158 
CAPE COD. 
perchance, to read the Constitution by! I thought that 
he should read nothing less than his Bible by that light. 
I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps 
of a light-house, which was more light, we think, than 
the University afforded. 
When we had come down and walked a dozen rods 
from the light-house, we found that we could not get the 
full strength of its light on the narrow strip of land 
between it and the shore, being too low for the focus, 
and we saw only so many feeble and rayless stars; but 
at forty rods inland we could see to read, though we 
were still indebted to only one lamp. Each reflector 
sent forth a separate “ fan ” of light, — one shone on the 
windmill, and one in the hollow, while the intervening 
spaces were in shadow. This light is said to be visible 
twenty nautical miles and more, from an observer fifteen 
feet above the level of the sea. We could see the 
revolving light at Race Point, the end of the Cape, 
about nine miles distant, and also the light on Long 
Point, at the entrance of Provincetown Harbor, and 
one of the distant Plymouth Harbor Lights, across the 
Bay, nearly in a range with the last, like a star in the 
horizon. The keeper thought that the other Plymouth 
Light was concealed by being exactly in a range with 
the Long Point Light. He told us that the mariner 
was sometimes led astray by a mackerel fisher’s lantern, 
who was afraid of being run down in the night, or even 
by a cottager’s light, mistaking them for some well-known 
light on the coast, and, when he discovered his mistake, 
was wont to curse the prudent fisher or the wakeful cot¬ 
tager without reason. 
Though it was once declared that Providence placed 
this mass of clay here on purpose to erect a light-house 
