ACROSS THE CAPE. 
135 
flow this State has risen and thriven by its fisheries, —• 
that the legislature which authorized the Zoological Sur¬ 
rey sat under the emblem of a codfish, — that Nan¬ 
tucket and New Bedford are within our limits, — that 
an early riser may find a thousand or fifteen hundred 
dollars’ worth of blackfish on the shore in a morning, —- 
that the Pilgrims saw the Indians cutting up a blackfish 
on the shore at Eastham, and called a part of that shore 
‘‘ Grampus Bay,” from the number of blackfish they 
found there, before they got to Plymouth, — and that 
from that time to this these fishes have continued to 
enrich one or two counties almost annually, and that 
their decaying carcasses were now poisoning the air of 
one county for more than thirty miles, — I thought it 
remarkable that neither the popular nor scientific name 
was to be found in a report on our mammalia, — a cata¬ 
logue of the productions of our land and water. 
We had here, as well as all across the Cape, a fair 
view of Provincetown, five or six miles distant over the 
water toward the west, under its shrubby sand-hills, with 
its harbor now full of vessels whose masts mingled with 
the spires of its churches, and gave it the appearance 
of a quite large seaport town. 
The inhabitants of all the lower Cape towns enjoy 
thus the prospect of two seas. Standing on the western 
or larboard shore, and looking across to where the dis¬ 
tant mainland looms, they can say. This is Massachu¬ 
setts Bay; and then, after an hour’s sauntering walk, 
they may stand on the starboard side, beyond which 
Sio land is seen to loom,- and say, This is the Atlantic 
Ocean. 
On our way back to the light-house, by whose white- 
ivashed tower we steered as securely as the mariner by 
