YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY HiT H4i ,1 * i*j ¦ ¦I [ t Location of Towns mentioned ^^^^.^ AUTOMOBILE ROUTES FOLLOWING |\ STATE HIGHWAYS ^ FROVINC PUBLISHED BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY A GARDEN ROSARY. THE HOUSE OF FRIENDSHIP. OUR COMMON ROAD. CAPE COD NEW AND OLD. Illustrated. CAPE COD NEW AND OLD Pronnoetown from Tovm Hill CAPE COD New ^ Old BY AGNES EDWARDS Vo, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOUIS H. RUYL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Cbe %U)tr£itie Crests Camicftise COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY AGNES EDWARDS PRATT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published May zqi8 3\8 -p^vJ\i- « ^ 5 S v^ To him whose feet have so often tramped the Cape Cod moors and beaches: whose hands have wrought beauty in many of her neglected places; and whose spirit has become one with the sunshine and simplicity of this wide horizon — TO MY FATHER JOHN JAY ELMENDORF ROTHERY this book is affectionately dedicated CONTENTS The Lost Road : A Foreword . . . xi I. The Cape Cod Canal 1 II. Bourne and the Cape Cod Canal . . 4 III. Sandwich — The Oldest Cape Town . 22 IV. Barnstable — The County Seat . . 39 V. Yarmouth and Cape Cod Methodism . 59 VI. New Industries and Old in Dennis . 72 VII. Brewster and Cape Cod Architecture . 88 VIII. Orleans 101 IX. Eastham and the Agricultural Future of the Cape 116 X. Wellfleet and Cape Fishing . . . 126 XI. Truro 139 XII. Provincetown 149 XIII. Chatham and the Life-saving Service . 170 XIV. Harwich and the Cape Cod Schools . 187 XV. Falmouth the Prosperous .... 198 XVI. By a Cape Cod Pond 216 XVII. A Forgotten Corner of Cape Cod . ILLUSTRATIONS Frontispiece xi xvi 1 34 Old Provincetown from Town Hill . An Old Windmill at Cataumet The Crossways, Cataumet The New York Boat in the Canal A Brewster Clipper .... Richard Bourne teaching the Indians The Author's Home at Cataumet, with Mill, facing The Txjpper House in Sandwich . The Old Chuech in Sandwich, /acing' An Old Cape Cod House .... Cape Cod Types: Indian, Puritan, Portuguese, Finn, StnviMER Resident The Barnstable Marshes, /acingr . Seafaring Men Yarmouth's Main Street, facing Dennis Bird-Houses .... Cranberry-Pickers, /acin^ . Salt-Works at Dennis An Old Fireplace A Brewster Doorway, /acire^ . A Cape Cod Stagecoach . 363839 5659 6072. 8487 8890 101 X ILLUSTRATIONS Duck-shooting, /acmfir 106 Early Camp-Meeting 116 Agriculture, /acing' 116 Celery-growing 125 Building a Whaling-Ship 126 The Wellfleet Man is First op All a Seaman, facing 126 Leaving Provincetown 138 Grand View Farm, Truro 139 On the Truro Highway, /aci'wjr . . . 140 Provincetown Sand-Dunes 149 The Pilgrim Memorlal Monument at Province- town, /acin^ 152 The Twin Lights of Chatham .... 170 The Life-Savers, /aczTt^ 182 An Old Salt . 186 A Cape Cod School 187 A Street in Harwich, /ocm^ 192 Through Pine-Wood Roads 197 Shiverick Pond, Falmouth 198 Village Green, Falmouth, /acmg' .... 198 An Old-fashioned Garden 215 A Cape Cod Pond 216 Mashpee Indians 226 Canaumet Neck, Mashpee 239 THE LOST ROAD A FOREWORD IT was not so very long ago — only ten or fifteen years — that every spring and fall witnessed a picturesque and fragmentary pageant, winding its leisurely way along the sandy road from Boston to Cape Cod. First there would come a couple of well-bred horses, driven either by a gentleman who continually and impatiently shook the thickly settling dust from his cloak, or by an imperturbable groom in livery. Behind these there would be xii THE LOST ROAD another horse, or may be two, being led from the back seat. Possibly there would be another carriage attached to the first. This entourage was being engineered to or from one of those charming summer places on Cape Cod which — more rare then than they are to-day be cause of their inaccessibility — had something of the air of feudal estates. It was quite neces sary to bring your own tea and tacks and cut sugar and glue in those days, for the village stores furnished no such luxuries and few ne cessities. Now the mail comes three times daily, and the automobile has brought the summer cottage within a few easy hours of Boston. To-day, on Saturday afternoons, the well-oiled highway is alive with glancing cars, and on the great drawbridge over the canal at Buzzard's Bay on holidays two traflSc police men are kept busy from dawn to dusk. We will not say that the modern way is not as good or even better than the old way; that the thermos bottle does not fulfill its mission as acceptably as did the chafing-dish, which we were wont to set up in a meadow, and make THE LOST ROAD xiii our tea upon ; or that the frequent garage does not prove as friendly as did the rambling livery stable where the gentleman used to stop at midday, and see that the horses were properly rubbed down, fed and watered, before the twenty-mile drive in the afternoon. But the old way was a charming way, and we who knew it well recall it with affectionate memories. Memories that, like ribbons at a children's party, if followed to their proper conclu sion, reveal a sugar plum at the end. Mem ories of a little town in which we once found ourselves quite as inexplicably as in the town in a dream — although, perhaps, the devious turnings of the unmarked roads were respon sible for our straying. Here a river ran one side of the village street; white cottages, hedged by lilacs, dotted the other. Children, shy-eyed and wondering, gazed at us, and the old ladies, like the decent country dames in a rural English shire, looked soberly forth. We stopped and asked for a drink of water, and while we were drinking, peeked surreptitiously at the thrifty little house, with its well-kept xiv THE LOST ROAD bits of ancient furniture — fain to linger longer, but ashamed of the obviousness of our excuse. At last, reluctantly, we drove away, and never again, in our subsequent searchings, did we ever find that village on any trip, either to or from the Cape. Perhaps when the sign-boards were put up at the crossways, directing trav elers "To All Points on the Cape," the minia ture hamlet saw its opportunity of withdraw ing into its idyllic seclusion. Memories, too, of large old mansions, which originally stood near the sea, and from whose carved and fan- lighted doors sea captains issued grandly forth. But when we discovered them, we found a desolate marsh where once the sea had been, and in the dim, echoing house only a few de caying relics of the past. You might occasion ally purchase genuine antiques, a decade ago, if you were not too proud to carry them away, secured with a hitching-rope to the back of your wagon. Memories of picnics in apple orchards where the drowsy silence was un broken by any shriek of the passing motor . . . When I close my eyes in reminiscence of those THE LOST ROAD xv semi-annual journeys to the Cape, I seem to feel again the gentle jog of the yellow-wheeled dogcart, in which Joe Jefferson of fragrant memory on the Cape had driven many miles, and which followed, quaintly enough, on the heels of our old gray mare. Automobiles were becoming more frequent then, and many of them, as they whizzed by, paused to smile at our gypsy paraphernalia, packed naively on behind our open cart. The blue eyes and peachblow face of my sunny-haired friend be side me probably did not detract in the least from the picture we presented. WTio has time, to-day, to notice whether the tourists to the Cape are blue-eyed or brown, or whether it is a coffee-pot or an automobile kit that is slung on behind? The old road to the Cape is lost — and with it much of the dust, both of reality and ro mance. But a new road has opened, bring ing every year hundreds and hundreds of automobiles; and literally thousands of men and women who would otherwise never breathe the balmy air or see those windswept moors. xvi THE LOST ROAD Surely, we old Cape-Codders must and do greet them all hospitably. It is for their special welcoming that this little book is written. And if, perhaps, it is touched too fondly by the spirit of reminiscence, that fault may be for given by the newcomers, and may endear it more to those who are not strangers to Cape Cod. CAPE COD NEW AND OLD T CAPE COD NEW AND OLD Chapter I