THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 
179 
ProvincetowQ and its harbor, now emptied of vessels, 
and also a wide expanse of ocean. As we did not wish 
to enter Provincetown before night, though it was cold 
and windy, we returned across the Deserts to the Atlan¬ 
tic side, and walked along the beach again nearly to 
Race Point, being still greedy of the sea influence. All 
the while it was not so calm as the reader may suppose, 
but it was blow, blow, blow, — roar, roar, roar, — tramp, 
tramp, tramp, — without interruption. The shor^now 
trended nearly east and west. 
Before sunset, having already seen the mackerel fleet 
returning into the Bay, we left the sea-shore on the north 
of Provincetown, and made our way across the Desert to 
the eastern extremity of the town. From the first high 
sand-hill, covered with beach-grass and bushes to its top, 
on the edge of the desert, we overlooked the shrubby 
hill and swamp country which surrounds Provincetown 
on the north, and protects it, in some measure, from the 
invading sand. Notwithstanding the universal barren¬ 
ness, and the contiguity of the desert, I never saw an 
autumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this was. 
It was like the richest rug imaginable spread over an 
uneven surface ; no damask nor velvet, nor Tyrian dye 
or stuffs, nor the work of any loom, could ever match it. 
There was the incredibly bright red of the Huckleberry, 
and the reddish brown of the Bayberry, mingled with 
the bright and living green of small Pitch-Pines, and also 
the duller green of the Bayberry, Boxberry, and Plum, 
the yellowish green of the Shrub Oaks, and the various 
golden and yellow and fawn colored tints of the Birch 
and Maple and Aspen, — each making its own figure, 
and, in the midst, the few yellow sand-slides on the sides 
of the hills looked hke the white floor seen through 
