166 
CAPE COD. 
We could not perceive that any of their leavings 
washed up here, though we picked up a child’s toy, a 
small dismantled boat, which may have been lost at 
Pontevedra. 
The Cape became narrower and narrower as we ap¬ 
proached its wrist between Truro and Provincetown, 
and the shore inclined more decidedly to the west. At 
the head of East Harbor Creek, the Atlantic is separated 
but by half a dozen rods of sand from the tide-waters of 
the Bay. From the Clay Pounds the bank flatted off 
for the last ten miles to the extremity at Race Point, 
though the highest parts, which are called “ islands ” 
from their appearance at a distance on the sea, were still 
seventy or eighty feet above the Atlantic, and afforded a 
good view of the latter, as well as a constant view of the 
Bay, there being no trees nor a hill sufiicient to interrupt 
it. Also the sands began to invade the land more and 
more, until finally they had entire possession from sea to 
sea, at the narrowest part. For three or four miles 
between Truro and Provincetown there were no in¬ 
habitants from shore to shore, and there were but three 
or four houses for twice that distance. 
As we plodded along, either by the edge of the ocean, 
where the sand was rapidly drinking up the last wave 
that wet it, or over the sand-hills of the bank, the mack¬ 
erel fleet continued to pour round the Cape north of 
us, ten or fifteen miles distant, in countless numbers, 
schooner after schooner, till they made a city on the 
water. They were so thick that many appeared to be 
afoul of one another; now all standing on this tack, 
now on that. We saw how well the New-Englanders 
hiid followed up Captain John Smith’s suggestions with 
regard to the fisheries, made in 1616 , — to what a pitch 
