52 
CAPE COD 
Nauset Lights behind us, we began to walk leisurely up 
the beach, in a northwest direction, toward Province- 
town, which was about twenty-five miles distant, still 
sailing’^ under our umbrellas with a strong aft wind, ad¬ 
miring in silence, as we walked, the great force of the 
ocean stream,— 
TTorafioio peya crdevos ’D/ceawio. 
The white breakers were rushing to the shore ; the foam 
ran up the sand, and then ran back as far as we could 
see (and we imagined how much farther along the At¬ 
lantic coast, before and behind us), as regularly, to com¬ 
pare great things with small, as the master of a choir 
beats time with his white wand ; and ever and anon a 
higher wave caused us hastily to deviate from our path, 
and we looked back on our tracks filled with water and 
foam. The breakers looked like droves of a thousand 
wild horses of Neptune, rushing to the shore, with their 
white manes streaming far behind ; and when, at length, 
the sun shone for a moment, their manes were rainbow- 
tinted. Also, the long kelp-weed was tossed up from 
time to time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in the 
brine. 
" There was not a sail in sight, and we saw none that 
day, — for they had all sought harbors in the late storm, 
and had not been able to get out again; and the only 
human beings whom we saw on the beach for several 
days, were one or two wreckers looking for drift-wood, 
and fragments of wrecked vessels. After an easterly 
storm in the spring, this beach is sometimes strewn with 
eastern wood from one end to the other, which, as it 
belongs to him who saves it, and the Cape is nearly des¬ 
titute of wood is a Godsend to the inhabitants. We 
