204 
CAPE COD. 
inhabitants are obliged to get leave from the authorities 
to cut wood behind the town for fish-flakes, bean-poles, 
pea-brush, and the like, though, as we were told, they 
may transplant trees from one part of the township to 
another without leave. The sand drifts like snow, and 
sometimes the lower story of a house is concealed by it, 
though it is kept off by a wall. The houses were for¬ 
merly built on piles, in order that the driving sand might 
pass under them. We saw a few old ones here still 
standing on their piles, but they were boarded up now, 
being protected by their younger neighbors. There was 
a school-house, just under the hill on which we sat, filled 
with sand up to the tops of the desks, and of course the 
master and scholars had fied. Perhaps they had im¬ 
prudently left the windows open one day, or neglected to 
mend a broken pane. Yet in one place was advertised 
“ Fine sand for sale here,” — I could hardly believe my 
eyes, — probably some of the street sifted, — a good in¬ 
stance of the fact that a man confers a value on the most 
worthless thing by mixing himself with it, according to 
which rule we must have conferred a value on the whole 
backside of Cape Cod; — but I thought that if they 
could have advertised “ Fat Soil,” or perhaps “ Fine 
sand got rid of,” ay, and “ Shoes emptied here,” it would 
have been more alluring. As we looked down on the 
town, I thought that I saw one man, who probably lived 
beyond the extremity of the planking, steering and tack¬ 
ing for it in a sort of snow-shoes, hut I may have been 
mistaken. In some pictures of Provincetown the per¬ 
sons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ancles, 
BO much being supposed to be buried in the sand. Nev¬ 
ertheless, natives of Provincetown assured me that they 
could walk in the middle of the road without trouble 
