208. _Le Port aux Huistres_, Oyster Harbor. The reader will observe, by looking back a few sentences in the narrative, that the French coasters, after leaving Cap St. Louis, that is, Brant Point, had aimed to double Cape Cod, and had directed their course, as they supposed, to accomplish this purpose. Owing, however, to the strength of the wind, or the darkness of the night, or the inattention of their pilot, or all these together, they had passed to the leeward of the point aimed at, and before morning found themselves near a harbor, which they subsequently entered, in Cape Cod Bay. It is plain that this port, which they named Oyster Harbor, was either that of Wellfleet or Barnstable. The former, it will be remembered, Champlain, with De Monts, entered the preceding year, 1605, and named it, or the river that flows into it, St. Suzanne du Cap Blanc.--_Vide antea_, note 166. It is obvious that Champlain could not have entered this harbor the second time without recognizing it: and, if he had done so, he would not have given to it a name entirely different from that which he had given it the year before. He was too careful an observer to fall into such an extraordinary mistake. We may conclude, therefore, that the port in question was not Wellfleet, but Barnstable. This conclusion is sustained by the conditions mentioned in the text. They entered, on a flood-tide, in twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four feet of water, and found thirty or thirty-six when they had passed into the harbor. It could hardly be expected that any harbor among the shifting sands of Cape Cod would remain precisely the same, as to depth of water, after the lapse of two hundred and fifty years. Nevertheless, the discrepancy is so slight in this case, that it would seem to be accidental, rather than to arise from the solidity or fixedness of the harbor-bed. The channel of Barnstable Harbor, according to the Coast Survey Charts, varies in depth at low tide, for two miles outside of Sandy Neck Point, from seven to ten feet for the first mile, and for the next mile from ten feet to thirty-two on reaching Beach Point, which may be considered the entrance of the bay. On passing the Point, we have thirty-six and a half feet, and for a mile inward the depth varies from twelve to twenty feet. Add a few feet for the rise of the tide on which they entered, and the depth of the water in 1606 could not have been very different from that of to-day. The "low sandy coast" which they saw is well represented by Spring Hill Beach and Sandy Neck; the "land somewhat high," by the range of hills in the rear of Barnstable Harbor. The distance from the mouth of the harbor to Wood End light, the nearest point on Cape Cod, does not vary more than a league, and its direction is about that mentioned by