More than a hundred years ago the project of a ship-canal was seriously discussed. Very recently a corporation, not composed, we ought to state, of Cape Cod men, undertook the work. The route surveyed was about seven miles in length. An army of Italian laborers was brought on from New York, and digging was begun; but the enterprise suddenly collapsed, and the sons of Rome were left there, penniless, to shake their fists and utter Italian threats, and the town of Sandwich found itself obliged to feed the unfortunate men and send them back to New York. The project has lately been revived. Long ago, the tempting narrowness of the isthmus gave rise in the mind of some local genius to a singular proposition. In those days, wolves made serious havoc. It would seem that Cape Cod was subject to visitations from the main-land. And so, in 1717, it was proposed to build a high fence from “Picket Cliff,” on the north side of the Cape, to Wareham, to keep wolves from coming into the county; but the lower towns, finding, perhaps, in the activity of the Sandwich farmers already a sufficient bulwark, were lukewarm, and the scheme fell through. The discussion of it, however, disclosed a certain lack of a spirit of self-denial in some of the outside towns. They objected to the fence, not wishing, they said, “all the wolves to be shut out of the county upon their limits.” So, in one way and another, by the project of a ship-canal or a wolf-fence, the main-land has, from the earliest time, trembled under a perpetual menace of being cut off from Cape Cod. The question of cutting the Cape at Eastham was once debated. It was thought, however, that the channel would be likely to be closed by the action of the sea, which often shows a mind of its own with regard to geography. The ocean, in fact, is constantly making changes in the shores of the Cape. Stage Harbor is entered by a narrow opening in a long tongue of sand. This opening has been changing its location. It was formerly in Eastham; but being of a roving disposition, as befits a Cape Cod institution, it has gradually moved to the south, and is now in the town of Orleans. [Illustration: MAP OF CAPE COD. Struthers, Servoss & Co., Engs:, N.Y.] In many places on the more exposed coast-line, the shores are slowly washing away. Where there are woods immediately on the bluff, trees are often seen lying along the beach, with their uptorn roots exposed in the bank where they were undermined in a winter’s gale. Sometimes, on the other hand, a storm makes beach, by throwing thousands of tons of sand upon a low stretch of coast and burying out of sight the marsh-bank. In Eastham, large stumps may be discovered nearly a mile from land, and ancient peat-meadows now lie under water. At another place in that town is a peat-meadow which was buried in remote times by sand, but has been washed out again by the waves, and fuel has been taken from it.