140 
CAPE COD. 
stand forty-five years, allowing the bank to waste one 
length of fence each year, but,” said he, “ there it is ” 
(or rather another near the same site, about twenty rods 
from the edge of the bank). 
The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere, for 
one man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago on the 
north of Provincetown whose ‘‘hones^^ (this was his 
word) are still visible many rods within the present line 
of the beach, half buried in sand. Perchance they lie 
alongside the timbers of a whale. The general state¬ 
ment of the inhabitants is, that the Cape is wasting on 
both sides, but extending itself on particular points 
on the south and west, as at Chatham and Monomoy 
Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long, and Race Points. 
James Freeman stated in his day that above three miles 
had been added to Monomoy Beach during the previous 
fifty years, and it is said to be still extending as fast as 
ever. A writer in the Massachusetts Magazine, in the 
last century, tells us that “ when the English first settled 
upon the Cape, there was an island off* Chatham, at three 
leagues’ distanee, ealled Webbs’ Island, containing twenty 
acres, covered with red-cedar or savin. The inhabitants 
of Nantucket used to carry wood from it ”; but he adds 
that in his day a large rock alone marked the spot, and 
the water was six fathoms deep there. The entrance to 
Nauset Harbor, which was once in Eastham, has now 
travelled south into Orleans. The islands in Wellfleet 
Harbor once formed a continuous beach, though now 
small vessels pass between them. And so of many 
other parts of this coast. 
Perhaps what the Ocean takes from one part of the 
Cape it gives to another, — robs Peter to pay Paul. 
On the eastern side the sea appears to be everywhere 
