242 



CAPE COD GEOLOGY 



a lobelet of ice on the west side of the lobe which was formed by the resistance 

 offered to the ice by Manomet Hill. 



CARTOGRAPHY 



Before Henri de Champlain and Captain John Smith made the voyages to 

 New England, Cape Cod was shown very inaccurately on maps of the north 

 Atlantic coast. A critical essay on early maps of the coast line, with illustrative 

 charts, is given by Justin Winsor. 1 Maps sufficiently accurate to be useful 

 for comparing the coast line at different dates began to appear with the 

 growing need for them in naval operations at the time of the Revolutionary 

 War. The most reliable of these maps is one of the New England coast pre- 

 pared from surveys made in 1777 and published in 1780 by Joseph Friederich 

 Walsh Des Barres. Professor Henry Mitchell mentions a corrected edition of 

 this chart by Matthew Clark. James D. Graham made accurate surveys of 

 Cape Cod and Provincetown harbor for the United States Government in 

 1833-35, before surveys were made by the United States Coast Survey. Prelimi- 

 nary coast charts were first issued by the Coast Survey in 1857. Their scale 

 was 1/200,000 for Cape Cod and 1/50,000 for Provincetown Harbor. Other 

 harbor charts were issued for Barnstable in 1861, Wellfleet in 1853, Bass River 

 in 1857, and Hyannis in 1850. More recent surveys and editions of coast charts 

 are listed in the catalogue of publications issued from time to time by the Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey. 



Special charts and land maps were prepared in connection with the work 

 in Cape Cod Canal. A history of the discussion and development of this project, 

 which dates from 1676, is given in an account published by the Massachusetts 

 commissioners in 1862. 2 



The topographic maps of the United States Geological Survey, which were 

 made from surveys completed in 1886, were preceded by two maps of the State 

 of Massachusetts that included Cape Cod peninsula. The first of the state 

 surveys was ordered by the legislature in 1830 and made under the direction 

 of Simeon Borden. The manuscript map was completed in 1840 and published 



1 Justin Winsor (editor), Narrative and critical history of America, Boston, 1884. For early maps 

 of New England, see vol. 3, pp. 381-384. The cartography of the northeast coast of America from 

 1535 to 1600, 4, pp. 81-102. See also Maps of the eastern coast of North America, by B. F. DeCosta, 4, 

 pp. 33-80 and General atlases and charts published in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, pp. 

 368-394. 



2 Report of the Joint Committee of 1860 upon the proposed Canal to unite Barnstable and Buzzards 

 bays, Public Document No. 4, Boston, State Printers, 1864, pp. 165. Maps and plates. Appendix I, 

 pp. 58-76, gives a list of shipwrecks around Cape Cod from 1843 to 1859. 



