10 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number io2. 



and walk by the sea, but there is no park or common or pub- 

 He beach. The time is coming, as in other shore regions, 

 when there will be throngs of people all summer long — the 

 autumn is the best of the year on the Cape — and when there 

 will not be much more space or freedom for them than con- 

 victs enjoy in the state prison, marching in lock-step to dinner 

 and away from it again. The summer dwellers here will have 

 their rooms in the cottages and in great hotels and boarding- 

 houses, and they will have the freedom of the sidewalk and 

 the public road. There will be no rambling over breezy up- 

 lands, or musing where the rolling surf beats and thunders 

 on the shore. The uplands will be an almost continuous vil- 

 lage, and the shore everywhere will be in somebody's back- 

 yard. Those who wish to see the Cape country before its 

 wildness and freedom are displaced by the new stage of civil- 

 ization, with its warnings "Private grounds" and "Keep oif 

 the grass," forbidding visitors to leave the highways, should 

 visit it within the next few years. 



Orleans can advertise one attraction which I suppose not 

 many towns can rival. The alms-house is not needed for its 

 original purpose, for long and long it has had no pauper ten- 

 ants, and has been constantly let for a dwelling. Think of liv- 

 ing in a town where even the poor-house brings in an annual 

 revenue ! Who says the Cape is a barren region and poor ? 

 There are many inland ponds or lakes here, some salt, many 

 fresh. If they had been made expressly for purposes of 

 pleasure and recreation they could not have been better. The 

 Orleans Cemetery Association owns the new part of the cem- 

 etery. It is on a hill, with a fine view of the ocean and bay, 

 and the summer people go there in numbers. The old part 

 is not so high. The title to it is probably in the town. There 

 are three wind-mills in Orleans, each about 150 years old. A 

 man from the city with a new place here thought he would buy 

 one of these mills and set it up in his grounds as an article of 

 " bigotry and virtue," but the owner of the mill asked $300 for 

 it. The summer resident concluded that he would try to get 

 along without a wind-mill, and the "boom" in these antiqui- 

 ties came suddenly to an end. The town clerk bought one- 

 fourth of the one at Orleans village for $25, and it pays for 

 itself by its tolls every year. These mills are about thirty or 

 thirty-five feet high, and twenty feet in diameter at the base, 

 which is square or octagonal. They are not picturesque ob- 

 jects, though it is the fashion to say they are. They are too 

 small, and all their lines too severely simple to be impressive, 

 and they are interesting only because they are unfamiliar to 

 most visitors. There is a valuable public library here, and 

 the town owns a very small area around the library building. 

 The town-hall lot should be considerably extended while land 

 is cheap. It is far too small for permanent public convenience. 

 Hon. John Kenrick, A. T. Newcomb, David L. Young and 

 George S. Nickerson are much interested in the objects of 

 the Trustees of Public Reservations, and will aid them in any 

 convenient way. There was a meeting here early in Decem- 

 ber to consider the need of open spaces for public resort. 

 After experimenting with the topic at meetings in Boston and 

 at Provincetown I found here that an average country audience 

 responds readily to a direct presentation of the essential facts 

 and obvious deductions related to this matter. It is always 

 interesting to try the effect of a new subject on audiences of 

 different kinds. 



Eastham has no considerable public holdings. The early 

 history of the town is interesting, but it receives little popular 

 attention. I noted that in 1705 the town voted to fine any free- 

 man living within seven miles of the polls if he failed to attend 

 an election. Some interesting experiments in Asparagus-cul- 

 ture made here during the last few years give promise of anew 

 and highly profitable industry for farmers and market-garden- 

 ers, and Turnips grown in this region are said to distance all 

 competition. Under existing local conditions such facts are 

 of great interest and importance. Wellfleet is an attractive 

 town. All its interests are at present much depressed by the 

 decay of the old industries of its people — fishing, whaling and 

 boat-building. Much land has been bought here by non-resi- 

 dents within a few years, but not much of it has been occupied 

 or improved. The town formerly owned Great Island and 

 Beach Hill, but sold these holdings a few years ago to Mrs. 

