The Outer Beach is broken only at Nauset Inlet, where the tidal waters pour through an opening that has frequently changed its width and position, and at Chatham. The Chatham break leads in to the wide area of Chatham Harbor and Pleasant Bay. In both places, but more especially at Nauset, where the marshes and the inland shore behind them are protected by the beach and a sandspit some two and three-quarter miles in length, an unstable, but at the same time fairly constant equilibrium is attained between sea and land. It does not seem obvious that this should be so at all. The sandspit looks only too narrow and fragile, and at intervals it does show evidence that the sea has broken through. Driftwood logs lie on the cuts made between its hummocks, headed as they were when the sea subsided, after it had lifted them in toward the marsh. Except for the great volume of the beach itself, which is maintained in collaboration with the forces of the sea, it is hard at first to understand why the marsh should not be inundated. Why does that lord the sea not heave in and overwhelm this sandy barrier, flooding over the marshy flats and islands, and wash up permanently against the inland shore? The shoulders of the low cedar-studded land slope down to the edge of the marsh with a neat, trimmed look and neat houses, seemingly confident of being in residence indefinitely, although I have heard people who live there talking in ways that suggested they were not sure of it. Once see those stormy waters heaving and rushing over the sandspit and you cannot be sure of anything. Looking out at the sea, even from a fairly safe distance, you can find eternal balance and at the same time inundation and disaster. Now that the Outer Beach stretches past the miles of cliffs and is no longer backed up by them, becoming an outlying stretch of sand, its own “protective” power might seem much less clear. On the other hand, when was this beach in anything but a state of flux and change? There is protection in that, even if it is hard to define. The fact is that the relationship between the sea, the beach, and the sandspit, the marsh and inland shore, has been maintained for ages in the past and probably ages to come. In general the volume of sand that is packed along the shore balances what is removed from it, but only in general, for the time being, because erosion takes place consistently over the years and during its course more sand is removed than delivered. Also a standing equilibrium is kept between this deposition and taking away of sand and the conditions offshore: the currents, drift, wave height and direction, the changing shoals and bars. All these states and forces are involved in an extremely complex kind of order, and it is certainly broken and rearranged all the time. A season may show it, or the records of history. In fact, changes occur from day to day.