NORTH 
SHORE 
HOUSE WHERE 
“CALICO PARTY” WAS HELD 
to put these same old designs into doorways of wood and 
stone and marble. They take the lines, the measurements 
and every little detail—but the secrets, and the memories 
and the atmosphere of long ago cannot be taken but re- 
BREEZE and Reminder 13 
MOST ORNATE IN THE TOWN 
main until, with time, the doorways and the houses reared 
above them pass forever. 
(Reprinted from July 1912 issue 
of New England Resorter.) 
Cape Ann as a Tourists’ Haven 
By W. LESTER STEVENS 
(Note: Articles affording an access to many beauty 
spots of Cape Ann not well known to the summer resi- 
dents will be printed weekly. The author is an artist 
who is a native of Cape Ann and in his sketching trips 
has become thoroughly acquainted with every portion 
of the place. That others may see and know what a 
wealth of beauty is here is therefore our aim in printing 
the articles which will serve as road maps, as well as de- 
scriptions of the most picturesque spots on the North 
Shore.—ED. ) 
The first settlers who came to Cape Ann found it to 
be an ungrateful country in that it was not a land of 
milk and honey, but one which necessitated the exercising 
of considerable courage and hardiness in the production 
of a living. © 
There were no large plots of land for gardens. The 
woods running to the ocean’s edge left few fertile fields. 
These were to be cleared and made by the sweat of the 
brow. And where there were no woods was a barren 
waste of rock strewn moor stretching for miles and miles 
until the tidal creek ‘now called the “Squam river’ was 
met. And again while there was a fairly good harbor 
yet those hardy men who “went down to the seas in 
ships” often never returned. The rugged coast has wit- 
nessed many a craft banged to pieces against her cliffs. 
And so it was not to an Eden that the forefathers came 
in the early seventeenth century. Rather it was to a land 
to be tamed and subdued. 
Ungrateful as seemed the country it must neverthe- 
less have been very beautiful. We, whose pride leads us 
to boast that Cape Ann and the North Shore is one of 
the most beautiful spots in America and perhaps in the 
world, might well have acclaimed that beauty in a louder 
voice had we seen it before its virginity was violated. 
Imagine a beautiful grove of magnificent pine and oak 
trees extending over the Rockport Headlands to the water, 
the three islands—Thatcher’s, Straitsmouth and Milk— 
heavily wooded. And over the moor where now is Gap 
Head. Flat Point and that portion of Rockport where is 
now the summer colony, only the crows and gulls sped 
with swift flight. Save for the foot print of an occasional 
“red-man” the human foot had not made its impress. I 
have often at an October twilight watched the night de- 
scend over the moor and in fancy have joined the crew 
of one of Captain John Smith’s vessels, or have buried 
the gold of Captain Kidd and I have gloated in the deso- 
