fallen on the buttered side some time. I only saw that it was a closely
built town for a small one, with glass-works to improve its sand, and
narrow streets in which we turned round and round till we could not
tell which way we were going, and the rain came in, first on this side,
and then on that, and I saw that they in the houses were more
comfortable than we in the coach. My book also said of this town, “The
inhabitants, in general, are substantial livers.”—that is. I suppose,
they do not live like philosophers: but, as the stage did not stop long
enough for us to dine, we had no opportunity to test the truth of this
statement. It may have referred, however, to the quantity “of oil they
would yield.” It further said, “The inhabitants of Sandwich generally
manifest a fond and steady adherence to the manners, employments, and
modes of living which characterized their fathers”; which made me think
that they were, after all, very much like all the rest of the
world;—and it added that this was “a resemblance, which, at this day,
will constitute no impeachment of either their virtue or taste”: which
remark proves to me that the writer was one with the rest of them. No
people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their
fathers might have been to them. But it must be confessed that ours was
old authority, and probably they have changed all that now.
[Illustration: An old windmill]
Our route was along the Bay side, through Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis,
and Brewster, to Orleans, with a range of low hills on our right,
running down the Cape. The weather was not favorable for wayside views,
but we made the most of such glimpses of land and water as we could get
through the rain. The country was, for the most part, bare, or with
only a little scrubby wood left on the hills. We noticed in
Yarmouth—and, if I do not mistake, in Dennis—large tracts where
pitch-pines were planted four or five years before. They were in rows,
as they appeared when we were abreast of them, and, excepting that
there were extensive vacant spaces, seemed to be doing remarkably well.
This, we were told, was the only use to which such tracts could be
profitably put. Every higher eminence had a pole set up on it, with an
old storm-coat or sail tied to it, for a signal, that those on the
south side of the Cape, for instance, might know when the Boston
packets had arrived on the north. It appeared as if this use must
absorb the greater part of the old clothes of the Cape, leaving but few
rags for the pedlers. The wind-mills on the hills,—large
weather-stained octagonal structures,—and the salt-works scattered all
along the shore, with their long rows of vats resting on piles driven
into the marsh, their low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter
wind-mills, were novel and interesting objects to an inlander. The sand
by the road-side was partially covered with bunches of a moss-like
plant, _Hudsonia tomentosa_, which a woman in the stage told us was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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