Cape Cod and the Old colony . e boatover the bar, the wind rising inshore, the blastof the wet northeaster. He will remember theyellow dawn of an October morning across hismisty moors, and the fog of the chill pondamong the pine trees, and above all the bluesea within its headlands, on which go thewhite-winged ships to that great, far-off worldwhich the boy had heard of and the grownman knows so well. We have heard a historian question whetherthe Plymouth Pilgrims were a great and forma-tive force in American life. But a plain andnot unobservant American, if no historian,believes still that it
Cape Cod and the Old colony . e boatover the bar, the wind rising inshore, the blastof the wet northeaster. He will remember theyellow dawn of an October morning across hismisty moors, and the fog of the chill pondamong the pine trees, and above all the bluesea within its headlands, on which go thewhite-winged ships to that great, far-off worldwhich the boy had heard of and the grownman knows so well. We have heard a historian question whetherthe Plymouth Pilgrims were a great and forma-tive force in American life. But a plain andnot unobservant American, if no historian,believes still that it was not so much a matterof numbers or constructive statesmanship incolonial and federal days as of high and per-vading sentiment. It was what the Pilgrimswere that mattered—how they thought andlived told the story. It is not so important,perhaps, if the men of Boston and the otherpeople on Massachusetts Bay fill more pagesin political and military history than the plainmen of Plymouth, Sandwich, Barnstable The Environment of the Sea 277 When the Mayflower anchored in the outerhaven of the Cape, and her tired voyagerswaded to shore, and when, after cold andstormy search, they landed on the Plymouthside of the Bay, they fixed the destiny of acontinent. They lived and died on the bordersof Cape Cod Bay, and thither others came tofill up their shrinking nimibers. All these wereforerunners of Massachusetts, of Rhode Islandand Connecticut, of all New England. Intime New England passed into New York, andfrom New York to Ohio, and the memory of our older men, Iowa,Nebraska, Colorado and Oregon have felt thepulse of the Puritan energy. In morals and religion, in constitutions andlaws, in trade and education, old England laidhold of the outstretched Cape, and thencebegan its march to the western sea. No othercontinent entangles itself in the sea with aland just like the Cape. It is long and narrowand crooked; it is of low relief, of frail materi-als,
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