desperate launching in a surf that beat the life from his body. Ever since the day of the Pilgrims, who made the suggestion, and of George Washington, who furthered the project, there has been talk of a Cape Cod canal to expedite traffic and avert disaster. A channel between Eastham and Orleans was once forced by the sea, and various routes through Yarmouth, Barnstable and Sandwich have been surveyed, and charters granted, but ships still round Race Point. The railroad, however, which was built by slow stages down the Cape and reached Provincetown only a quarter of a century since, has facilitated travel, doing away both with the red-and-yellow mail-coach, which used, a hundred years ago, to clatter through to Boston in two glorious days, and with the packet service of jolly memory. Yarmouth and Barnstable were sharp rivals in these packet trips, Barnstable putting her victories into verse: “The _Commodore Hull_ she sails so dull She makes her crew look sour; The _Eagle Flight_ she is out of sight Less than a half an hour. But the bold old _Emerald_ takes delight To beat the _Commodore_ and the _Flight_.” [Illustration: BARNSTABLE INN.] Barnstable has pursued from the outset a course of modest prosperity. She does not ask too much of fortune. If her census-roll has gained only five in the last decade, that is better than losing, as most of the Cape towns have done, and, even so, her numbers rank next to Provincetown. How humble were the beginnings of this sedate and gracious county seat may be learned from the letter of an early citizen, declining Governor Winslow’s appointment to lead an expedition against the Dutch. This quiet colonist, who commanded the Plymouth forces in King Philip’s War, pleads his domestic cares: