78 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



as remains, is smothered under Portuguese and 

 summer boarders; not bad people these, but 

 vastly different. The wind and the sea make 

 minor changes in the Cape itself from year to 

 year, especially this end of it. The waves give 

 and the waves take away sand bars, now making 

 an inlet where none was, now closing one that has 

 existed perhaps for centuries. The winds pack 

 the sands hard in drifts of rounded hills where 

 once was a tiny valley, and again they come and 

 take these away and establish them elsewhere as 

 suits their vagrant fancy. Race Point, within 

 the friendly shelter of whose barb the Mayflower 

 fleet first cast anchor, is Race Point still, but I 

 doubt if anyone can surely locate that pond on 

 the margin of which the Pilgrim mothers did 

 that first tremendous two months' wash. The 

 caprice of the shifting sands may have whelmed 

 and re-dug it a half dozen times since then. A 

 century ago that little creek at what is now North 

 Truro, that blocked the way of doughty Myles 

 Standish and his men, sending them inland on 

 a detour, was open still to the sea and a port of 

 safety for the North Truro fishing boats. A half 



