Cape Ann 31 
fully explored them. It is thus I have been a 
long time sauntering on these pastures and 
have never yet come to the end of them. 
On this moorland, intersected by swamps 
and skirted in places by woods of white 
pine, the sombre red cedar standing solitary 
amidst the boulders is the only tree, while the 
swamps themselves are thickly grown with 
red maples, black birch, and an occasional 
clump of hemlocks. It is these Dogtown 
pastures which contribute, as much as the sea, 
to the rugged individuality of Cape Ann. 
They are the dominant element in its person- 
ality, and this is due not only to the austerity 
of the landscape but quite as much to the 
boulders and to the red cedar. Indeed the 
cedar is transmuted granite, a sombre tree as 
befits a stern environment, pointing a rigid 
finger to the skies where it stands unbending 
beside the great boulders, many of which 
like dolmens or druidical stones also point 
heavenward, as if both would admonish the 
saunterer of some inexorable destiny. Rigid 
tree and unyielding granite, these might well 
have been the insignia of the Puritan. 
The same stern affinity exists between the 
boulder and the juniper, a shrub which is the 
spirit of hardihood incarnate in a plant. It 
