Cape Cod and the Old colony (1921) (14596432220)

Identifier: capecodoldcolony1921brig (find matches)
Title: Cape Cod and the Old colony
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Brigham, Albert Perry, 1855-1932
Subjects: Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony) Cape Cod (Mass.)
Publisher: New York and London, G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries



Text Appearing Before Image:
undreds of gar-deners and farmers in the eastern parts of theBay State. There are many gardens in exposed Truro,often on low kettle-hole floors in the midst ofthin and brown pastures and acres of wildmoor. Thus environed with a half-desert ofmosses and wild cranberry, these small, shel-tered and moist plots produce all the commonvegetables in luxuriant profusion. By the rail-way in Wellfleet, completely framed in forestsof pitch pine, one gets a flying glimpse fromthe car window of one of these little paradisesof domestic culture. On the uplands, however,of the lower Cape, the turnip, corn and beansoften look the image of poverty and cast doubton the sage conclusion of Josh Billings thatpiety and white beans flourish best on poorsile. The salt marshes of the Cape border, nowoffer little in the production of food for manor beast. In old days they were vastly im-portant for their salt hay, and in time to comethey will be reclaimed and be like littlepatches of Netherlands lowland. We may
Text Appearing After Image:
On the Land i49 reckon nearly twenty thousand acres or morethan thirty square miles, as the Capes endow-ment of such swamps, which the tides are add-ing to the land areas. They are found fromSandwich to Provincetown on the inner shoreand from Buzzards Bay around the southshore, but are absent from Nauset to Province-town on the outside. The largest swamps arethe Great Marshes of Barnstable and thosealong the Herring River in Wellfleet. The marshes of Barnstable seem intermin-able even though they are rimmed by the longdune range of Sandy Neck. A survey for aCape Cod canal made by James Winthrop in1791 records an estimate of four thousandacres of marsh there. A committee was earlyappointed in Sandwich to divide the meadow-lands, to give *to every man such a portion asshall be esteemed equal and suitable to hisnecessity and ability.* The holdings rangedfrom one to forty-two acres. President Dwight saw several thousandstacks of hay on the Great Marshes. This ismuch changed to-day and sal