PEOVINCETOWN. 
197 
or beans.” I took beans, though they never were a 
favorite dish of mine. I found next summer that this 
was still the only alternative proposed here, and the land¬ 
lord was still ringing the changes on these two words. 
In the former dish there was a remarkable proportion of 
fish. As you travel inland the potato predominates. 
It chanced that I did not taste fresh fish of any kind on 
the Cape, and I was assured that they were not so much 
used there as in the country. That is where they are 
cured, and where, sometimes, travellers are cured of eating 
them. No fresh meat was slaughtered in Provincetown, 
but the little that was used at the public houses was 
brought from Boston by the steamer. 
A great many of the houses here were surrounded by 
fish-flakes close up to the sills on all sides, with only a 
narrow passage two or three feet wide, to the front door ; 
so that instead of looking out into a flower or grass plot, 
you looked on to so many square rods of cod turned 
wrong side outwards. These parterres were said to be 
least like a flower-garden in a good drying day in mid¬ 
summer. There were flakes of every age and pattern, 
and some so rusty and overgrown with lichens that they 
looked as if they might have served the founders of the 
fishery here. Some had broken down under the weight 
of successive harvests. The principal employment of 
the inhabitants at this time seemed to be to trundle out 
their fish and spread them in the morning, and bring 
them in at night. I saw how many a loafer who chanced 
to be out early enough, got a job at wheeling out the fish 
of his neighbor who was anxious to improve the whole 
of a fair day. Now then I knew where salt fish were 
caught. They were everywhere lying on their backs, 
their collar-bones standing out like the lapels of a man- 
