PfJOVINCETOWN. 
205 
even in slippers, for they had learned how to put their 
feet down and lift them up without taking in any sand. 
One man said that he should be surprised if he found 
half a dozen grains of sand in his pumps at night, and 
stated, moreover, that the young ladies had a dexterous 
way of emptying their shoes at each step, which it would 
take a stranger a long time to learn. The tires of the 
stage-wheels were about five inches wide ; and the wagon- 
tires generally on the Cape are an inch or two wider, 
as the sand is an inch or two deeper than elsewhere. I 
saw a baby’s wagon with tires six inches wide to keep it 
near the surface. The more tired the wheels, the less 
tired the horses. Yet all the time that we were in Prov- 
incetown, which was two days and nights, we saw only 
one horse and cart, and they were conveying a coffin. 
They did not try such experiments there on common 
occasions. The next summer I saw only the two-wheeled 
horse-cart which conveyed me thirty rods into the harbor 
on my way to the steamer. Yet we read that there were 
two horses and two yoke of oxen here in 1791, and we 
were told that there were several more when we were 
there, beside the stage team. In Barber’s Historical Col¬ 
lections, it is said, “ so rarely are wheel-carriages seen iu 
the place that they are a matter of some curiosity to the 
younger part of the community. A lad who understood 
navigating the ocean much better than land travel, on see¬ 
ing a man driving a wagon in the street, expressed his 
surprise at his being able to drive so straight without the 
assistance of a rudder.” There was no rattle of carts, and 
there would have been no rattle if there had been any 
carts. Some saddle-horses that passed the hotel in the 
evening merely made the sand fiy with a rustling sound 
like a writer sanding his paper copiously, but there was no 
