No one who travels through Cape Cod and visits the people in their houses can fail to notice an almost universal thrift and comfort. No other section of the State, perhaps, shows more general independence and average prosperity. There are large villages, with streets of handsome houses and bearing signs of wealth. But, to a considerable extent, the houses are in hamlets, or stand apart in lonely situations. To city people they often seem forbidding. You see a cottage, with an L extravagantly long, standing by itself upon a hill-side, by a pond, or near the beach. The outside, very likely, has never been painted; but if you enter, you are pretty sure to find substantial comfort. And if you find a welcome, it is no more than you have a right to expect in the little county which, in King Philip’s war, invited to its hospitality the people of three whole towns exposed to Indian ravages. And it is a barren house that does not display some foreign treasures. No mean museum could be filled from the houses of Cape Cod. Everywhere, too, you see signs of familiarity with the sea. There are often great foreign shells on the gateposts, or rows of shells up a front path; a wide-doored barn with haymows will have a cod-fish weather vane; from a key left in the door of a blacksmith’s shop will dangle a shell, instead of a billet of wood. Occasionally, you will see a hen-yard fenced about with a seine. Even the men whose work lies ashore have all been more or less at sea, and can steer and reef on a pinch. A man was hurried off a farm awhile ago to fill a gap on a coaster. He had the easy berth, and through all the heavy weather that prevailed he merely stood and hauled on deck. But when the voyage was over, and the vessel swung at anchor in the home port, and there was occasion for some one to go to the foretop masthead, the farmer, with a twinkle in his eye, seized the ratlines and went up like a cat. He had shrewdly kept dark as to his seamanship. [Illustration: WELLFLEET ANCIENT WHARVES.] The history of Cape Cod has, of course, been closely interwoven with the fate of the Indians. The titles of lands are based upon grants from them. The prices, of course, were very small. One of the early deeds runs as follows: “August 26, 1644. “These presents witness that I, Serunk, Indian, now dwelling at South Sea, do sell and make over unto the town of Barnstable all the sd. lands and meadows lying betwixt the bounds of Sandwich and the bounds of Prexit and other Indians, in consideration of four coats and three axes. In witness I have hereunto set my hand, the day and year above written. “The mark of ┼ Serunk. ANTHONY ANNABLE, } HENRY COBB, } THOMAS ALLEN, } _Witnesses._” JOHN SMITH, } LAURENCE WILLIS, } THOMAS DIMOCK, }