THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 
139 
be the highest land in North Truro. Even this vast 
clay bank is fast wearing away. Small streams of water 
trickling down it at intervals of two or three rods, have 
left the intermediate clay in the form of steep Gothic 
roofs fifty feet high or more, the ridges as sharp and 
rugged-looking as rocks; and in one place the bank is 
curiously eaten out in the form of a large semicircular 
crater. 
According to the light-house keeper, the Cape is wast¬ 
ing here on both sides, though most on the eastern. In 
some places it had lost many rods within the last year, 
and, erelong, the light-house must be moved. We cal¬ 
culated, from his data, how soon the Cape would be 
quite worn away at this point, ‘‘ for,” said he, I can 
remember sixty years back.” We were even more sur¬ 
prised at this last announcement, — that is, at the slow 
waste of life and energy in our informant, for we had 
taken him to be not more than forty, — than at the rapid 
wasting of the Cape, and we thought that he stood a fair 
chance to outlive the former. 
Between this October and June of the next year, 1 
found that the bank had lost about forty feet in one 
place, opposite the light-house, and it was cracked more 
than forty feet farther from the edge at the last date, the 
shore being strewn with the recent rubbish. But I 
judged that generally it was not wearing away here at 
the rate of more than six feet annually. Any conclu¬ 
sions drawn from the observations of a few years or one 
generation only are likely to prove false, and the Cape 
may balk expectation by its durability. In some places 
even a wrecker’s foot-path down the bank lasts several 
years. One old inhabitant told us that when the light¬ 
house was built, in 1798, it was calculated that it would 