THE CAPE COD CANAL O a stranger, strolling in the evening along the pleasant Bournedale Valley, the hour of nine is heralded by a spectacular phe nomenon. From far down the narrow strip of water, which is called the Cape Cod Canal, but which seems, from this secluded spot, as quiet as a country brook, there flashes a piercing, boring, burrowing shaft of light: a terrifically powerful incandescence — spring ing from an unseen source, and cleaving a dazzling path for miles ahead. Then, as if awakened from " the first sweet sleep of night" by the unnatural sunrise, there vibrates the roar of a foghorn, which, in turn, arouses 2 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD echoes far and near. On the bridge at Buz zard's Bay bells ring and ring, and ring again; red lights appear; the two mighty jaws of the drawbridge slowly rise and stand open, darkly silhouetted against the sky. People gather at the crossroads ; automobiles, halted by the lifting of the bridge, rapidly form a string of twinkling beads upon the incline. And then, slowly, irresistibly, majestically, the New York boat — gleaming white and hung with lights like a fairy ship — appears. It is strange to see this floating palace coming through the Cape Cod meadows; strange to hear, as if at our very doorsteps, the laughter and scatter ing voices of people that crowd the open decks. And strangest of all, to be, for one brief instant, sucked into the orbit of that great searchlight, which, like the peering eye of some monstrous Cyclops, flings its penetrating ray here — there — ^ up — down — illuminating as in a blazing noon the shyest path and the tiniest cottage that comes within its ray. As the boat steams between the lifted sec tions of the bridge, voices on the shore call out THE CAPE COD CANAL 3 greetings, and voices from the boat respond. For a moment there is that curious inter change of human intimacy that may only pass between strangers. The boat steams on and out. The jaws descend and clamp together, the bells cease ringing, the automobiles speed across the bridge, and the idlers disperse along the country road. The New York boat has passed. Chapter II BOURNE AND THE CAPE COD CANAL THE town of Bourne, from which the famous canal starts, marks the geographi cal beginning of Cape Cod. Strangers in this part of the country are frequently puzzled by the colloquial use of the word " town," for each Cape town — of which there are fifteen — usually contains half a dozen or even a dozen small hamlets within its confines, each one with its separate name, post-oflfice, railway station, and distinctive personality. These smaller settlements might very easily be called " towns," but the local way is prettier: they are " neighborhoods." Major-General Leonard Wood was born in Pocasset; the yellow house — square and vine-clad, on its wide lawn — BOURNE AND THE CANAL 5 stands at the crossroads. And Pocasset is a neighborhood in the town of Bourne. So also Buzzard's Bay — from which the canal ac tually starts — is a neighborhood in the town of Bourne. The name of Buzzard's Bay is perhaps bet ter known than that of the mother district. Buzzard's Bay is a railroad center and a sum mer resort. It is at this point that the first Cape coolness strikes through the train, rumbling down from Boston laden with sum mer folk and heat; it is from here that cars connect for Provincetown and Chatham, and to and from Wood's Hole; it is here that Joseph Jefferson and Grover Cleveland had their summer homes, — Crow's Nest and Gray Gables, — as well as a score of other eminent men before and since. But in spite of its prominence, Buzzard's Bay is only a small portion of Bourne, which existed before there was any Joseph Jefl^erson, or any railroad to the Cape, or any canal. As you glance out from your car window, or from your flying automobile, even if you 6 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD alight and look around, you may not find here, at first, anything that seems particularly unique. There are characteristic Cape Cod houses, of course, — gray or white, shingled or clapboarded, a few with porches, but most of them without, a story and a half high, with the beauty of simplicity and the lure of modest content. The extraordinarily good roads that criss-cross here are part of the network that threads the whole Cape and makes it possible to spin from one end to the other as smoothly and cleanly as on a magic carpet. There are telephones, a public library, and high school and town hall — all the paraphernalia of a modern and comfortable Cape town. For Cape Cod is very prosperous these days: her hard struggle wresting a living from the sea is over. Now she gets her bread and butter from her cranberry bogs, and more and more fre quently a goodly coating of jam from the per quisites from the summer people. Of course it is the canal that gives Bourne her present emi nence, but the present is built upon a past both honorable and charming. So before we BOURNE AND THE CANAL 7 investigate the canal, it might be well to stroll down the quiet streets, and hear something of those far-off days when Jonathan Bourne, for whom the town was most fehcitously named, gathered under the mantle of his preaching all the Indians from Middleboro to Provincetown. This good man was a friend of Eliot, and taught almost one hundred and fifty of the red men to read the Eliot Bible. He began his labors in 1658, and thirty years later the num ber of praying Indians — praying under his tutelage in twenty-two different places on the Cape — had reached a thousand and fourteen, including six hundred warriors. One likes to read of his patient and loving labors among these aborigines who had received — and were about to receive — anything but loving treatment from the hands of their white brothers. One likes to remember that the town was named after him, and that his de scendants still live in it. There is a story that several years after his death a child of his was stricken by a mortal disease and given up by 8 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD the doctors. But the faithful Indians, who cherished a reverent and faithful memory for the pastor of their souls, came from miles around with their medicine men, and, begging the mother's permission, treated the child with wizardry and incantation and herbs and simples, working hour after hour with zealous fanaticism. The story is concluded — and we have no reason to doubt it — that the child recovered. And, after all, there have been stranger revelations of faith and its healing fruit. The good Jonathan Bourne finally went to live with the Indians at Mashpee, and died there — after a long and singularly exalted life. The serious chronicle comes down to us with a few amusing irrelevancies. We hear that at one time Bourne hired an Indian to build a stone wall around a portion of his land, promising him a barrel of rum when it was finished. It was no meager estate, for legend has it that he had been presented by the In dians with all the land he could blaze between sunup and sundown — which made him the BOURNE AND THE CANAL 9 owner of the large area which bears his name and which extended from Falmouth to Ware- ham and infringed a trifle on both. However, the Indian, spurred on by the waiting reward, worked with a vengeance — and worked for years. But when he got within a few hundred yards of the end, he fell dead, and so he never got his drink, after all. The stone wall still runs through the woods, and although it no longer bounds anything, it is in a fair state of preservation. The whole history of Bourne is associated with this family. Ruins of the original home stead may still be seen near the banks of the canal, and from the private graveyard, not so very long ago, a thigh bone was dug up, twenty- seven inches long, the last earthly reminder of some eight -footer. As a matter of fact, the en tire digging of the canal was complicated by old legends and curious fragments of the past. At the curve near Bournedale there was a tradition of a slave buried with a barrel of money, and with the assurance that if his bones were disturbed the offender would be 10 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD cursed. The money did not materialize