244 
CAPE COD. 
exclaimed, “ What’s that ? He had been employed on 
this boat for a year, and passed this light every week 
day, but as he ha/i never chanced to empty his dishes 
just at that point, had never seen it before. To look at 
lights was the pilot’s business; he minded the kitchen 
fire. It suggested how little some who voyaged round 
the world could manage to see. You would almost as 
easily believe that there are men who never yet chanced 
to come out at the right time to see the sun. What 
avails it though a light be placed on the top of a hill, if 
you spend all your life directly under the hill ? It might 
as well be under a bushel. This light-house, as is well 
known, was swept away in a storm in April, 1851, and 
the two men in it, and the next morning not a vestige of 
it was to be seen from the shore. 
A Hull man told me that he helped set up a white- 
oak pole on Minpt’s Ledge some years before. It was 
fifteen inches in diameter, forty-one feet high, sunk four 
feet in the rock, and was secured by four guys, — but it 
stood only one year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near 
the same place stood eight years. 
When I crossed the Bay in the Melrose in July, we 
hugged the Scituate shore as long as possible, in order 
to take advantage of the wind. Far out on the Bay 
(off this shore) we scared up a brood of young ducks, 
probably black ones, bred hereabouts, which the packet 
had frequently disturbed in her trips. A townsman, who 
was making the voyage for the first time, walked slowly 
round into the rear of the helmsman, when we were in 
the middle of the Bay, and looking out over the sea, 
before he sat down there, remarked with as much origi¬ 
nality as was possible for one who used a borrowed 
expression, This is a great country.” He had been 
