4 
CAPE COD. 
hut on it, lying just off the shore. This is said to be the 
rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from Nantasket to Scit- 
uate, — hard sienitic rocks, which the waves have laid 
bare, but have not been able to crumble. It has been 
the scene of many a shipwreck. 
The brig St. John, from Galway, Ireland, laden with 
emigrants, was wrecked on Sunday morning; it was 
now Tuesday morning, and the sea was still breaking 
violently on the rocks. There were eighteen or twenty 
of the same large boxes that I have mentioned, lying on 
a green hill-side, a few rods from the water, and sur¬ 
rounded by a crowd. The bodies which had been recov¬ 
ered, twenty-seven or eight in all, had been collected 
there. Some were rapidly nailing down the lids, others 
were carting the boxes away, and others were lifting the 
lids, which were yet loose, and peeping under the cloths, 
for each body, with such rags as still adhered to it, was 
covered loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no signs 
of grief, but there was a sober despatch of business which 
was affecting. One man was seeking to identify a par¬ 
ticular body, and one undertaker or carpenter was call¬ 
ing to another to know in what box a certain child was 
put. I saw many marble feet and matted heads as the 
cloths were raised, and one livid, swollen, and mangled 
body of a drowned girl, — who probably had intended to 
go out to service in some American family, — to which 
some rags still adhered, with a string, half concealed by 
the flesh, about its swollen neck; the coiled-up wreck of 
a human hulk, gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the 
bone and muscle were exposed, but quite bloodless, —- 
merely red and white, — with wide-open and staring 
eyes, yet lustreless, dead-lights; or like the cabin win¬ 
dows of a stranded vessel, filled with sand. Sometimes 
