F.— APPENDIX: CAPE COD FISHEEMEN IN 1862; AUTOBIOG- 

 RAPHY OF OAPT. N. E. ATWOOD. 



55. FREEMAN'S DESCRIPTION OF CAFE GOD FISHERMEN. 



The following excellent sketch of the fishermen of Cape Cod is from Freeman's History of 

 Oape Cod, published in 1862. It will apply as well to the men of the present day. 



"Cape Cod has, not inappropriately, been called the 'Eight Arm of Massachusetts.' Without 

 reference to the topographical outline, the designation is merited, if regard be had to the employ- 

 ments, the nautical skill, the enterprising and hitherto morally upright character of its inhabit- 

 ants; and it is doubtless to these considerations that reference was primarily intended in the 

 figure employed. The glory of the Cape, we unhesitatingly assert, without the possibility of 

 contradiction, has been the character of the men who settled here and, through successive gener- 

 ations, their numerous descendants. We make this declaration ingenuously, unawed by the fear 

 of an accusation of self-laudation or egotism; for we speak of the community as a whole, not 

 gnoring the few anomalies that might possibly be found, as among all people, to constitute the 

 ' exceptions that prove the general rule; nor claiming for history the unfinished career of genera- 

 tions now on the stage of action. 



" The almost entire population of the Cape has been made up of those who were descendants 

 from the Puritans, perpetuating their names and their virtues; and the races here are generally 

 more purely English than in any other part of our land. The Cape has, at all times, furnished its 

 full proportion of enterprise, talent, genius, learning; and the merit of her sons has been acknowl- 

 edged in all lands. The moral sense and general intelligence of the people, from the time of the 

 earliest settlements, compare favorably with the inhabitants of any age, clime, or country. 



"A large proportion of the male inhabitants ofthe Cape are, as is well known, early, addicted 

 to the seas. This is a necessary incident of their locality. As seamen their aim, generally, is to 

 command; and perhaps no one portion of the globe, of similar extent, has furnished so many able 

 commanders of ships. A vague impression, we are aware, has long possessed a portion of the 

 public mind, that a seafaring life is not promotive of virtue ; but, that the seamen of Cape Cod are 

 as remarkably exempt from the vices and frailties of humanity as any class of people whatever, 

 challenges denial; and the apprehension to which we have adverted has, whether just or merely 

 imaginary, no support from what is observable here. Our seamen are generally, as before inti- 

 mated, very soon commanders of ships, rather than ordinary sailors ; and such as have not arrived 

 at the distinction are, for the most part, employed in vessels under those commanders or engaged 

 in the fisheries. Their visits to all lands and their intercourse with the wide world give them 

 large views that tend to the formation of a liberal, manly, noble character. Even in their fishing 

 excursions they are, as it were, at home among their relatives and their early associates; and when 

 returned to the land and under their own roofs — whatever privations they may have suffered in 

 the times of peril, or because of national calamities, involving embargoes and wars — their dwellings 

 are pre-eminently abodes of comfort, and exhibit the marks of healthy thrift and enjoyment beyond 



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