206 With Rod and Gun in New England 



relief. I could have almost hugged the man for his candor. So it was 

 not a good day for birds, after all ! Then I was glad I had brought no 

 gun. 



The next day, with Thoreau's charming book in my hand, I crossed 

 Vineyard sound and took a jaunt down the whole length of Cape Cod to 

 the land's end. For mile after mile I followed the identical route which 

 the good man had chosen fifty years before ; along the beach and over the 

 dunes, across the sands, and past the old windmills and wrecks, and into 

 the lighthouses and fishermen's huts, and past travesties of so-called 

 "farms " where the soil is so scant that mature corn stands only breast 

 high, and fruit-bearing apple-trees grow no higher than one's head ; skip- 

 ping the railroad ties as I went, until I rose the Town Hill at Province- 

 town at the terminus of the route, and so rested at Gifford's. 



By all accounts the end of the cape is a great resort for foxes and 

 rabbits, which love to burrow in its warm sands and forage upon the 

 demesnes of the numerous sea-fowl which congregate there, such as black 

 ducks, plover, curlew, shore birds and brant. A local authority asserts 

 that raccoons and quail are numerous. I can testify as to English spar- 

 rows. Just imagine ! Where will these feathered tramps not pene- 

 trate ? Parties from New Bedford make yearly visits to this place for the 

 purpose of fox-hunting. Between coursing, fishing, shooting, bathing, 

 boating, and sailing, the local attractions are great, to say nothing of the 

 cool comfort one gets in summer when everywhere else is hot. 



In Pilgrim times the Fathers must have had grand sport, for Mourt's 

 Journal mentions deer, partridges, and great Mocks of geese and ducks, 

 and Bradford, the historian of the colony, says, " Besides water foules 

 there was great store of wild turkies, of which we took many, besides veni- 

 son, etc." 



Reminiscences of this sort make Cape Cod interesting to the visitor 

 of to-day. No burgh in the good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts is 

 so replete with historical facts as Provincetown, and all who are familiar 

 with them will rejoice that a suitable monument is about to be completed 

 there to commemorate a period so pregnant with momentous events. 



