36 
CAPE COD. 
of the storm, which would show us the ocean in ita 
angriest mood. Charles Darwin was assured that the 
roar of the surf on the coast of Chiloe, after a heavy 
gale, could be heard at night a distance of “21 sea miles 
across a hilly and wooded country.” We conversed 
with the boy we have mentioned, who might have been 
eight years old, making him walk the while under the 
lee of our umbrella ; for we thought it as important to 
know what was life on the Cape to a boy as to a man. 
We learned from him where the best grapes were to be 
found in that neighborhood. He was carrying his dinner 
in a pail ; and, without any impertinent questions being 
put by us, it did at length appear of what it consisted. 
The homeliest facts are always the most acceptable to 
an inquiring mind. At length, before we got to East- 
ham meeting-house, we left the road and struck across 
the country for the eastern shore at Nauset Lights,— 
three lights close together, two or three miles distant 
from us. They were so many that they might be dis¬ 
tinguished from others ; but this seemed a shiftless and 
costly way of accomplishing that object. We found 
ourselves at once on an apparently boundless plain, 
without a tree or a fence, or, with one or two exceptions, 
a house in sight. Instead of fences, the earth was some¬ 
times thrown up into a slight ridge. My companion 
compared it to the rolling prairies of Illinois. In the 
storm of wind and rain which raged when we traversed 
it, it no doubt appeared more vast and desolate than it 
really is. As there were no hills, but only here and 
there a dry hollow in the midst of the waste, and the 
distant horizon was concealed by mist, we did not know 
whether it was high or low. A solitary traveller, whom 
we saw perambulating in the distance, loomed like a 
