26 East and West 
vanished ice. Between them, they carved and 
fashioned a rugged land. Scoured by the 
winds and lost in the fogs, it is only during the 
short summer and the mellow autumn that 
it is habitable for any but the robust, and 
these—fisherfolk and quarrymen, rugged as 
the land itself,—cling to the Cape like rock- 
weed on the ledge or lichens on the boulders. 
To these weather-beaten seadogs in oil- 
skins and sou’westers, the dapper summer 
visitors in tennis clothes must appear like 
some species of mayfly—ephemera, blown 
away by the first autumn gale. 
It is for the most part, the rocky shore, not 
the beach, with which one comes to form a 
lasting friendship on the Cape. Bold masses 
of granite advance abruptly into the sea; long 
shelving reaches of granite dip beneath the 
waters, and upon these the restless surf for- 
ever dissolves in thunder. Here it foams and 
froths, hissing in anger as it gnaws at the 
wall of rock. Here again it purrs in content- 
ment as it fawns at the feet of the imper- 
turbableledge. As the tide ebbs there emerges 
from the waters that strange region which is 
both of the land and of the ocean, whose 
fauna are molluscs and crustaceans, its flora, 
rockweed, sea-lettuce, red alge, and kelp, 
