OLD HALLETT HOUSE, OSTERVILLE.
A wood-packet runs regularly from Cotuit to Nantucket. It is quite common for the crews of coasting vessels hauled up in the winter to turn to felling wood; in this, as in everything else, is seen a mingling of rural and maritime pursuits. Every mariner knows something of farming, and every farmer is more or less of a sailor. They tell of an action against a town for injuries from a defect in a highway, in which the distance of a certain hole in the road from the traveled path was in question. A town officer had fixed the distance by actual measurement, and the only evidence for the plaintiff was that of a man who simply gave his judgment. Nobody could guess how the plaintiff’s counsel would get around the evidence of the town officer. But he was undaunted. “Gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “both witnesses are honest; one of them is mistaken—which is it? You all know how liable we are, in ciphering or in measuring, to make a mistake of calculation; my good friend, the selectman, probably laid down his foot-rule one time more or less than he thought, and so he is mistaken; but my witness, gentlemen, did not put his trust on any foot-rule: he knew better. As you all know, he has cut more cord-wood than any other man in Barnstable County, and he can measure by his eye infallibly. About his accuracy, therefore, there can be no possible question. The selectman may be wrong; my witness can’t be.”
THE TOWN-CRIER.
The natural ponds of the Cape are among its chief charms. You come upon them everywhere. The smaller ones are much alike, except as nature loves to give to each some shy, peculiar grace. They lie for the most part in an amphitheater, and have neither inlet nor outlet. The bottom and the shore are commonly of white sand, and the water is as clear as crystal and singularly pure.
These ponds are, of course, spring-fed, and there must be an overflow through the loose upper soil by percolation. Many of them are wooded all about and to the very beach, and the trees throw out long branches over the water, and fling their shadows far on its surface. Others are surrounded by pastures divided from each other by rail fences, which project out to deep water to keep the cows of different farms separate. Often a farmhouse, with its barn and sheds, stands on the bank above the pond.
There is no rocky coast upon Cape Cod. The powerful swirl of waves into worn granite race-ways is unknown. Instead of rocks, there are long sand beaches curving as far as the eye can reach, cut, every few miles, by the opening of some little bay or harbor. There are no perils on a bold rocky shore equal to those of Peaked Hill Bars off the white Provincetown sand-hills, seizing vessels in their sunken traps and holding them there to beat in pieces. There is not a mile of coast from Provincetown to Chatham that has not stories to tell of shipwreck. In fact, the history of the whole coast line, inner and outer, of Cape Cod would be a history of disasters, from the time when the pirate ship Whidah was driven ashore in a gale, a century ago, and more than a hundred bodies were washed up on the beach.
HIGHLAND LIGHT, NORTH TRURO, AND NAUSET LIGHT, EASTHAM.
The number of birds on Cape Cod is very great, and among them are many rare ones for the North, such as the black skimmer, or shear-water, and the Maryland yellow-throat. Mr. H. E. Chase, who spends his summers at Hyannisport, has himself counted a hundred and eighteen varieties, and has shot and stuffed a good many of the more interesting.