Some glacial lands, now vanished, still existed in historical times. There are many early references, for example, to Ile Nauset, or Nauset Isle, a point of land that lay off Nauset Beach, perpendicular to the coastline. It may have formed part of Cape Mallebarre, the place of “dangerous shoals and roaring breakers” that turned back the _Mayflower_ from its intended destination of Virginia. Nauset Isle had sunk beneath the waves by the 18th century, but another piece of early glacial real estate survived much longer. In the late 19th century, Billingsgate Island, off Jeremy Point in Wellfleet, was a flourishing 60-acre fishing community with livestock, a schoolhouse, and a lighthouse. By 1915, however, the island had been abandoned, and by 1942 it had vanished, the victim of gradual erosion by currents, storms, and rising sea levels. Today, at low tide, one can view the remains of this Wellfleetian Atlantis from the southern bluffs of Great Beach Hill: an extensive spread of granite boulders brought over on ships as riprap in a futile attempt to stem the tides. [Illustration: (Capt. Myles Standish.)] [Illustration: _In Capt. Myles Standish the Pilgrims had both a military and temporal leader. He helped found the Plymouth Colony, led a group that bought the colony from London investors, and served as assistant governor and treasurer for 5 years. Metacomet, or King Philip, shown in an engraving by Paul Revere, was killed leading the Wampanoags in an unsuccessful war concerning land disputes with the English settlers in 1676._] To get some idea of the scope of erosion on the Outer Beach, consider this: in 1990 an ancient prehistoric site was uncovered at Coast Guard Beach; archeologists have estimated that at the time of its occupation, nearly 9,000 years ago, it was five miles inland. More recent evidence of erosion can often be observed on the Seashore’s ocean side. At Nauset Light Beach, a circular brick foundation from one of the former “Three Sisters” lighthouses (replaced in 1923 with the present single light) is frequently uncovered in winter at the base of the cliffs, having survived a 50-foot slide to the beach. Farther north, at the Marconi Site in South Wellfleet, Guglielmo Marconi constructed his original transmitting towers in 1901-1902, set back 165 feet from the edge of the cliff. Today only two of the foundations remain; the other two have fallen into the sea.