during the excavation; but the curse did. It is a curi ous fact that practically all the difficulties in cident to the building of the canal, and all the accidents in it since then, have occurred at this very spot. Ever since the earliest days there has been speculation concerning such a waterway as has at last been achieved. The reason is ob vious. The Cape stretches out to sea, sixty- five miles on the north shore and eighty on the south. The hook at Provincetown has caught thousands of unwary and unfortunate ves sels : during the last sixty-five years alone more than two thousand vessels were wrecked in the waters of the Cape and seven hundred lives lost. It was evident that a canal would not only minimize the danger of that terrifically rough route, but would shorten it immensely. Many places through which to cut such a wa terway have seemed tempting, but the line be tween Buzzard's Bay and Barnstable Bay was through an alluvial deposit only eight miles in width, with a surface elevation of twenty -nine BOURNE AND THE CANAL 11 feet above tidewater — which points finally won for it its selection. The Pilgrims, educated to the convenience of canals by their sojourn in the Low Countries, had vainly tried to com plete one across the Cape. The old charts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries indi cate the possible routes they considered. Later the High Court of the Colony ordered an ex amination and survey. Then George Wash ington decreed that " the interior barrier should be cut in order to give greater security to navi gation and against the enemy." Later the canal project was vigorously agitated by Gen eral Knox, Secretary GaUatin, Winthrop, and Thorndike. In 1860 the Legislature of Massa chusetts pubhshed an exhaustive report set ting forth the feasibility of such an undertak ing. The agitation was incessant and fruitless: it was not until 1909 that anything was actu ally done. Then Mr. August Belmont, who was born on the Cape and has always had an affec tion for the place, conferred with Mr. William Barclay Parsons, who had been a member of the Panama Canal Commission and had also 12 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD constructed the New York Subway, and three years later, with flags and floats and bells and lights, the canal was opened. The casual traveler who pauses upon the drawbridge at Buzzard's Bay or at Sagamore, and gazes up and down the peacefully curving stream, seeing the little vessels slide under his feet, while the great jaws of the bridge open for the passage of the taller ones, has hardly more conception of the value of this waterway than might an Indian, returning from his happy hunting-grounds after three hundred years, and standing awe-stricken as the vast " white- winged birds," as he called all ships, float through his level pasture land down to the great ocean. Most tourists are amazed to learn that the canal — following the line of Bournedale Val ley — is thirteen miles long, and that on each side runs a flawless automobile road; that it is a hundred feet wide at the bottom and three hundred at the top; that it saves seventy miles of the distance between New York and Bos ton. That is probably as far as they care to BOURNE AND THE CANAL 13 follow the statistics. It means little to them to be told that this is the only large canal — ex cept those of Suez and Manchester — which has been built by private enterprise (incident ally, the majority of the Suez Canal stock is now owned by the British Government and that of the Manchester Canal by the city of Manchester); or that it cost twelve million dollars; or that while it is not deep enough for warships of the battleship class, it could be made deep enough, and that it is pledged to surrender itself for Government use in time of war; or that twenty-five thousand vessels, carrying approximately twenty-five million tons of freight, used to pass around the Cape through Vineyard Sound — a tonnage equal to that of the Suez Canal. Wliile it is not possible even yet to estimate the precise tonnage pass ing through the Cape Cod Canal, and while the great boom of prosperity which it promised to bring has come more slowly than was expected; nevertheless, this canal ranks with one of the most important in the world, and if it had been cut through sooner might have gained a 14 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD marine supremacy equal to that of the Hudson River. The work was first undertaken with suction dredges, but great boulders, some of them weighing twenty tons, barred the way. The natives recalled the old legend about the Devil, who came down the Cape one fine day step ping from one hill to another to keep from get ting his feet wet. His apron was full of bould ers, and as he entered the town of Bourne a chickadee laughed at him. In a rage he seized ¦a boulder from his apron and started to throw it at the bird. But he stumbled and fell, and the boulders landed in Bournedale and are pointed out from one generation of children to the other as the place where the Devil broke his apron strings. However that may be, the huge boulders were there when the suction dredges were installed, and shovels and locomotives were set to tugging at them, — mammoth dental instruments against a colossal mouth, — each one bringing up twenty thousand tons of earth a day, or as much in every scoop as could be shoveled by one man working ten BOURNE AND THE CANAL 15 hours. The material was dumped upon scows and deposited in deep water. Two machine shops had to be set up, — one at each end of the canal, — as the work necessitated con stant repairs and the making of new imple ments. Two dikes, something like the Gam- boa at Panama, were built, and the central part of the canal was dug with steam shovels. Elec trically driven pumps kept the water down when the men were working below tide. When the work was completed the dikes were dy namited, and the two bays brought together. The canal is a sea-level one, and is constructed without a tidal lock, the necessity for one be ing obviated by the three hours' difference in time between the periods of slack water on the two sides of the Cape. It is easy to see for one's self any of the most interesting features of the canal. The three drawbridges — one at Buzzard's Bay, one at Bourne, and one at Sagamore — open spec tacularly in a prodigious yawn at the passing through of all tall vessels. The double line of lights curve with the curve of the canal. 16 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD making a sort of brilliant Broadway across the quiet landscape. There is a complete tele phone and telegraph system; a transatlantic cable; and signals to blow and sparkle in time of fog and when the bridges are lifted. These precautions are not too many, for the ghastly accident of a few winters ago is still vivid in many minds. It was during a blinding snow storm, and an automobile was on the draw bridge when it opened. Imagine the horror of the occupants when they felt rising under them a sheer vertical wall, as impossible to scale as the side of a house, and saw gaping be hind them a deadly chasm, between the shore end of the draw and the bridge. For only a moment could the brakes hold to that per pendicular surface. To jump was immediate death; to stay was to defer the end only a few seconds. Slowly at first and then with terrific speed the auto slid backward down the incline, reached the opening and crashed through the darkness to the black rocks and rushing water forty feet below . . . Down toward Sandwich one can see the mas- BOURNE AND THE CANAL 17 sive breakwater, three thousand feet long, and containing three hundred and fifty thousand tons of granite. At the Buzzard's Bay end the passage out has been deepened for five miles, in the same fashion as the Panama Bay on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. As the franchise gave the Canal Company the right to buy or condemn property if neces sary, in order that it might have a canal zone of one thousand feet at each end, and six hun dred feet through the central part, this even tually resulted in several lawsuits. In one of these. Gray Gables, the home of former Presi dent Cleveland, was involved. The canal also divided several villages — in Bournedale the railroad station is on one side, and the vil lage is on the other, and one must cross by means of a ferry. A relocation of several miles of railroad was necessary, to which the rail road officials showed no objection, realizing that whatever cheapens water communication benefits the mills, and that products of the mills will be shipped over the railway. And mills and factories are confidently expected 18 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD to line the banks of the canal at some future date. We who idly stand watching the traffic of the world pass along this little stream of water, or who come up in automobiles to see the New York boat pass through, have almost forgot ten — if we ever heard of it — the first trad ing-station made upon this spot. On the south bank of the Manomet River, — the Indian name has been changed to Monument by care less use, — halfway between Gray Gables and where the railway station was built in 1880, the Pilgrims placed a trading-post in 1627. Here it was that on September 2 of that year Miles Standish sailed up from the Scusset River to meet the sloops of the merchant De Rasieres, who had been sent out by New Amsterdam to answer the starvation call of the English pio neers. Here a trading-post — or pinnance — was established, where the colonists exchanged sugar and linen stuffs and other goods with the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the colonists of Virginia. There was no settlement there: only a rude station, as the forerunner of the BOURNE AND THE CANAL 19 communication that now flows so easily along the whole Atlantic Coast. There is another tale to be told about Bourne and the Manomet River; perhaps the most strange, surely the saddest, of all. It was in 1756 that a company of people, speaking French, appeared here in seven two-masted boats. They landed, and came wearily ashore, explaining, as best they could in their broken patois, that they wished to have their vessels and their women and children carted across the land to the opposite bay. One can pic ture them, gathered in a wistful group on the sands, the men with stocking caps and the women with white kerchiefs on their heads, while the children, like and unlike the sober little Puritans who wondered at them, held tightly to a paternal hand or maternal petti coat. These ninety souls were the last remnant of the seven thousand Acadians who had been driven from the exquisite Annapolis Valley by the British, and, after a heart-breaking period of exile, were now making one despairing bold 20 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD rush for home again, snatching at any hand to help them. There is extant a letter from Silas Bourne to Colonel Otis concerning them, which says: " They profess to be bound for Boston and want their boats carted across to the opposite bay. They have their women and their children with them, and they say were last from Rhode Island, but previously from Nova Scotia. I fear they may continue, when once in the ocean, to miss Boston, and think it safe, there fore, to detain them." Thus it was that the pitiful little band — Papists and strangers in a strange land — were distributed in lots among the various towns for "safe keeping" — not to mention regeneration. In due time the court ordered their boats sold. It is safe to presume that none of these pathetic wayfarers ever reached home, or came in touch again with any of their own kin, who were also in "safe keeping" in other coast towns. Not a trace of them remains on Cape Cod: not a name on a hill or path. There are no descendants to preserve even the faint- BOURNE AND THE CANAL 21 est tradition of the past. The whole band seems to have been completely obliterated — swallowed up forever by the congregation of "the Lord's people." It was in the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, that a great storm shifted the sands near Scusset Neck and revealed traces of what might have once been a French settlement. Here it was, in all probability, that the unfortunate Acad ians had gathered; near the harbor where they could look out over the wide waste of water that separated them from all that they held dear — from Grand Pre. and the noble river. A pathetic folk, doomed to live and finally to die, among a hostile people: foreigners, igno rant of the language about them; Romanists without a priest — their homesickness and despair are better told by Longfellow in his sad and gentle story of "Evangeline." But we, to-day, untangling the strong, plain threads that made up the warp and woof of simple Puritan life in Bourne, pause a moment as our fingers touch this solitary silken strand -^ so rudely broken, long ago. Chapter III SANDWICH— THE OLDEST CAPE TOWN SANDWICH, Yarmouth, and Barnstable all date their incorporation from 1639, but Sandwich stubbornly insists that she is the oldest of the three. And she is right. Although, as explained in the previous chap ter, there had been a trading-post established on the southern shore of the Manomet River in 1627, yet there was no English settlement on the Cape until April 3, 1637, when ten men from Saugus were magnanimously given per mission by the court at Plymouth to "have the liberty to view a place to sit down in, and have sufficient land for threescore families." It is rather amusing to hear of liberty to "sit SANDWICH 23 down" granted to a people who, from the be ginning of their history, have shown anything but a desire to "sit down," but rather a most determined disposition to range from pole to pole, either by sea or land. However, these ten men, — perhaps glad to "get up" from Plymouth, — after hunting around a little while, selected a place of residence, and named it Sandwich, after a seaport in Kent. The names of these ten men are noteworthy, not only because of the distinction of the orig inal bearers, but because of the perpetuation of them in Cape Cod records ever since. They were Edmund Freeman, Henry Feake, Thomas Dexter, Edward Dillingham, William Wood, John Carman, Richard Chadwell, William Almy, Thomas Tupper, and George Knott. Sir Charles Tupper, the last of the fathers of the Canadian Confederacy, who died in Lon don in 1916, was a direct descendant of this "man from Saugus." Soon after the settlement was begun, the ever-vigilant Plymouth Colony sent two com missioners to Sandwich to set forth the 24 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD "bounds of the land granted there." They were commanded to go "with all convenient speed," which probably averaged about three miles an hour; and it quickens school-day memories to know that their names were Miles Standish and John Alden. They evidently did their duty according to directions, for the lit tle town immediately entered upon a thor oughly regular and decorous career: so deco rous, indeed, that it fared ill with any but the strictest, as the records of two hapless bachelors who had innocently undertaken to "sit down" shows. They had no families, and although they were diligently laboring to clear the ground for future uses, they were promptly arraigned in Plymouth for "disorderly keep ing house alone," which throws another light upon the desirability of winning a Priscilla in those days. Church was established; laws rigidly en forced; meadow-land which had previously been laid out was again "divided by equal proportion, according to every man's estate " ; a common for the pasturage of young cattle SANDWICH 25 was decided upon. And then, having safely found a secure and pleasant place which they could call their own, and in which they could enjoy the pleasure of individual freedom more easily than at Plymouth, they unanimously decreed that "no other inhabitants would be received into the town, or have lands assigned to them by the committee, without the con sent of Mr. Leverich [the minister] and the church " — 'a complacent narrowness entirely characteristic of the early records of our fore fathers. Sandwich — that village which lies so dreamily around its willow-shaded pool, with the peaceful graveyard basking in the sun, one of the sweetest of all the Cape towns, es pecially to those who know the way of ap proach through the woods, and to whom the sylvan clearing blooms forth in ever lovely, ever fresh surprise — was a stern place in those early days. The winters were severe. The settler had to modify his English ideas of agriculture, and to feed his cattle on the wild grass of the salt marshes. He lived in 26 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD a thatched hut, and worked from morning till night. He fought blackbirds, crows, and pigeons in swarms. He raved against the wolves and they raved back at him, until the last one was shot by a teamster from his load of wood in 1839. ^ Before there was a gristmill in Sandwich, men either had to walk to Plymouth and back with a grist of corn on their shoulders, or to follow the Indian fashion of pounding corn in a mortar. There was no sawmill nearer than Scituate. As though they did not have trouble enough with the elements and the inevitable difficul ties of pioneers, as soon as these intrepid first settlers had subdued their surroundings enough to enable them to draw breath, they turned themselves to an energetic campaign against the Quakers. ^ At one time Sandwich, in despair about these fierce ma rauders, proposed a palisade fence, ten feet high, to run from Buzzard's Bay to Massachusetts Bay, so as to keep out the wolves. Objections were made quite strenuously by the peo ple on the other side of the fence, who, with good show of reason, did not relish the idea of being deliberately penned up with the brutes, even for the sake of accommodating their neighbors. SANDWICH 27 Cape Cod has been entirely free from the witchcraft mania which swept the North Shore, but her behavior toward the Quakers fills a page as shocking as any hangings on Gallows Hill in Salem. There was more trouble in Sandwich than in the other towns of Barn stable County, not necessarily because there was more bitterness, but because there were more Quakers. The persecution began in 1657 and lasted for four years, until Charles the Second put an end to it. The laws were exces sively cruel and were cruelly enforced. E.n- tertaining a Quaker — even for a quarter of an hour — cost five poxmds, the year's pay of a laboring man. If any one saw a Quaker and did not inform the constable, — even if he had to go six miles for the purpose, — he was pun ishable at the discretion of the court. For allowing preaching in one's own house, the fine was forty shillings : in addition the preacher was fined forty shillings, and each auditor forty shillings, although no one of them might have spoken a word. The Quakers were fined for every Sunday that they went to their own 28 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD meeting-house, and for every Sunday that they did not go to that of the Puritans. In three years, besides other punishment, there were taken from them cattle, horses, and sheep to the value of seven hundred pounds. The fines of William Allen alone amounted to eighty- seven pounds. In addition to this, they were flogged, banished, and had their ears cut off. And yet the people of Sandwich insisted then — and maintain to this day — that they personally had no animosity toward this per secuted sect, but were forced to these extreme measures by the Plymouth Colony. The facts, indeed, seem to substantiate this claim. There are many records of a Quaker having to be sent to a neighboring town for punishment, local feeling running so high against such treat ment in Sandwich. Ultimately so many of the citizens were fined for expressing sympathy with Quaker views that the town constable could not perform his duties and a special marshal from Plymouth was appointed to fill his place ! This marshal — ¦ Barlow — would have inspired Dickens with material for an- SANDWICH 29 other Squeers of Dotheboys Hall. When sent to levy on the goods of a Quaker he used to seize the article which could be least spared, — such as the family kettle, — thus revealing a malignity only equaled by its ingenuity. In order to understand the vindictive in tolerance of the Puritans toward a people who, all agreed, were inoffensive enough in their personal lives, one must realize that a com munity like this was built upon the belief that the ministerial office was sacred. The church organization was an essential part of the social and ethical life. Therefore, any people who merely followed what they called the "inward light," and who had no consideration for paid preachers, believing that the Divine Revela tion comes to all alike, were dangerous, not only religiously but civically. This, coupled with the irritation we always feel toward a thing which we do not quite understand, ex plains in a measure the Puritans' determina tion to drive the Quakers out of the colony. And it accounts, also, for the difference be tween this and the witchcraft mania : for while 30 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD the latter was due to individual hatred and terror, the former was based upon a system atic policy of government. Like many apparently yielding people, the Quakers were tenacious. Floggings, ear-crop- pings, and fines did not discourage them. They neither gave up their beliefs nor their habita tions, although many of them did leave Sand wich, for Falmouth, where they were kindly received, gently treated, and where they have a meeting-house of their own to this day. Sandwich, besides being typical of this sec tion of Massachusetts in much of its early his tory, and in much of its characteristic scenery, in which woodland, moor, pond, and ocean blend in ever-charming, ever-changing vistas, is also typical in that it was once the seat of manufacturing as well as maritime activities. The glass-works, which were established in 1825, were among the then largest in the world. There are still, in many Cape Cod parlors, specimens of this Sandwich glass : colored gob lets, engraved pitchers, lamp globes, a sugar bowl made by hand for a wedding gift, mir- SANDWICH 31 rors, funny little glass animals in their natural colors, blown inside a glass bell, — a perpetual mystery to the children who occasionally crept into the sacred room to steal a look at the marvelous curiosities. There are doors in some of the old houses of the old glass-workers with engraved glass inset as panels, and many a humble cottage glitters with an array of cut- glass, for which the blanks were made at Sand wich. There were flint-glass-works in Sand wich, too, the most important industry in the county, and a tack factory which was de stroyed by fire in 1883. To-day the large manufacturing plant which one sees at Sagamore, — one of the "neighbor hoods" of Sandwich, extending over a mile in length, and with the usual accompaniment near by of employees' houses, — is the largest freight-car plant in New England. This Keith Car and Manufacturing Company was estab lished as early as 1864, when Sagamore still bore the Indian name of Scussett, and the founder, Isaac Keith, started the building of wagons. Many of the prairie schooners which 32 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD traveled over the Western desert in '49 were built here, notably the one in which Captain Sutter had sallied forth to find his spectacular fortune of gold. Now ten thousand freight cars can be turned out in one year and shipped to all parts of the world. And with the Cape Cod Canal at its door, the cars may be shipped di rectly from the plant and delivered to their destination. There is an old wood road, barely visible now, which runs straight from Sandwich to Falmouth. No automobile could go through it: in fact, no automobilist would notice its faint traces. But horseback riders, and those few folk who love to tramp through the Cape woods, know it well. This is the Turpentine Road, down which used to be carted the tur pentine made from the pines in this region. Those tall pines have fallen under the tongues of flames, which have lapped the Cape so many times, and scrub oaks have sprung up in their place. The turpentine industry is gone, and this ancient road, with its three ruts, is fast fading into eternal obliteration. SANDWICH 33 It is wholly fitting that the oldest town on the Cape should boast the oldest house. If you are interested in antiques it will pay you to take the Canal Road on your way from Saga more to Sandwich, and make the little detour that will bring you to the Tupper house. You will recognize it immediately, for its sagging framework and small-paned windows betray its age as clearly as do the bent form and dimming eye of an octogenarian. It was built in 1637, and is, without question, the oldest house in America, in spite of the claim so often made for the old stone Van Rensselaer manor house near Albany, New York. It is not merely because its years are many that the Tupper house deserves a respectful survey: it is because they have been honorable as well. When you stand under the shadow of the venerable door, your feet are resting on the very sill where a hundred and thirty-five years after the landing of Columbus, Thomas Tup per stood when he became a householder in the new little town of Sandwich, and where, only this year, there was picked up by a work- 34 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD man a coin marked 1609. The seven genera tions of Tuppers who have lived there suc cessively for two hundred and sixty-seven years have been prominent in the ministry, the army, the navy; in medicine and peda gogy. Sir Charles Tupper, who won for him self not only a place in the British peerage, but also among the list of Canadian benefactors, was only one of this remarkable family, scat tered throughout the length and breadth of the land, and which has recently formed itself into the Tupper Family Association, to restore the old homestead and turn it into a museum. Look well at this venerable house. Note the chimney — almost twelve feet square. Note, too, the mark of the axe on the timbers that are exposed, and the good workmanship re vealed in the corners and the ceilings. Houses like this one were built without studs, the sheathing being nailed perpendicularly to the framework of the house. Pick up one of the old shingles lying at your feet. It was split by hand three hundred years ago, and fastened by a hand-made nail. See how the lower, weather- SANDWICH 35 beaten half is worn to half its original thick ness — and yet the shingle is still good. To day we think a wooden shingle that will last twenty years is exceptionally solid, while our modern nail often rusts out in half that time. Few modern houses, no matter how costly, can claim the beauty of fine workmanship which distinguishes this simple homestead. There are other points of interest in this vicinity: the Daniel Webster Inn, where that eloquent statesman used to put up when on his frequent and well-loved fishing trips to the Cape, and the grave of Joseph Jefferson, the actor whose summer home, "Crow's Nest," was for many years at Buzzard's Bay. Jef ferson's grave, in the Bayview Cemetery by the side of the country road, is marked by a great rough boulder, with a bronze medallion of his keen, kindly profile on one side, and on the other his own words: "And yet we are but tenants ; let us assure ourselves of this, and then it will not be so hard to make room for the new administration, for shortly the Great Landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired." 36 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD At Sagamore Beach, where there is quite a settlement of summer folk, is also the summer headquarters of the Christian Endeavor As sociation, and a favorite place for many con ferences of a progressive nature. At East Sandwich the State maintains a fish hatchery which is restocking many of the ponds of Massachusetts with trout, and also experimenting with land-locked and Chinook salmon.^ The Cape Cod Farm Bureau, which, with the assistance of the United States Depart ment of Agriculture and the Agricultural Col lege, is endeavoring to stimulate and instruct the farmers of the Cape, not only in the latest and best methods of planting and marketing, but in cooperation, was organized at Sand wich, and maintained there until its recent re moval to Hyannis. In the Bureau there is a Home Economics Department also; so, not only the men may profit by the demonstration lectures in spraying, pruning, milk-testing, 1 For a more detailed account see the pages about the Cape fisheries, chap. x. SANDWICH 37 soil-testing, compounding fertilizers, packing and grading apples, etc., but the boys and girls are urged to join garden and canning clubs, and the women are assisted in their special problems of household management, sanita tion, etc.^ These things you can read about when you return home. But there is one thing in Sand wich which you cannot read about; that you must go to see for yourself, or forever lose. Do not leave Sandwich without straying to the little graveyard that lies on the sloping hill side, jutting into the lake. You will see the ancient stones peacefully slanting against the rays of the setting sun, bearing inscriptions almost obliterated by the finger of time. You will see the willows fringing the tranquil waters, and a spire that will remind you of the best of Sir Christopher Wren's fine modeling, white against the soft blue sky. You will see two dark, thimble-shaped linden trees, curi ous accents against the paler background. ' For a more detailed accoimt of the Agricultural Awaken- ing of the Cape, see chap. ix. 38 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD And as you linger in the quiet yet cheerful spot you will, perhaps, see the prettiest of white boats slip out from a bridge that might have been copied from a Chinese plate and slide across the water. You will see these things, and then, if you will close your eyes and open your spirit, you will feel the peace that comes from a place ineffably lovely, ineffably serene. A place which men chose as beautiful and set aside as sacred three hundred years ago, and where for three throbbing centuries good men and good women have been laid reverently to rest. Chapter IV BARNSTABLE — THE COUNTY SEAT IF you should imagine a long picture gal lery — three centuries long, and as wide as from the Atlantic to the Pacific — hung with American types, from the Indian and the Puritan to the twentieth-century business man, you would, if you had a correct view of such a gallery, notice that not an inconsider able portion of it would be occupied by the New England type, in various phases of its development. And you would be struck by even a more detailed classification: the Cape Cod type. Perhaps, however, in order to study this specialized group, it would be better to transfer our imaginations from a national pic ture gallery to a local one; and what more suit- 40 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD able place than the gracious and sedate county seat of Barnstable.'' Barnstable has been the home of many dis tinguished men: James Otis, Samuel A. Otis (member of Congress and father of Harrison Gray Otis), Solicitor-General Davis, Samuel Shaw, Mr. Palfrey (the historian). Governor Hinckley, and Nymphas Marston among them. If we step inside the handsome, gray- pillared court-house, we shall find here, in looking over the ancient records and the yel lowing pictures, portraits from which we our selves will evolve an imaginative gallery. First of all we shall hang the portrait of the Indian; not only because he was the first in habitant of this region, but because he still persists upon it. You may see him any day — not in pure-blooded impressiveness, to be sure, yet with the straight black hair, the erect car riage, and the numberless small traits which characterize the people of Mashpee.^ Next we shall hang the pioneer: of pure Eng lish descent, of high order of intelligence; 1 See chap, xvii, "A Forgotten Corner of Cape Cod." BARNSTABLE 41 grave, severe, upright. Perhaps we may be forgiven if we now put two smaller pictures close to this one ; for, after all, the Puritan was not the only man who came to the new colo nies. Looking back to those early days we are very apt to forget that there were along with the band of sterner personages a number of wits and scamps and wags, seeking adventure rather than religion, and freedom from re sponsibility rather than assumption of it. After the Revolution the reaction against the Puritans encouraged more and more recruits to this jolly crew. They had big Saxon hearts; they tasted wine with Yorick at the tavern, and afterward went their way to Yorick's fate in the graveyard. As they did not write the records, we learn of them chiefly between the fading lines of fines and trials. They were never stanch upholders of the Church, in an age when not to be so was a decided disgrace. Stalwart and rollicking, they infuse a certain ruddy tang into the austere color of those early days. Let us give them some remem brance in our gallery. 