[3] See Des Barres’ accurate chart of the coast.
[4] In the northwest quarter of the township, on Barnstable Bay, is Namskeket Creek, which is three quarters of a mile long, and which, as far as it runs, is the dividing line between Orleans and Harwich [now Brewster.] Description of Orleans, in 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., VIII., 188.—Ed.
[5] The beach where this ship was stranded still bears the name of Old Ship, and it is said that some portions of the wreck were to be seen about seventy years ago. See 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii., 144.—Ed.
[6] A more close examination of the vessel showed this to be incorrect. The charred surface of plank was found in close contact with timbers which had not been burned at all. The inference is, that the plank was partially charred, while being heated for the purpose of bending it,—the modern process of steaming, not having yet come into vogue.
[7] This was not to be, however. For, a few months after, the capricious sea exhumed her once more, when the wreck was removed beyond and above high-water mark.
In the winter of 1860–61, in a storm, a new channel of sufficient depth for fishing-boats to pass out and in, opened in the beach, a short distance south of where the wreck lay. Through this channel the tide ebbed and flowed; and such was its effect on the currents that a cove or indentation was made in the beach nearly opposite the grave of the Sparrow-Hawk. This indentation became deeper and deeper, until at length the hull revisited the glimpses of the day. At the time of this writing, the channel and the cove have disappeared; in their place is a straight line of sea-beach, and there are ten feet of sand where the old vessel lay. But for this accidental opening and consequent abrasion of the beach, the vessel might, indeed, have remained “undiscovered for ages.”
[8] The first recorded division of these meadows was in 1750.—The inference is that they were in process of formation up to that time, but had not become valuable for mowing until that date.
The salt-meadows have a certain frontage along the beach, the boundaries being usually a stake and stones. These are occasionally found outside the beach, which has travelled inland. Leander Crosby, Esq., found one of these, a cedar stake, where the tide ebbed and flowed. It was marked with the initials, “R. S.” Doubtless, Richard Sparrow.
[9] See Morse’s Universal Geography, I., 357, ed. 1793.
[10] This refers to our first edition, which comprised the first thirty-eight pages of this work