Thus the sing-song went when, later, the lush Nauset dairy herds provided milk for a good part of the Cape. And Eastham, truly farming-minded, would fling back these better known lines: _The Cape Cod girls they have no combs, They comb their hair with codfish bones; The Cape Cod Boys they have no sleds, They slide downhill on codfish heads._ PILGRIM’S TREE STILL BLOSSOMS Life still springs from at least one of the plantings of those far distant days of the forefathers. Thomas Prence, who first set foot on the Cape in 1621, subsequently built a house for himself and his bride near Fort Hill. He planted a little pear tree there; it had been brought over from England. Each Spring a pear tree blossoms on this site. Thoreau, in the book on his Cape Cod travels, refers to the planting by Thomas Prence and states the tree had been blown down a few months previous to his visit to the scene. A modern historian, however, records that Thomas Prence’s pear tree is still bearing, a sapling having been planted after the old tree had been swept down in a gale. Thoreau quotes the following tribute by a Cape Codder, a Mr. Herman Doane: “_That exiled band long since have passed away, And still, old Tree! Thou standest in the place Where Prence’s hand did plant thee in his day,-- An undersigned memorial of his race._” THE LAST WORKING WINDMILL The lone workable windmill on Cape Cod is located in Eastham. Before Pearl Harbor there would be a ceaseless trek of Summer visitors to the Seth Knowles’ windmill and Miller John Fulcher would demonstrate its ancient workings with true professional eclat. He’d set her sails, swing her into the wind, give the lift wheel a deft spin, and, in jig time, Miller John would turn out a bushel of ground corn before the eyes of the intrigued city folk. Those who seemed to know asserted that Miller John had the “miller’s thumb”. Dipping his thumb into the trough, he would decide just when the corn was properly ground. The story of the old windmill is vague. Some say it gave service originally in Plymouth and then was “flaked” across the Bay to be re-erected in Eastham. The date 1793 is nailed inside, but this still leaves unanswered the point as to when and where its story begins. There’s a tablet near a stretch of Eastham beach that memorializes the “First Encounter.” The event is described in William Bradford’s narrative: