192 
CAPE COD. 
under the authority of law in the month of April yearly, 
to plant beach-grass, as elsewhere they are warned to 
repair the highways. They dug up the grass in bunches, 
which were afterward divided into several smaller ones, 
and set about three feet apart, in rows, so arranged as 
to break joints and obstruct the passage of the wind. It 
spread itself rapidly, the weight of the seeds when ripe 
bending the heads of the grass, and so dropping directly 
by its side and vegetating there. In this way, for in¬ 
stance, they built up again that part of the Cape be¬ 
tween Truro and Provincetown where the sea broke 
over in the last century. They have now a public road 
near there, made by laying sods, which were full of 
roots, bottom upward and close together on the sand, 
double in the middle of the track, then spreading brush 
evenly over the sand on each side for half a dozen feet, 
planting beach-grass on the banks in regular rows, as 
above described, and sticking a fence of brush against 
the hollows. 
The attention of the general government was first 
attracted to the danger which threatened Cape Cod 
Harbor from the inroads of the sand, about thirty 
years ago, and commissioners were at that time ap¬ 
pointed by Massachusetts to examine the premises. 
They reported in June, 1825, that, owing to the trees 
and brush having been cut down, and the beach-grass 
destroyed on the seaward side of the Cape, opposite the 
Harbor,” the original surface of the ground had been 
broken up and removed by the wind toward the Har¬ 
bor, — during the previous fourteen years, — over an 
extent of “ one half a mile in breadth, and about four 
and a half miles in length.” — “ The space where a few 
years since were some of the highest lands on the Cape, 
