ON FIRST TRAIL OF PILGRIMS 79 



century later a storm brought sand and so effec- 

 tually closed this little harbor entrance that the 

 North Truro fishermen have ever since launched 

 their 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 children 

 skate in winter while their elders cut ice for the 

 shipment of fish and the retention of summer 

 visitors. 



But after all it is only man's changes that make 

 the tip of the Cape and its near-by narrowness 

 different in our day from what it was when 

 Myles and his men trod it with matchlocks ready 

 and matches lighted, spying out the land. These 

 as yet have not gone so deep but you may find 

 portions that seem as wild and untrammeled 

 now as they were then. Indeed they may well be 

 identical. That a row of sand dunes has moved 

 before the winds a half mile east or west matters 

 little to the eye. They are sand dunes still, and 

 the vegetation which grew up on them in one 

 place or was wiped out, cut off by gnawing sand 

 particles and blown away by the wind, or buried 

 beyond all hope of resurrection in the over-riding 



