64 
CAPE COD. 
quicksilver. Before the land rose out of the ocean, and 
became dry land, chaos reigned; and between high and 
low water mark, where she is partially disrobed and ris¬ 
ing, a sort of chaos reigns still, which only anomalous 
creatures can inhabit. Mackerel-gulls were all the while 
flying over our heads and amid the breakers, sometimes 
two white ones pursuing a black one; quite at home in 
the storm, though they are as delicate organizations as 
sea-jellies and mosses ; and we saw that they were adapt¬ 
ed to their circumstances rather by their spirits than their 
bodies. Theirs must be an essentially wilder, that is, 
less human, nature than that of larks and robins. Their 
note was like the sound of some vibrating metal, and 
harmonized well with the scenery and the roar of the 
surf, as if one had rudely touched the strings of the 
lyre, which ever lies on the shore; a ragged shred of 
ocean music tossed aloft on the spray. But if I were 
required to name a sound, the remembrance of which 
most perfectly revives the impression which the beach 
has made, it would be the dreary peep of the piping 
plover ( Gharadrius melodus) which haunts there. Their 
voices, too, are heard as a fugacious part in the dirge 
which is ever played along the shore for those mariners 
who have been lost in the deep since first it was created. 
But through all this dreariness we seemed to have a 
pure and unqualified strain of eternal melody, for always 
the same strain which is a dirge to one household is a 
morning song of rejoicing to another. 
A remarkable method of catching gulls, derived from 
the Indians, was practised in Wellfleet in 1794. The 
Gull House,” it is said, ‘‘ is built with crotchets, fixed in 
the ground on the beach,” poles being stretched across 
for the top, and the sides made close with stakes and 
