It was in Wellfleet Harbor that the Pilgrims had seen Indians at a kill of blackfish, and named it “Grampus Bay.” These blackfish, only less valuable for oil than whales, down to recent times were occasionally beached in great shoals on the Cape, and the stench of the rotting carcases carried for miles. Mr. Rich tells of a Truro captain who, as he drove his cows to pasture one fine morning, descried on the shore as he took a squint seaward seventy-five huge fish, which before nightfall he had sold for nineteen hundred dollars. And in 1874, over fourteen hundred, the largest school ever known, were stranded at Truro and cut up to twenty-seven thousand gallons of oil. Even boys were adept at the game; and one urchin, having prevented several great fish from escaping to deep water, fought one with hatchet and knife, made his kill, and was discovered deftly stripping it of blubber. It was in 1834, as ill chance would have it on a Sabbath, that a vast school of blackfish was beached at Truro. Here was temptation for the devout that was to divide, in the eyes of all men, the sheep from the goats. Many fishermen happened to be offshore; the news reached the churches at the close of morning service. It is said honors were even as to Sabbath-breakers from church-goers and seamen. But one young sailor, though he was no “professor,” refused to take part in the chase because, forsooth, his father had kept sacred the day. He was a conservative by nature, and winter after winter studied his sums in a tattered old book. “My father and grandfather cyphered out of that arithmetic,” was his retort for criticism. “I should think it divilish strange if I can’t.”