84 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



the sluggish brooks or small ponds which make 

 this region famous for its trout. Brewster, 

 Orleans, Eastham, and Wellfleet were traversed 

 one by one, the train hitching to the left mile by 

 mile until from pointing southeast it pointed east, 

 then northeast, and finally north. We passed 

 cranberry bogs by dozens ; stunted pine forests 

 scorched by the railway fires ; windmills 

 some old and full of Dutch dignity, many new 

 and bristling with Yankee ingenuity ; flocks of 

 blackbirds on the flat hay-fields ; clouds of dry 

 sand rising from the track ; views across the 

 blue bay of blue skies and bluer shores reaching 

 up to the mainland westward and northward. 



By a little after midday our eyes had spanned 

 the placid inner waters of the bay and seen the 

 long curving shore of Truro and Provincetown, 

 its white hills and low cliffs flashing almost like 

 chalk in the strong sunlight. Passing Well- 

 fleet, a large and busy-looking village, we 

 soon gained a narrower part of the Cape and 

 began to point northwest instead of north, 

 seeing sand-hills first on one side, then on 

 the other. Truro is a long township, a block 

 set on end in this pile of Cape republics. 

 First came South Truro, then Truro, then a 

 mile or two of bluffs along the bay shore with 

 swift visions of feeding herring gulls on the flats, 

 and forests of poles rising from the blue water, 



