlet tassels, the stinted pine and sassafras, stretch out into spicy groves of Arabia Felix, and the long valleys become the fragrant vales of Cashmere.
The butterfly and bumble-bee Come to the pleasant woods with me ; Quickly before me runs the quail, Timorous of his grassy trail. High up the lone wood-pigeon sits, And the woodpecker pecks and flits. The swarming insects drone and hum, The partridge beats his throbbing drum, The squirrel leaps among the boughs, And chatters in his leafy house ; The oriole flashes through the light. On graceful wing with plumage bright Here the blue cat-bird trims his coat And tiny feathers fall and float.
As silently, as tenderly, The dawn of peace descends on me. O, this is peace ! I have no need Of friend to talk, or book to read :
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A dear companion here abides ; Close to my thrilling heart, He tides : The holy silence is his voice, I lie and listen, and rejoice !
Father Raslas, a Roman Catholic missionary to the Indians near Quebec, obtained from them the art of producing wax from the bayberry, from which he made candles to light his chapel in the distant wilderness. He says, "Twenty-four pounds of this beautiful green wax, and an equal quantity of tallow, will make one hundred handsome wax candles a foot long." What could be prettier or in finer taste on Christmas, or any festive occasion in the country, than these beautiful green wax candles, home-made, burning in the old-fashioned, dazzling bright brass candlestick? These Indians were also adepts at making maple sugar ; this writer thinks they initiated the English in the art. Father Raslas, like his contemporary Jesuit brethren, Lasalle, Marquette, Sallemond and Joliet, on the western frontier, was a man of extensive acquirements and undaunted fortitude. He shared with the Indians their privations, and continued their faithful, devoted friend and spiritual guide from 1689 till 1724, when he was killed while defending them against American troops.
Whatever may be said of the Jesuits, it must be admitted that they have been the most indefatigable, self-sacrificing, energetic and enterprising missionaries, since the days of St. Paul.
India repaired half Europe's loss ; O'er a new hemisphere the cross Shone in the azure sky ; And from the isles of far Japan, To the broad Andes, won o'er man A bloodless victory.
" While the enemies of Rome were ridiculing holy water, and scoffing at relics, the disciples of Loyola were penetrating the wilderness of America, and searching the sources of the Ganges." Almost a parallel case is related in Grote's history of Greece. "Socrates was exposing his life for Athens, at
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nearly the same time at which Aristophanes at Athens was exposing him to derision in the Country of the Clouds, as a dreamer alike morally worthless and physically incapable."
THE OLD MILLER.
We have referred to the great number of windmills stand- ing on the banks and hills, connected with the salt works, as being an attractive feature, and as imparting a semi-foreign look to the scenery. These were comparatively modern ; but the old grist mills standing top of the highest hills, were contemporary with the settlements, and were always a prominent feature in the landscape. At one time there were three or four in Truro.
Around old mills, almost as much as around old cas- tles, there clusters much of history and romance. If not overrun by ivy and stained by blood, they tell OLD WINDMILL. - ONE OF THE LAND- MARKS. the story of civilization and industry better then rampart, donjon or turret. Don Quixote and his valiant squire, Sancho Panza, have garlanded the conservative old windmills of Spain with a youth as beau- tiful and immortal as has our own gifted countryman the far- famed castles of the Moors, the marble halls of Alhambra, and the magnificent fabric of the Escurial.
For many years past the principal landmarks seen upon approaching Truro shore from the bay side, were the tall grist mill, and the two meeting-houses, grouped but a few hundred rods apart, in a triangular position. About thirty years ago a a town hall was built on the same plateau. From their pecu- liar geographical position to each other, a short distance by sea or land from a given point, would seem to remove them
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miles apart. This, added to the peculiar looming, or atmos- pheric illusion, sometimes gave these almost rude architectural structures vast and symmetrical proportions : sometimes weird and shadowy shapes ; sometimes the semblance of life. Then they became dramatis persone; now striding off across the hills, like Fingal's misty ghost, lifting high his shadowy spear, now countermarching and confronting each other like angry giants for a conflict at arms.
But it is the tall mill that claims now our particular atten- tion. It was built early in the present century. The frame was Southern tun timber, with its huge dimensions, as landed from a vessel stranded on the back of the Cape, and drawn to the hill-top by ox teams. A wash-barrel of grog was used at the raising. Doubtless this frame would have stood a thou- sand years, as when, two years since, removed it was as sound and bright as when first lifted to its airy summit. Its tall arms, and one long leg, the mast of a dismantled schooner,
TOWN HALL ..
which, like a huge spider's web, angled from the cornice to a little wheel on the ground, nearly a hundred feet distant, and which turned the mill's arms windward, were the outside wonders. Inside, the giant shaft, the remorseless cogs, the
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iron spindle, the upper and nether millstones, were wonders of mechanism, and filled my mind with admiration for the men who could construct such mighty engines of power and cunning. On the wall of the first loft, nailed against the timbers, was a plain deal board about eighteen by forty inches, on which, carved by some educated jack-knife, were these let- ters,-
F. A.
A. H.
S. R.
Which being interpreted meant, " This mill is owned in equal parts by Freeman Atkins, Allen Hinckley, Samuel Rider." These were important personages in my mind. The first of them only concerns us in this sketch.