42 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD And beside them a small portrait, but a definite one — the high-bred eccentric, sent over to the colonies by some distracted family, glad to find an asylum for a peculiar member. "Characters" they were often called, and their successors still flavor many a New England village. Another portrait, too frequently neglected by the historians, must hang in this line: a dark face, laughing and yet sorrowful, — the face of the negro. The people of Massachusetts have liked to believe that slavery had a very light and very brief hold upon this soil. Rec ords, however, testify all too distinctly that our Puritan fathers, doubtless considering themselves the elect to whom God had given the heathen for an inheritance, not only en slaved captured Indians, but sold them to work in the tropics, where they died almost immediately; that they obtained negroes by importation, purchase, and exchange; that they condemned criminals into slavery as punishment; and that they even enslaved the Quakers at one time. Neither was this a priv- BARNSTABLE 43 ate speculation, but an enterprise of the au thorities of the colony, and existed for over a century and a half without serious challenge. Cotton Mather illustrates the temper of the times toward the Indians in his "Magnalia," in which he explains: "We know not when or how these Indians first became inhabitants of this mighty continent, yet we may guess that probably the Devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hope that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come to de stroy or disturb his absolute Empire over them." In the will of John Bacon, of Barnstable, made in 1730, we get another inimitable speci men of the inconsistency then current. This John Bacon gives to his wife the "use and im provement" of the slave Dinah for her life time, and if "at the death of my said wife, Dinah be still living, I direct my executors to sell her, and to use and improve the money for which she is sold in the purchase of Bibles, and distribute them equally among my said wife's and my grandchildren." 44 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD About 1780 slavery became unprofitable and therefore unpopular in this climate, but it was not until President Lincoln's Proclama tion that it was entirely abolished — a fact which it would be salutary for many a too emphatic New England abolitionist to remem ber. Before we leave this era let us place one more vivid and forever romantic picture against the wall: it is of a young woman, seated upon a scarlet blanket upon a snow-white bull. Before her walks the newly made bridegroom, for this is a bridal procession, and John Alden is leading his wife — ¦ she who was Priscilla Mullen of Barnstable — back to the Plymouth Colony; surely a picturesque flash in the som ber annals of that early history. If we pass over two hundred years we shall recognize anew many of the qualities which distinguish the first settlers. The portraits we place against the wall are still of those of pure English descent. They have married and inter married until nearly every one calls nearly every one else by his or her first name. Uncle BARNSTABLE 45 Simon and Aunt Lizzie and Cousin Abbie are as frequent here as colonels in Kentucky. They are thrifty, law-abiding, intelligent. Their humor is as sharp and dry as the sand on which they live. They are excellently well in formed. And why not, when every other family boasts a member who has sailed around the world and kept his eyes open as he went, bringing back more than silk and fans and coral from his visit to distant shores? In 1880 a case was tried in Barnstable, for which a laviT^er from a distance was summoned. Dur ing the course of his argument he implied that probably none of the jury knew of procedures beyond their own dooryards. Rather nettled by the assumption, some one took the trouble to inquire about that particular jury, and found that eleven out of the twelve had been all over the world, either as masters of their own ves sels or in some business capacity. The twelfth was a substantial farmer. And such an as sortment of men was by no means an extra ordinary thing. We do not over-estimate the intelligence of 46 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD these Cape-Codders. Practically every ener getic man took long sea voyages, coming back with new ideas and broad opinions. In 1839 two hundred and fifty of its citizens were masters or mates of some of the finest ships in the Union. They not only raised the mental standard of the community to which they so faithfully returned and to which they brought so generously of their cosmopolitan collec tions, but they were judges of tea and silk and coal and manufactured goods. They were commercial pioneers: they gambled on car goes, and sometimes made a fortune on a single voyage. They were the forerunners of the Americans who have conceived the big commercial ideas and carried them out; who later built railroads across the continent, and laid telegraph wires under the sea. It was a Cape-Codder who sent a ship-load of babies' cradles around the Horn in '48 to California, and sold them at fabulous prices to serve as "rockers" for gold mines, just as the first fever of '49 began. And it was another who sent ice to the tropics where such a thing had BARNSTABLE 47 never been heard of and where profits of one thousand per cent were made. Besides their intelligence, the Cape-Codders have always been a conspicuously law-abiding folk. Thor- eau observed when he passed through Barn stable that the jail was "to let." It might fre quently have been marked so, for it is hard to imagine communities less inclined to litigation and more habituated to minding their own business and not interfering with their neigh bors. There are, of course, opportunities of disputes concerning cranberry flowage statutes, fishing and beach privileges, etc. But not withstanding their admirable record for valor both on the seas and in fighting the enemy, their respect for order has always prevailed. In spite of their good behavior at home — possibly because of it? — they were rovers. One cannot scour the globe and hug one's hearthstone at the same time. But although they sailed away, — and, when the sailing and fishing interests declined, went away by land to seek fame and fortune and to find it, they never forgot the smell of the salt marsh in 48 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD haying- time, or the cool of the misty moors; the trailing arbutus in spring, or the sight of the "white-winged birds" as the Indians love to call the sailing vessels. Just as the merchant from Detroit comes back to his native birth place at Hyannis or Bourne, so his grand father and his great grandfather found their way back after their trips to India and Ceylon, and settled down to end their days within sight of the tranquil shore. This is the Cape-Codder that the historian has delighted to honor; that the novelists have eagerly depicted; that the cartoonists have jocularly portrayed with web feet combing his hair with a codfish bone. Until 1895 ninety per cent of the population of Cape Cod was native-born of pure English stock, maintain ing to a remarkable degree the quintessence of New England characteristics with the wider virtue of Americanism. But with the influx of summer people — about fifteen or twenty years ago — a change has crept through the veins of the race. The most radical ethnical change that has occurred BARNSTABLE 49 since the beginning of her history is in process, and it is coming about in such a silent, incon spicuous way that even those it affects most vitally have as yet hardly realized it. The time has come to hang another portrait on the walls of the picture gallery : that of a newcomer with physiognomy and complexion