XIV--The Marsh 116 XV--The Uses of Light 124 The Great Beach I From a Distance The Pilgrims who reached Cape Cod in 1620 had heard of it before. It got its name in 1602 and had been touched on by European seamen at least a century before that, and so when the Pilgrims “... fell in with that land which is called Cape Cod; the which being made and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful.” Their coming had taken a long time, and they had passed over “a tedious and dreadful” sea; but as Bradford’s history relates it further: “... they now had no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor.” “And for ye season it was winter, and they that know ye winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruell and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to ye top of Pisgah, to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main barrier and gulf to separate them from the civil parts of the world.” Now, nearly 350 years later, that lone land reaching out into the mighty ocean seems to be full of the “solace and content with respect to outward objects” which the Pilgrims lacked. Roads, gas stations, shopping centers, and a continually increasing number of houses, proclaim it as human territory, another populated home ground from which we have to go far to be separated from civilization. The simple, raw existence which the Pilgrims not only endured but anticipated has been replaced by a world of goods, which is not to say that we do not have to have a fortitude of our own, made inevitable, in great measure, by the very abundance we have achieved.