90 
CAPE COD. 
round east, and we should have rainy weather. The 
ocean was heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and 
this roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its 
equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before the 
wind. Also the captain of a packet between this country 
and England told me that he sometimes met with a wave 
on the Atlantic coming against the wind, perhaps in a 
calm sea, which indicated that at a distance the wind 
was blowing from an opposite quarter, but the undula¬ 
tion had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of “ tide- 
rips ” and ground-swells,” which they suppose to have 
been occasioned by hurricanes and earthquakes, and to 
have travelled many hundred, and sometimes even two 
or three thousand miles. 
Before sunrise the next morning they let us out 
again, and I ran over to the beach to see the sun come 
out of the ocean. The old woman of eighty-four win¬ 
ters was already out in the cold morning wind, bare¬ 
headed, tripping about like a young girl, and driving up 
the cow to milk. She got the breakfast with despatch, 
and without noise or bustle ; and meanwhile the old man 
resumed his stories, standing before us, who were sitting, 
with his back to the chimney, and ejecting his tobacco- 
juice right and left into the fire behind him, without 
regard to the various dishes which were there preparing. 
At breakfast we had eels, buttermilk cake, cold bread, 
green beans, doughnuts, and tea. The old man talked a 
steady stream; and when his wife told him he had bet¬ 
ter eat his breakfast, he said: “ Don’t hurry me; I have 
lived too long to be hurried.” I ate of the apple-sauce 
and the doughnuts, which I thought had sustained the 
least detriment from the old man’s shots, but my com¬ 
panion refused the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot cake 