quite as different from the Anglo-Saxon as the Anglo- Saxon from the aborigines. Would you be surprised to know that, in a certain graduating class in a public school in the township of Falmouth, fifty of the children were Portuguese and but ten were American? Would you be surprised to know that there are Roman Catholic churches in Barnstable where only Portuguese attend, and Protestant ones where Finns are the only communicants? One sixth of the population is foreign in the town of Barnstable; in certain neighborhoods, one half. What a change from the old days when a dark-skinned newcomer was a curios ity! With the exception of Provincetown, Barn stable has probably the greatest number of 50 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD Portuguese of any town on the Cape, their advent here being similar to their advent in many of the small towns where they have now firmly established themselves. The newcomers are usually a small group, say half a dozen single men, who appear in the press of the cranberry season when their serv ices are gratefully accepted. They find ac commodation in some old barn or shed, where they live peaceably enough, the sound of danc ing and of a crude guitar on a summer eve ning being the only thing which proclaims their presence. They buy milk from a near-by farmer and are punctilious in their payments. Once established, they proceed to make them selves extremely useful. They pick strawber ries, blueberries, cranberries, and beach plums in due succession. In the winter they gather shellfish. And in the spring they import a wife and children from Sao Miguel or from Lisbon, buy some abandoned farmhouse, and move in. The land that has lain fallow for a decade is coaxed into fertility. Besides tending their garden patches and their houses they work all BARNSTABLE 51 day like beavers. The man teams, fishes, goes out for "day's work," and picks berries. A quick Portuguese can earn as much as three dollars a day in blueberry season. The wife goes out scrubbing or takes in washing. Every single child hies to the woods and picks berries like mad all summer and goes to school all winter. And presto! in half a dozen years the village, which was almost deserted, resounds to a voluble dialect. The school which boasted ten pupils has twenty-five — more than half of them with unpronounceable, three-syllable names. Gradually the community which sur veyed the intruders with resentment succumbs to force of numbers. The Portuguese youth, educated side by side with the Yankee maiden, falls in love with her, and marriage is the sequel. It is largely a matter of numbers. Wliere there are few Portuguese, as in neighborhoods in Bourne, they have no social standing. The natives even refuse to pick berries on the bogs with them at cranberry-time. But where they outnumber the original inhabitants, as in 52 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD Provincetown, we get the other side of the shield. They become storekeepers; the girls go to normal school and attain a teacher's diploma, and intermarriage follows quite na turally. While the Portuguese are scattered all over the Cape, the Finns are gathered chiefly in Barnstable. They are a quiet and industrious people, with a desire and capacity for educa tion; and they bring with them many of the admirable traces of their own civilization. Their entrance into a village is similar to that of the Portuguese, but it is doubtful if they will ever reach such large numbers. They are so intelligent and thrifty that some of the most progressive farmers from other towns have found it worth their while to import them — giving them house-room for the sake of serv ices which later they may hire from them and their numerous children. Thus, as the sons and daughters of the Cape have wandered inland, as their progenitors wandered seaward, to win fame and fortune, a comely and a quiet race has humbly taken pos- BARNSTABLE 53 session of the deserted houses and is patiently and with infinite persistence making the light but productive soil to blossom like the rose. So, to the Portuguese and the Finn must surely be granted the next place in the picture gal lery of the Cape. The final place in the gallery would belong to a group affording quite an amusing con trast — that of a prosperous business man, his well-dressed wife, and a group of young folks, children and guests, with tennis rackets, riding-whips, and the other insignia of sum mer recreation. For popular as all the Cape is, and permeating as are the presence and in fluence of the summer colonists throughout the county, yet the spacious township of Barn stable is especially favored, not so much with boarding-houses and hotels, but with hand some estates and substantial summer homes of a large and cosmopolitan population. Hyan nis, with its fashionable shops, where you may buy Italian furniture or Brittany pottery or Japanese novelties; Osterville, Centerville, Wianno, — about a dozen or so progressive 54 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD villages, — are all part of Barnstable, and are rich with modern houses, shaven lawns, and commodious garages. You may travel for miles through them along a well-oiled highway catching glimpses of well-kept gardens and hospitable residences across the white fences or the vine-clad stone walls. Hyannis, although technically a village in the town of Barnstable, is such a thriving place that one cannot slip over it with a mere men tion. Its original Indian name of lyannough, in honor of the young sachem who first re ceived the colonists, has passed through the modifications of Janno, lanno, Hyanno, to the present Hyannis, which pleasantly recalls the Indian syllables. With its all-the-year- round population of 4500; with its Board of Trade, Women's Club, Sunday Evening Lec tures, and its world-famous Normal School,^ it is a place of modernity. The headquarters of Barnstable Council Boy Scouts of America is at Hyannis. The Boy Scouts on the Cape number sixteen troops, with an enrollment of 1 See chap, xiv, "Harwich and the Cape Cod Schools." BARNSTABLE 55 two hundred and sixteen boys and eighty men. The headquarters of the Barnstable Y.M.C.A. have recently been removed from Sagamore to Hyannis, and the Cape Cod Farm Bureau has made the same change from Sandwich. For the rest, there are summer hotels, golf courses, tennis courts, moving pictures — quite an amazing development for a village which in 1850 had only nine letter boxes in its post- office. One should not leave Hyannis without a trip to Shoot Flying Hill, five miles away, from which, on a clear day, one may see all Cape Cod, and the entire mainland as far north as Plymouth, stretching out in a living map at one's feet. Thus the long picture gallery of Barnstable brings us up to the present day. First the pioneer, both the Puritan and the adventurer; then the thrifty, intelligent "first inhabitants" with their sea captains and sailors and patriots, whose descendants live on to this day in the old homesteads; then the voluble Portuguese and the industrious Finns; and finally the generous army of summer folk, who, although 56 CAPE COD NEW AND OLD they return in the fall to distant cities from Boston to St. Louis, still love to call the Cape "home." Besides being the center of the racial melt ing-pot, Barnstable has some fair sights, chief among them being the sweep of the marshes — green in summer, russet in the fall — from which the town received its original name of "Great Marshes." The court-house, too, standing on its dignified eminence, is of goodly proportions, and is the inspiration and reposi tory of many legends. It was built in 1832, and has been twice enlarged. The bell which the first edifice — the court-house — bore was cast in Munich, and bore the inscription, "Si Deus pro nos, quis contra nos, 1675," recalling the tragedy of Captain Peter Adolphe,who had been cast away on the shore in 1697 or '98, and whose body was recovered and buried at Sandwich. His widow, in grateful remem brance of the reverent rites accorded her hus band, — who had been a stranger in a strange land, indeed, — presented the citizens with the bell, which hung in the tower of the old :;:- -5s:g;j-''?^J-:. vl.fe' M^'- --^tiT?-' A