THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



521 



A GIBRALTAR OF THE AMERICAN SEACOAST 



North of Gloucester lies Cape Ann, 

 with her pocket beaches. Here the waves 

 run high and dash themselves with un- 

 pitying force against the solid old rock ; 

 but she holds firm, a Gibraltar of the 

 American seacoast, guarding the outer 

 approaches to Boston, as the wonderful 

 British fortress has stood watch and ward 

 in the path of the invader of the Medi- 

 terranean. So wild is the sea here that it 

 is said that a sharp-angled fragment of 

 stone as large as a steamer trunk is often 

 worn as round as a tennis ball in the 

 course of five years. 



Many a brick and coal laden ship has 

 perished upon such shores as these, and 

 their scattered pieces of cargo have been 

 ground to bits under the incessant ham- 

 merings of one another under the urge 

 of the waves. 



Marblehead, on the northern shore of 

 Massachusetts Bay, is worthy of its name, 

 and often the sea resorts to unusual tac- 

 tics in trying to conquer it. Shaler, the 

 well-known authority on geology, tells of 

 witnessing an attack in which the sea 

 used seaweed as its ammunition train. 

 Sometimes these plants grow in shallow 

 waters and wrap their roots around 

 boulders on the floor of the ocean. Then, 

 as the surging sea rolls in, it lifts the sea- 

 weed on its buoyant bosom, and the 

 plants in their turn tug at the rocks 

 which their roots enmesh, until finally the 

 boulders are lifted clear of the bottom 

 and carried along into the maelstrom of 

 attack. 



It is too hard a struggle for the sea- 

 weed, which is quickly torn asunder, but 

 the stones are driven up to the attack 

 again and again. As much as ten tons 

 of these seaweed-borne rocks are some- 

 times cast up upon a quarter-mile stretch 

 of shore-line by a single storm. 



COMMUNIQUES OF NATURE'S WARFARE 



Farther south, on the northern wing of 

 the Atlantic battle-front, lies Lynn, and 

 in the sea below Lynn lies Nahant Island, 

 which bids us hope, for here at last the 

 sea has lost the initiative, the land has 

 assumed the offensive, and in an inspir- 

 ing counter-attack is demonstrating its 

 ability to give blow for blow and to match 

 maneuver against maneuver. 



Indeed, here for the first time we are 

 to learn, in Nature's War Communiques, 

 that the hardest rocks of the northern 

 coast are more yielding than the softest 

 sands of the southern waters and, in spite 

 of local engagements fought with fluctu- 

 ating results in this or that sector, as a 

 whole, the land is holding its own from 

 Lynn to the silver sands of Alton Beach 

 at Miami. 



In the counter-attack in the Lynn sec- 

 tor the land has built up a sandy beach 

 between Nahant Island and the mainland. 



Passing the Boston sector, where com- 

 parative quiet has reigned for some time, 

 midway between Plymouth and Barnsta- 

 ble, where Buzzards Bay on the south 

 and Barnstable Bay on the north have 

 long seemed to conspire to tear off the 

 "bare, bended arm" of Massachusetts, as 

 Thoreau called Cape Cod, we come to the 

 Cape Cod Canal. According to British 

 charts in the Library of the United States 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey, thought to 

 date from 171 5, there was once a sea-cut 

 channel through that neck, and Cape Cod 

 was an island, not a peninsula. Here, 

 again, the land won out in after years 

 and tied an island to the mainland. 



ICE AS A LAND ALLY 



The Cape Cod Peninsula affords an 

 illustration of how the ice in geologic 

 times came to the aid of the land in its 

 war against the sea. Once glaciers swept 

 down from Labrador and Maine and de- 

 posited vast quantities of clay and bould- 

 ers on the floor of the sea, making a great 

 breakwater to the east of what is now 

 Cape Cod Bay. This obstruction forced 

 the sea to give up the stores of sand it 

 was carrying, and with this material the 

 breakwater gradually wrought itself into 

 a peninsula. 



Passing around Cape Cod's two shore- 

 lines, inner and outer, one comes next 

 to Chatham, at the elbow of the outer 

 shore. Here the sea is once more on the 

 offensive, driving forward into the shore- 

 line at the rate of a foot a year. 



South of Chatham is Monomy Point, 

 called by De Monts, the French explorer 

 who nearly came to grief there in 1605, 

 the "graveyard of ships," a reputation it 

 has lived up to for three centuries and 

 better. Looking southward across the 



