126 
CAPE COD. 
ploughing the sea than the land. They do not disturb 
their sands much, though there is a plenty of sea-weed in 
the creeks, to say nothing of blackfish occasionally rot¬ 
ting on the shore. Between the Pond and East Harbor 
Village there was an interesting plantation of pitch-pines, 
twenty or thirty acres in extent, like those which we had 
already seen from the stage. One who lived near said 
that the land was purchased by two men for a shilling 
or twenty-five cents an acre. Some is not considered 
worth writing a deed for. This soil or sand, which was 
partially covered with poverty and beach grass, sorrel, &c., 
w^as furrowed at intervals of about four feet and the seed 
dropped by a machine. The pines had come up admirably 
and grown the first year three or four inches, and the 
second six inches and more. Where the seed had been 
lately planted the white sand was freshly exposed in an 
endless furrow winding round and round the sides of the 
deep hollows, in a vortical spiral manner, which pro¬ 
duced a very singular effect, as if you were looking into 
the reverse side of a vast banded shield. This experi¬ 
ment, so important to the Cape, appeared very success¬ 
ful, and perhaps the time will come when the greater 
part of this kind of land in Barnstable County wall be 
thus covered wdth an artificial pine forest, as has been 
done in some parts of France. In that country 12,500 
acres of downs had been thus covered in 1811 near 
Bayonne. They are called pignadas, and according to 
Loudon “constitute the principal riches of the inhab¬ 
itants, where there was a drifting desert before.” It 
seemed a nobler kind of grain to raise than corn even. 
A few years ago Truro was remarkable among the 
Cape towns for the number of sheep raised in it; but I 
was told that at this time only two men kept sheep in the 