 France B. Killer, of Wilmington, Massachusetts, who also 

 bought much land of private owners in the town. I believe 

 she is to expend a specified sum within a certain term of years 

 in improving the lands bought from the town, otherwise the 

 title will revert, and the property become again a public pos- 

 session. No improvement has yet been made. People in the 

 town say that many persons made claims for compensation for 

 their rights in one of the private estates bought by Mrs. Hiller, 

 and that " she bought them out, a thousand of them, for a dol- 



lar apiece. Whoever wanted a dollar said he was one of the 

 heirs, and she paid him a dollar, and he signed away his right, 

 whatever it was." Perhaps this is the beginning of the growth 

 of a legend. The town long ago planted a considerable tract 

 on Great Island with Pines, and they have grown well. It 

 owns a small piece of woodland — no one knows its area — which 

 supplies all the fuel needed for the schools of the town, and 

 will do so for many years to come, though the timber does not 

 grow as fast as it is cut. It is but a few acres in extent, and is 

 said to have belonged to the last survivors of an Indian tribe, 

 and to have reverted to the town at their death. Wellfleet re- 

 cently bought a playground near the High School building at a 

 cost of $150. The area is 280 by 286 feet. There is an old 

 cemetery on Taylor's Hill, owned by the town. Its dimensions 

 are 171 by 144, 149 and 167 feet. Beach grass, no trees. The 

 hill is seventy or eighty feet high. No interments for many 

 years. A land company is operating at South Wellfleet, and 

 has sold hundreds of lots. Wellfleet had once 160 sail of sea- 

 going vessels, now not over twent)'. The valuation of prop- 

 erty for taxation is declining. A profitable beginiflng at 

 garden-farming has been made here and in the next town, 

 Truro, and there is room for a great extension of this industry 

 in both towns. There are some historic places in Truro which 

 should be marked, and the early history of the town is worthy 

 of far more attention than it receives from the present inhab- 

 itants. Popular interest in the local history will probably have 

 a new development, as Mr. Shebnah Rich, of Salem, has writ- 

 ten an interesting and valuable history of Truro. Several 

 small tracts of land have reverted to the town by non-payment 

 of taxes. None of them is suitable for a reservation for public 

 resort. All visitors here go to Highland Light. I refer my 

 readers to the accurate and entrancing description of the ex- 

 cursion in Mr. Frank Bolles' new book, "The Land of the 

 Lingering Snow." All this shore should be forever accessible 

 to the public. (My report on Provincetown was published in 

 Garden and Forest for October 21st.) 



I have just reread Thoreau's book on Cape Cod. It is inter- 

 esting but one-sided, as it was meant to be. The author walked 

 along the shore, keeping to the very edge of the water nearly 

 all the way down the Cape. He did not see the country inland, 

 and appears to have had an entirely erroneous idea of it. He 

 says himself, " Our story is true as far as it goes. We did not 

 care to see those features of the Cape in which it is inferior or 

 merely equal to the mainland, but only those in which it is 

 peculiar or superior. We cannot say how its towns look in 

 front to one who goes to meet them ; we went to see the 

 ocean behind them. They were merely the raft on which we 

 stood, and we took notice of the barnacles which adhered to 

 it, and some carvings upon it." The Cape region is much 

 better wooded, has better soil, and is far more interesting and 

 attractive than his account of what he saw along the beach has 

 led people to believe. His book is usually read as if it were 

 an adequate description of the Cape country ; but all his read- 

 ers should make large allowance for Thoreau's love of para- 

 dox, even when he has seen what he describes. I suppose 

 that what he says of the few people whom he saw during this 

 excursion is strictly true, but it does not apply to the Cape 

 people in general any more than to the people of the author's 

 own town of Concord ; or, to give a better idea of it, it is ex- 

 actly of a piece with his description of Boston : " I see a great 

 many barrels and fig-drums, piles of wood for umbrella- 

 sticks, blocks of granite and ice, great heaps of goods, and the 

 means of packing and conveying them, much wrapping-paper 

 and twine, many crates and hogsheads and trucks, and that is 

 Boston. The more barrels, the more Boston. The museums 

 and scientific societies and libraries are accidental. They 

 gather around the sands to save carting. The wharf-rats and 

 custom-house officers and broken-down poets, seeking a for- 

 tune amid the barrels, their better or worse lyceums and 

 preachings and doctorings, these, too, are accidental." 



The wonderful "Cape Country," with its indefinable charm, 

 seems to me the most znUresfin^ Tegion in New England, or 

 — anywhere. There ought to be a new book about it. It has 

 no such place in our literature as it deserves. As I walked 

 through it, the extraordinary purity of the air made me feel 

 that I should like to be a gypsy and camp out in all the towns. 

 After we pass Chatham, going down the Cape, the atmosphere 

 is the same as if we were on a small island far out at sea. 

 Every possible breeze is a sea-breeze, no matter from what 

 quarter it blows. I once camped out for a while in the snow 

 on the mountains in the Crater Lake region, in sight of Mount 

 Shasta, and that is the only time I have ever tasted elsewhere 

 an atmosphere so vivifying as that of the Cape Cod country. 

 The number of ponds and lakes on the Cape is much greater 

 than most people know, and the inland scenery is serene and 



