There is a strong dash of humor about these people. They are piquant Capers, dry and sharp as the sand. One of them was relating that he had once watched for so long a time that he finally fell asleep while crossing the street to his boarding-house, and on going to bed had not waked for twenty-four hours. "Wa'al," said an old fellow, removing a short pipe from between his lips, "you was jest a-cannin' on it up, warn't ye?"
There is quite a colony of Portuguese in Provincetown. In my rambles I met with a band of them returning from the swamp region back of the town. They looked gypsy-like with their swarthy faces and gleaming eyes. The younger women had clear olive complexions, black eyes, and the elongated Madonna faces of their race; the older ones were grisly and witch-like, with shriveled bodies and wrinkled faces. All of them bore bundles of fagots on their heads that our tender women would have sunk under, yet they did not seem in the least to mind them. They chattered merrily as they passed by me, and I watched them until out of sight; for, picturesque objects anywhere, here they were doubly so. They had all gaudy handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and shawls worn sash-wise, and knotted at the hip, the bright bits of warm color contrasting kindly with the dead white of the sand. There were shapely figures among them, but the men's boots they of necessity wore subtracted a little from the symmetry of outline and my admiration.
They number about fifty families—these Portuguese—and are increasing. One citizen expressed a vague apprehension lest they should exclude, eventually, the whites, as the whites had expelled the Indians. And why not? They believe in large families, while we believe in small ones or none at all. The Pilgrims were fewer than they when they came to Cape Cod, though they did believe in large families. Besides, Gaspard Cortereal, a "Portingale," fell in with the land hereabouts before any of our English. The Portuguese are reported to have stocked Sable Island with domestic animals thirty years before Gilbert's coming to Newfoundland.[222] Assuredly, Cortereal had as good a mortgage on the country as Cabot, who did not land, but only beheld it in sailing by. I had found the town effervescent. The killing of a Portuguese by his captain, in a quarrel on board a fishing vessel, had set the whole town talking. Coming from the city, where we average a murder a week, I was quite startled at the measure of horror and indignation the deed excited here. Subsequently I learned that such crimes were rare, and that in this out-of-the-way corner of the land people had quite old-fashioned notions about the value of human life and limb.
MACKEREL.—A FAMILY GROUP.
The cod and mackerel fisheries have been the making of Provincetown, though they complained of dull times when I was there, the fleet not numbering more than fifty or sixty sail. Some schooners go whaling to the Gulf of Mexico, Western Islands, or far up the north coast; but the fares there are poor, they say, and growing poorer. The first mackerel exhibited in the spring in Boston market are taken in Provincetown Harbor.
Former travelers have observed that the art as well as the name of hay-making was applied to the curing of the cod here, the fish, when made, being stacked in the same manner. Cattle are reported to have sometimes eaten them in lieu of salt hay. When the fishing season was at its height, it must have been something to have seen—the length and breadth of the town over-spread with cod-fish, occupying the front yards and intervals between the houses. A good wife then, instead of going to the garden for vegetables, would bring in a cod-fish from the flakes. Then the hook was well baited.
I suppose the phrase "cod-fish aristocracy" did not originate on the Cape, but may have a more ancient beginning than is generally believed, as the Dutch were, in the year 1347, engaged in a civil war which lasted many years, the rival parties being called "Hooks" and "Cod-fish," respectively. The former supported Margaret, Countess of Holland; the latter, William, her son.