He it was who climbed the slender latticed arms and set the sails ; he it was who hitched the oxen, waiting grist, to the little wheel, and with the boys pushing, turned the white wings to the wind's eye ; he it was who touched the magical spring, and presto ! the long wings beat the air, the great shaft began to turn, cog played to its fellow cog, and the mammoth stones · began to revolve. He it was who mounted like Jove upon his Olympian seat, and with one hand on the little regulator, that, better than the mills of the gods that ground only slow, could grind fast or slow, coarse or fine, with the other hand caught the first golden meal.
I see him now, in my mind's eye. A tall man, with long arms, like his mill ; kindly blue eyes, angular face, prominent nose, and close shut lips, with a lingering of the old quarter-deck compression still revealed. He was not called a handsome man, and used to say facetiously that he was a warning to mothers with handsome babes, as he was considered the handsomest in town. But far more than the paintings of the old or new masters, this homely face had attractions for me.
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Ever and anon as. he removed his great bony hand from the hot meal, touching his face and long nose till whitened like a distant promontory, he grew still more attractive, and I nestled still nearer his coveted seat, encouraged by his kindly manner to ask a few more questions.
This old man with his grist mill, and salt works, and patch of cornfield, and semi-weekly newspaper, was no every-day man. In his younger days as sailor and master of a ship, he had seen the world. With keen observation and good memory his mind was well stored. He had -
Old Greece and Rome surveyed, And the vast sense of Plato weighed.
In the fall of the Harrison campaign, when the vessels were packing out their fish at the wharf in Truro, I saw his son William Pitt, during some discussion, dressed in oil trousers, green baize jacket, fish boots and sou'wester, jump upon a barrel of mackerel, as a Whig platform, and make an impromptu Harrison speech to hundreds of fishermen, who received it with great applause. Besides home politics, the old miller used to discourse of the Corn Laws, and the Corn League of England - fresh topics in his day - and of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer. He had many stories to relate of his experience. The old miller has ceased from his labors, and the sound of the grinding is low. A stone to his memory in the Congregational churchyard has the following :
He came down to the grave like a shock of corn fully ripe.
In memory of CAPT. FREEMAN ATKINS. died Nov. 1, 1855, Æt 79 years I mo & 14 days. 1
Though time had set the seal of years upon his brow, Yet still that brow bowed not beneath the weight of care,
Till by the reaper's hand in Death's embrace laid low, Like shock of golden grain well prepared.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WAR OF THE REBELLION.
Fort Sumpter. Liberty Poles. War Meetings. Tall Flag Spars. Hoisting the Flag. Devotion to the Cause. Enrollment. Mutual Support Club. The Army. Volun- teers Mass. 43d. Nine Months' Men. Volunteers of 1862. Mass. 33d. Fighting Family. A Prison and a Monument. Prison Rules. Prison Fare. Active Service. Haps and Mishaps. Hard Marching. Good Fighting. The Work done. Marching Home. Turning over the Flags. Served and saved the Country.
The Navy. Accomplished Officer. Swallowed up. Father and Sons. Final Dis- charge. Gallant Commander. The Boy Sailor. Prize Master. Blockade Runner. Never heard from. The End.
W ITH the exception of the large towns, patriotism in the North did not assume positive or popular action till the attack upon Sumpter and call for troops. Truro promptly discussed the issue, and, as in the war of the Revo- lution, voted to fall in. In May a liberty pole was set up in the south part of the town, with due formalities and enthusiasm. In June a pole measuring one hundred and one half feet, was planted on the hill north of Wilder's. It was a fine specimen of spar work by Isaac Collins, now of Provincetown. A large company was present ; a military turnout discharged cannon, etc. Some of the oldest people of the town, including John Pike, John Mayo and Mrs. Sally Collins, the latter over ninety years of age, hoisted the flag amid long cheers and patriotic songs. Able speeches were made by Captain Eben Davis of Somerville, Rev. E. W. Noble and others, all of which counciled devotion to the cause and the preservation of the flag at whatever cost. A little later a third pole was raised in North Truro with a like creditable baptism. During the war many meetings were held to discuss war questions
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