Pilgrim Trails: A Plymouth-to-Provincetown SketchbookWarner, Frances Lester
History
Pilgrim Trails: A Plymouth-to-Provincetown Sketchbook
Warner, Frances Lester
Massachusetts -- Description and travel
But let us stick to our own experience. In our own house, and in those
of the neighbors around us, you see delicate white paneling around the
fireplace up to the ceiling; an antique china closet with its old
copper-lustre and sprigged ware; white wainscoting around the room up to
the level of the window-sills; exquisite moulding all around the windows
and doors; in short, it is the simplest little house in the world, in
plan, with unexpected beauty of detail. Braided mats on the floor, a
fire in the stove, and a breeze from the Azores scudding over our
roof--there certainly is good comfort even in dead of winter on the
Cape.
We are glad that the Pilgrims were "joyfull" at the sight of "Cap-Codd."
They decided not to pause there, but to "stande for ye southward to
finde some place aboute Hudsons river for their habitation." But they
were turned back by the "deangerous shoulds and roring breakers," and
were thankful to bear up again along the Atlantic side of the Cape until
they got into harbor, "wher they ridd in safetie."
In our intervals of fair weather, we visited the places where they
stopped: Chatham where they were turned back, Provincetown where they
waded ashore, Truro where they camped for the night and explored the
Pamet River, and Corn Hill where they found "diverce faire Indean
baskets filled with corne." All this country was as wintry as the
Pilgrims found it, with long streaks of snow caught in the beach-grass
on the tops of the camel-back dunes. From the crest of one dune, we
watched the sun dropping over the harbor until it rested on the water,
like a great luminous net-float drifting off to sea.
[Illustration: The Pilgrim Monument, Provincetown]
Provincetown we saw in a flying snow-squall, all the marine colors so
loved by the artists softened in the snowy light, even the strange blue
of a guineaboat by the fish-wharf. Hollyhock Lane was only a narrow
passageway of frosty stubble, and the seagulls winging over looked
ghostly against the pale sky. The wharves, the monument, the lighthouse,
and the sails in the harbor were blurred by the fine flakes that filled
the air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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