VII 
ACROSS THE CAPE. 
When we have returned from the sea-side, we some¬ 
times ask ourselves why we did not spend more time in 
gazing at the sea; but very soon the traveller does not 
look at the sea more than at the heavens. As for the 
interior, if the elevated sand-bar in the midst of the 
ocean can be said to have any interior, it was an 
exceedingly desolate landscape, with rarely a cultivated 
or cultivable field in sight. We saw no villages, and 
seldom a house, for these are generally on the Bay side. 
It was a succession of shrubby hills and valleys, now 
wearing an autumnal tint. You would frequently think, 
from the character of the surface, the dwarfish trees, and 
the bearberries around, that you were on the top of a 
mountain. The only wood in Eastham was on the edge 
of Wellfleet. The pitch-pines were not commonly more 
than fifteen or eighteen feet high. The larger ones were 
covered with lichens, — often hung with the long gray 
Usnea. There is scarcely a white-pine on the forearm 
of the Cape. Yet in the northwest part of Eastham, 
near the Camp Ground, we saw, the next summer, some 
quite rural, and even sylvan retreats, for the Cape, 
wdiere small rustling groves of oaks and locusts and 
whispering pines, on perfectly level ground, made a little 
