194 
CAPE COD. 
property on it has lately been added to Provincetown, 
and I was told by a Truro man that his townsmen 
talked of petitioning the legislature to set off the next 
mile of their territory also to Provincetown, in order 
that she might have her share of the lean as well as 
the fat, and take care of the road through it; for its 
whole value is literally to hold the Cape together, and 
even this it has not always done. But Provincetown 
strenuously declines the gift. 
The wind bio wed so hard from the northeast, that, 
cold as it was, we resolved to see the breakers on the 
Atlantic side, whose din we had heard all the morning; 
so we kept on eastward through the Desert, till we struck 
the shore again northeast of Provincetown, and exposed 
ourselves to the full force of the piercing blast. There 
are extensive shoals there over which the sea broke with 
great force. For half a mile from the shore it was one 
mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such 
a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak. Of 
this part of the coast it is said: “ A northeast storm, 
the most violent and fatal to seamen, as it is frequently 
accompanied with snow, blows directly on the land: a 
strong current sets along the shore: add to which that 
ships, during the operation of such a storm, endeavor 
to work northward, that they may get into the bay. 
Should they be unable to weather Race Point, the wind 
drives them on the shore, and a shipwreck is inevitable. 
Accordingly, the strand is everywhere covered with the 
fragments of vessels.” But since the Highland Light 
was erected, this part of the coast is less dangerous, and 
it is said that more shipwrecks occur south of that light, 
where they were scarcely known before. 
This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed, — more 
