“There we lay, till next day. In the Bay of Biscay O!” A little south of east was Palos, where Columbus weighed anchor, and farther yet the pillars which Hercules set up; concerning which when we inquired at the top of our voices what was written on them,—for we had the morning sun in our faces, and could not see distinctly,—the inhabitants shouted _Ne plus ultra_ (no more beyond), but the wind bore to us the truth only, _plus ultra_ (more beyond), and over the Bay westward was echoed _ultra_ (beyond). We spoke to them through the surf about the Far West, the true Hesperia, ἕω πέρας or end of the day, the This Side Sundown, where the sun was extinguished in the _Pacific_, and we advised them to pull up stakes and plant those pillars of theirs on the shore of California, whither all our folks were gone,—the only _ne_ plus ultra now. Whereat they looked crestfallen on their cliffs, for we had taken the wind out of all their sails. We could not perceive that any of their leavings washed up here, though we picked up a child’s toy, a small dismantled boat, which may have been lost at Pontevedra. The Cape became narrower and narrower as we approached its wrist between Truro and Provincetown, and the shore inclined more decidedly to the west. At the head of East Harbor Creek, the Atlantic is separated but by half a dozen rods of sand from the tide-waters of the Bay. From the Clay Pounds the bank flatted off for the last ten miles to the extremity at Race Point, though the highest parts, which are called “islands” from their appearance at a distance on the sea, were still seventy or eighty feet above the Atlantic, and afforded a good view of the latter, as well as a constant view of the Bay, there being no trees nor a hill sufficient to interrupt it. Also the sands began to invade the land more and more, until finally they had entire possession from sea to sea, at the narrowest part. For three or four miles between Truro and Provincetown there were no inhabitants from shore to shore, and there were but three or four houses for twice that distance.