At the extremity of Cape Cod is Provincetown, among the sand dunes, a town with about forty-five hundred inhabitants, encircling the harbor on its western verge, a long, narrow settlement between the high white sand-hills and the beach. There are two main streets, one along the beach and the other parallel to it back among the hills. Upon the highest hill is the Town Hall, the mariner's landmark entering the harbor, and from it are good views over ocean and bay, displaying the curious end of the Cape sweeping grandly around and enclosing the spacious harbor with room enough for anchoring an enormous fleet. To the west and south is the great bended hook having Race Point on its northwesterly verge and a lighthouse on the southern termination, whence a tongue of beach juts over towards Truro. This is a haven for many fishermen, and the people, who are among the purest descendants of the original Puritans, devote their energies largely to catching mackerel and cod, curing and stacking the fish all around the bay. The first appearance of Provincetown in history was when the "Mayflower" entered the harbor with the Pilgrims in November, 1620. Cape Cod was the first land they saw after leaving the English Channel, then not bare as now, but wooded down to the shore. They anchored in the bay, and the men were forced to wade "a bow-shoot" to the shore to make a landing, and it was this wading and subsequent exposure which gave them the colds and sickness resulting in the deaths of so many during the subsequent winter. It is recorded that upon Monday, November 23, 1620, the women went ashore to wash, and thus they inaugurated that universal institution which has extended all over the country, the great American Monday washing-day. It was while anchored in Provincetown harbor the Pilgrims framed and signed the celebrated Puritan Compact, so long ruling Plymouth, which is regarded as the foundation of constitutional government. John Quincy Adams said of it: "This is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive original social compact which speculative philosophers imagined as the only legitimate source of government." It was signed by forty-one Pilgrims, of whom twenty-one died during the ensuing four months. It reads: