Old Fish Wharf, Cape Cod
The Double House is different; the two-story house is different; the steep-roofed house is different; and so are the houses built by summer people. There are even a few houses made of old windmills, with three stories: living-room on the ground floor, little bedroom on the second floor, tiny bedroom up aloft, and a look-out that is almost level with the windmill sails.
But let us stick to our own experience. In our own house, and in those of the neighbors around us, you see delicate white paneling around the fireplace up to the ceiling; an antique china closet with its old copper-lustre and sprigged ware; white wainscoting around the room up to the level of the window-sills; exquisite moulding all around the windows and doors; in short, it is the simplest little house in the world, in plan, with unexpected beauty of detail. Braided mats on the floor, a fire in the stove, and a breeze from the Azores scudding over our roof—there certainly is good comfort even in dead of winter on the Cape.
We are glad that the Pilgrims were "joyfull" at the sight of "Cap-Codd." They decided not to pause there, but to "stande for ye southward to finde some place aboute Hudsons river for their habitation." But they were turned back by the "deangerous shoulds and roring breakers," and were thankful to bear up again along the Atlantic side of the Cape until they got into harbor, "wher they ridd in safetie."
In our intervals of fair weather, we visited the places where they stopped: Chatham where they were turned back, Provincetown where they waded ashore, Truro where they camped for the night and explored the Pamet River, and Corn Hill where they found "diverce faire Indean baskets filled with corne." All this country was as wintry as the Pilgrims found it, with long streaks of snow caught in the beach-grass on the tops of the camel-back dunes. From the crest of one dune, we watched the sun dropping over the harbor until it rested on the water, like a great luminous net-float drifting off to sea.
The Pilgrim Monument, Provincetown
Provincetown we saw in a flying snow-squall, all the marine colors so loved by the artists softened in the snowy light, even the strange blue of a guineaboat by the fish-wharf. Hollyhock Lane was only a narrow passageway of frosty stubble, and the seagulls winging over looked ghostly against the pale sky. The wharves, the monument, the lighthouse, and the sails in the harbor were blurred by the fine flakes that filled the air.