80 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



drifts is the same to-day as it was three centuries 

 ago. On this primal wildness of the Cape the 

 march of human progress has in some measure 

 encroached, but it is a long way from obliterating 

 it yet. I fancy a man, choosing his route, could 

 start at Race Point and go down the land by 

 beach and by dune, to a point far beyond the one 

 reached by the second, farthest, land-exploring 

 expedition of the Pilgrim scouts from this point, 

 without seeing more evidence of human settle- 

 ment than the wheel tracks of a road deep in sand 

 or a glimpse of the towering turrets of the Pil- 

 grim monument which dominates the landscape 

 for a long distance. Through this same length 

 of Cape wind, of course, the hard ribbon of a 

 State-built automobile road and the railway. But 

 it is easy to lose and forget these. 



In fact, you need but to climb sand hills and 

 slide down sand declivities a very short distance 

 north of the center of Provincetown itself to be 

 as near lost as the Pilgrim scouts were and to 

 find those dense thickets of thorny growth which 

 they complained were like to tear their clothes 

 and their very armor itself off their backs. No 



