ON FIRST TRAIL OF PILGRIMS 87 



overhead. The wind song in the trees is not men- 

 acing, it is simply a minor melody, full of melan- 

 choly, as if it knew sad things and could but let 

 them tinge its music. But even on quiet days 

 when the south wind drifts gently in over the 

 bay there sounds from the air above these mellow 

 glades the growl of white-faced breakers that 

 are never still on the northern shore. Out of the 

 northeast they roll over gray-green leagues of 

 cold sea, and as they bite deep into the sand of 

 the shore behind Peaked Hill Bar, and drag it 

 and all that is on it down into their maw and hurl 

 it all back again, beating it on the beach and 

 snatching it and beating it again, it roars in- 

 articulate threats that make the onlooker draw 

 back glad of a space of summer-dried sand be- 

 tween him and its depths. If this threatening 

 undertone lingers in the ear even on a summer 

 day with the wind warm and fragrant from the 

 south, how must it have sounded to the Pilgrim 

 explorers in a November northeaster? 



And yet, for all the November bleakness to 

 come, for all the ever-warning growl of the sea, 

 I wonder, had the Pilgrims arrived at Province- 



