82 



OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



which so often greets one in the region there- 

 abouts. A much later explorer tells how the 

 curious atmospheric effects made the land seem 

 to tip up in front of him in whichever direction 

 he walked, making level land and even downhill 

 look like uphill, so uplifting is the Cape air. 



Gosnold was perhaps the first Englishman to 

 set foot there, doing it first in 1602 and coming 

 again, as we all must, once we know the region.' 

 Gosnold and his men got the eerie feel of the 

 place too when the winter approached. They 

 colonized Cuttyhunk and did very well through 

 the summer, digging sassafras by day and re- 

 treating to their fort on the little island in the 

 pond on the bigger island every time the goblins 

 chased them. But the shouting of warlocks in 

 the autumn gales was too much for them and 

 they reembarked for England, glad to get away 

 from the land which was so beautiful and so 

 strange. 



A dozen years later came Captain John Smith, 

 who feared neither man nor devil, and who saw 

 nothing unprosaic about the place. As mariner 

 and cartographer to him it was a cape, and noth- 

 ing more. ''Cape Cod,'* he writes, "which next 



