84 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



Cape, however; they merely serve to accentuate 

 it. From them you see the vasty blue velvet of 

 the ocean outside the Cape and think it but a 

 brief plunge to it through the glittering sands. 

 Yet as you go toward it you find that one sand 

 ridge hides another and that the valleys between 

 hide brackish meadows in which grow strange 

 plants, fleshy of stem and stubby and thick of 

 leaf, as if they were degenerate offspring of land 

 plants that had most unhappily intermarried with 

 sea weed. On the margins of these witch pools 

 it is a pleasure to find growing good old sturdy 

 homely dusty-miller. Whatever broomstick-riding 

 hags infest these weird hollows of windy mid- 

 nights, here stands that plain common-sense Puri- 

 tan to shame their reveries. Cineraria mari- 

 tima may not have come in the Mayflower, but 

 some ship from England brought him and he is 

 a Puritan without doubt. If the witches do 

 gather in these wild hollows of Cape Cod's desert 

 I warrant you he gets after them with a tithing 

 rod and drives them back abashed to their own 

 chimney corners. 

 Passing the desert you find the Cape widening 



