142 
CAPE COD. 
in many places there is occasionally none at all. We 
ourselves observed the effect of a single storm with a 
high tide in the night, in July, 1855, It moved the sand 
on the beach opposite the light-house to the depth of 
six feet, and three rods in width as far as we could see 
north and south, and carried it bodily off no one knows 
exactly where, laying bare in one place a large rock 
five feet high which was invisible before, and narrow¬ 
ing the beach to that extent. There is usually, as I 
have said, no bathing on the back side of the Cape, on 
account of the undertow’’, but when we were there last, 
the sea had, three months before, cast up a bar near this 
light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over which 
the tide did not flow, leaving a narrow cove, then a 
quarter of a mile long, between it and the shore, which 
afforded excellent bathing. This cove had from time to 
time been closed up as the bar travelled northward, in 
one instance imprisoning four or five hundred whiting 
and cod, which died there, and the water as often turned 
fresh and finally gave place to sand. This bar, the in¬ 
habitants assured us, might be wholly removed, and the 
water six feet deep there in two or three days. 
The light-house keeper said that when the wind blow^ed 
strong on to the shore, the waves ate fast into the bank, 
but when it blowed off they took no sand away; for in 
the former case the wind heaped up the surface of the 
water next to the beach, and to preserve its equilibrium 
a strong undertow immediately set back again into the 
sea w^hich carried with it the sand and whatever else was 
in the way, and left the beach hard to walk on ; but in 
the latter case the undertow set on, and carried the sand 
with it, so that it was particularly difficult for shipwrecked 
men to get to land when the wind blowed on to the shore, 
