One of the most curious buildings of Cape Cod stands in East Sandwich. It is a block-house, built in 1644. It is now the parlor of a dwelling-house, and its neat and peaceful interior, cheered by a cabinet organ, is in strange contrast with the thought of Pilgrims, in peaked hats, standing guard against possible forays of Indians. Next below Sandwich dies the scattered village of West Barnstable, anciently called “Great Marshes,” from the vast sweep of salt-marsh, rich in suggestive beauty, which makes far out to Barnstable Bay. From the road that rises to the southward to cross the Cape, you look on woods and farms, on bits of swamp, green in the hottest summer, on the great marshes and the bay. The meeting-house, high up the hill, is nearly one hundred and seventy years old, being one of the oldest in the State. It takes the place of an earlier structure, and the church which worships in it has a history. In the early part of the seventeenth century, Henry Jacob, a clergyman of the Church of England, wrote against the English Congregationalists then in exile. Shortly after, he went to Leyden, where he met with John Robinson, and, influenced probably by him, changed his views. On his return to England he took the lead in the establishment, in 1616, of an Independent Church, of which, for eight years, he was the pastor. He was succeeded by John Lathrop. Another eight years the congregation worshiped in secret in London, but it was finally discovered, by the bishop’s pursuivant, at the house of one Humphrey Barnet, in Blackfriars. Forty-two persons were apprehended, and the prisoners were held for some two years. Mr. Lathrop, the pastor, was detained longest, and it was only after the death of his wife, on the intercession of his children, that he was released, on condition of leaving the kingdom. He came to New England with thirty of his people, and settled at Scituate; but in 1639, with a majority of the members of the church, he emigrated to Great Marshes, and so began the settlement of Barnstable. “This circumstance,” says Palfrey, the historian of New England, himself a native of the town, “makes the first church in Barnstable the representative of the first Congregational church established in England, unless, which perhaps was the fact, the church of John Robinson, now surviving in that of Plymouth, was organized on Congregational principles before he left the mother country for Holland.” “Another interesting fact,” he adds, “connected with that primitive English Congregational church which still survives in our church at Great Marshes, is that from its bosom also proceeded the first English Baptist church: so that it is further entitled to the eminent rank of parent of the now very numerous churches of that denomination both England and America.” [Illustration: MARSHES (EVENING).]