. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. The wind and the sea makeminor changes in the Cape itself from year toyear, especially this end of it. The waves giveand the waves take away sand bars, now makingan inlet where none was, now closing one that hasexisted perhaps for centuries. The winds packthe sands hard in drifts of rounded hills whereonce was a tiny valley, and again they come andtake these away and establish them elsewhere assuits their vagrant fancy. Race Point, withinthe friendly shelter of whose barb the Mayflowerfleet first cast anchor, is Race Point still, but Idoubt if anyone can
. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. The wind and the sea makeminor changes in the Cape itself from year toyear, especially this end of it. The waves giveand the waves take away sand bars, now makingan inlet where none was, now closing one that hasexisted perhaps for centuries. The winds packthe sands hard in drifts of rounded hills whereonce was a tiny valley, and again they come andtake these away and establish them elsewhere assuits their vagrant fancy. Race Point, withinthe friendly shelter of whose barb the Mayflowerfleet first cast anchor, is Race Point still, but Idoubt if anyone can surely locate that pond onthe margin of which the Pilgrim mothers didthat first tremendous two months wash. Thecaprice of the shifting sands may have whelmedand re-dug it a half dozen times since then. Acentury ago that little creek at what is now NorthTruro, that blocked the way of doughty MylesStandish and his men, sending them inland ona detour, was open still to the sea and a port ofsafety for the North Truro fishing boats. A half. ON FIRST TRAIL OF PILGRIMS 79 century later a storm brought sand and so effec-tually closed this little harbor entrance that theNorth Truro fishermen have ever since launchedtheir boats from the bare beach and the little in-land sea thus enclosed has become a long, narrow,fresh-water pond, on which the Truro childrenskate in winter while their elders cut ice for theshipment of fish and the retention of summervisitors. But after all it is only mans changes that makethe tip of the Cape and its near-by narrownessdifferent in our day from what it was whenMyles and his men trod it with matchlocks readyand matches lighted, spying out the land. Theseas yet have not gone so deep but you may findportions that seem as wild and untrammelednow as they were then. Indeed they may well beidentical. That a row of sand dunes has movedbefore the winds a half mile east or west matterslittle to the eye. They are sand dunes still, andthe vegetation which grew up on
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booki, booksubjectnaturalhistory
