98 
CAPE COD. 
larger and more wonderful than they actually are. 
Lately, when approaching the sea-shore several degrees 
south of this, I saw before me, seemingly half a mile 
distant, what appeared like bold and rugged cliffs on the 
beach, fifteen feet high, and whitened by the sun and 
waves ; but after a few steps it proved to be low heaps of 
rags, — part of the cargo of a wrecked vessel, — scarcely 
more than a foot in height. Once also it was my busi¬ 
ness to go in search of the relics of a human body, man¬ 
gled by sharks, -which had just been cast up, a week 
after a wreck, having got the direction from a light¬ 
house : I should find it a mile or two distant over the 
sand, a dozen rods from the water, covered with a cloth, 
by a stick stuck up. I expected that I must look very 
narrowly to find so small an object, but the sandy beach, 
half a mile wide, and stretching farther than the eye 
could reach, was so perfectly smooth and bare, and the 
mirage toward the sea so magnifying, that when I was 
half a mile distant the insignificant sliver which marked 
the spot looked like a bleached spar, and the relics were 
as conspicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy plain, 
or a generation had labored to pile up their cairn there. 
Close at hand they were simply some bones with a little 
flesh adhering to them, in fact, only a slight inequality 
in the sweep of the shore. There was nothing at all 
remarkable about them, and they were singularly inof¬ 
fensive both to the senses and the imagination. But as 
I stood there they grew more and more imposing. They 
were alone with the beach and the sea, whose hollow 
roar seemed addressed to them, and I was impressed as 
if there was an understanding between them and the 
ocean which necessarily left me out, with my snivelling 
sympathies. That dead body had taken possession of 
