20 
CAPE COD. 
long rows of vats resting on piles driven into tlie marsh, 
their low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter wind-mills, 
were novel and interesting objects to an inlander. The 
sand by the roadside was partially covered with bunches 
of a moss-like plant, Hudsonia tomentosa^ which a woman 
in the stage told us was called “ poverty grass,” because 
it grew where nothing else would. 
I was struck by the pleasant equality which reigned 
among the stage company, and their broad and invulner¬ 
able good humor. They were what is called free and 
easy, and met one another to advantage, as men who had, 
at length, learned how to live. They appeared to know 
each other when they were strangers, they were so sim¬ 
ple and downright. They were well met, in an unusual 
sense, that is, they met as well as they could meet, and 
did not seem to be troubled with any impediment. They 
were not afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were 
contented to make just such a company as the ingredients 
allowed. It was evident that the same foolish respect 
was not here claimed, for mere wealth and station, that 
is in many parts of New England; yet some of them 
were the “ first people,” as they are called, of the va¬ 
rious towns through which we passed. Retired sea- 
captains, in easy circumstances, who talked of farming 
as sea-captains are wont ; an erect, respectable, and 
trustworthy-looking man, in his wrapper, some of the 
salt of the earth, who had formerly been the salt of the 
sea; or a more courtly gentleman, who, perchance, had 
been a representative to the General Court in his day ; 
or a broad, red-faced Cape Cod man, who had seen too 
many storms to be easily irritated ; or a fisherman’s wife, 
who had been waiting a week for a coaster to leave 
Boston, and had at length come by the cars. 
