CAPE COD GEOLOGY 



81 



remarks on the historical references to this passageway across the Cape are con- 

 densed as follows: 



The chart furnishes positive proof of the existence of one of the closed passages that 

 tradition says existed in early times through Cape Cod and sustains the statement of Capt. 

 Bartholomew Gosnold, in 1602, that Cape Cod was then an island. That one of these passages 

 remained open as late as 1717 is shown by a marginal note commenting on the loss of the 

 pirate ship Whido. 



The main passage was much used in early colonial time by small vessels and boats when 

 making voyages from the bay of Maine to Virginia. It is shown on the early Dutch and 

 French charts and on the one sketched by Schipper Adrian Block in 1614. 



These memorable passages were closed up, as I have been told by Capt. William Foster 

 of Brewster, Mass., about 150 years ago, during a furious gale of wind, 1 which was accom- 

 panied by a tidal wave. This herculean effort of the elements changed the whole east and south 

 shore of the Cape, and deposited, in the salt marshes and lowlands, sand hills sixty feet high, 

 and completely washed away a sand point off Nauset, where to this day, at extreme low tides, 

 stumps of former trees have been laid bare, which have been seen by men now living who 

 visited the spot for that purpose. 



As a matter of fact this passage seems never to have been actually closed 

 to tidal water. The ancient channel is followed by a marsh through which a 

 modern ditch would allow high tides to course were it not for a dike about a 

 third of a mile north of the point where the railroad crosses it. The ancient 

 entrance on the bay side is still known as Boat Meadow Creek. As late as 1844 

 the sea is said to have occasionally swept through at high tide. 2 



The remarkable hollow known as Pamet River, in Truro, may at some time 

 have been temporarily open so as to afford a passage across the Cape but prob- 

 ably the sea would not permit the east end of that trench to remain unbarred 

 long by gravel and sand. It is further probable that, when the coast stood farther 

 east, this trench was represented by one or more gullies leading down from the 

 upland surface, in the manner of the shorter hollows on the north. Except for the 

 beach and dune sand at the east end of this hollow the sea might now run through 

 this passage and thus make an island of that part of the Cape which lies north 

 of it. 



Crab Bank, shown as lying east of Cape Cod on the chart of 1917, appears 

 to have been so named because of the peculiarity of the bottom there rather than 

 because of shallow depth. The soundings on the ancient chart show that the 

 water gradually deepened eastward across the tract. Commander Stellwagen of 

 the Coast Survey in 1856 3 reported that no shoal then existed at that place 

 off the arm of Cape Cod, although it is shown on some charts. 



1 Probably a reference to the great storm of Saturday, October 20, 1770, or to that of Sunday, Febru- 

 ary 24, 1722-23; vide Sidney Perley, Historic storms of New England, Salem, pp. 41, 86, 1891. 



2 Enoch Pratt's History. 



8 TJ. S. Coast Survey Report for 1856, p. 115. 



