Chapter I: Geology and Early Appearance

A generation or two ago the notion existed in the minds of those who were at all interested that Cape Cod had risen from the sea--a Cytherea of sand and scrub pine--washed into being by the whim of tides and currents. There was good reason for this belief. Every year new sand bars appeared in the harbors, and old bars changed their shape. Year by year the inhabitants watched their long peninsulas of outer beach stretch farther and farther into the sea, the wind piling them into sand dunes as they went. Sometimes, too, they saw whole sections of beach washed away, leaving new channels between sea and harbor, until the tides of another year closed them with solid barriers of sand.

In the face of such performances it is no wonder that our fathers believed they were watching miniature manifestations of the same forces that little by little had swept the Cape itself out of the sea. Not until geologists advanced the glacial theory, and laymen accepted it, did it occur to any one that Cape Cod as it appears to-day is the result of the passing of glaciers, and that the activity of winds and tides in shifting the restless sands of its coast line was merely the trimming off and polishing of what the glaciers had left in the rough. But such was the case.

The speed with which Science marches from discovery to discovery, leaving behind her a trail of shattered theories, compels the most dogmatic of us to be cautious. Nowadays, if we are wise, we qualify our boldest assertions with some verbal loophole or other through which we may escape when our thesis is shattered by the findings of a new decade. The geology of Cape Cod is a case in point. But the most widely accepted theory at the moment--one that has held for more than thirty years and is probably correct--is that the foundation of the Cape, the solid bed of clay that lies under the loose gravel and sand on the surface, antedates all glaciers, and is one of the ‘ancient drainage divides of the country.’ This very old foundation exists under almost the whole length of the Cape, cropping out at the surface here and there, as in the clay deposits that supply the West Barnstable Brick Yard, and the spectacular cliffs, called the Clay Pounds, at North Truro. For the rest, it is the despair of well-drivers, who have the greatest difficulty in working through it. What the glaciers did, then, was merely to cap this antique foundation with a blanket of light, loose soil. This fact should be borne in mind in connection with all that follows.

It took two glaciers, it seems, to apply this top layer of earth. One, called the Buzzards Bay Glacier, stopped its journey southward with its southern edge resting along the curving line of the Elizabeth Islands, and its eastern side lying along the eastern shore of Buzzards Bay. From here it stretched north along the coast line of Massachusetts. Close beside it on the east was the Cape Cod Glacier, the southern edge of which exactly fitted the curve of Cape Cod Bay. The movement of the ice in glaciers is in three directions. It crawls southward, of course, but at the same time spreads sideways in both directions; thus the upper part of the Cape (from Bourne south to Falmouth and thence northeast through Mashpee to the Bay at Sandwich) consists of the rubbish of earth, gravel, and boulders that was pushed east by the eastern edge of the Buzzards Bay Glacier, and west by the western edge of the Cape Cod Glacier. In the same way the north shore of the Cape was formed by deposits of earth that were scooped up in front of the southern edge of the Cape Cod Glacier, while the eastward motion of its ice pushed into place the section of the Cape from Orleans north to Truro.

But the process was only begun. No sooner had these glaciers come to rest than they began to melt, and a thousand streams appeared flowing out from under them, carrying more soil with them. These rivers forced their way through the earthy deposits already piled up in front of the glaciers, and carrying the lighter material along, spread it out in the broad gentle slope that forms the southern shore of the Cape, all the territory, in fact, from the high ridge that runs east and west along its axis, south to the beaches that border it from Cotuit to Chatham. Similar rivers flowed out from under the eastern edge of the glacier and gave breadth to the plains of Nauset.

In connection with this part of the Cape--to be more explicit, the Ocean side from Chatham to Highland Light--another geological conjecture must be mentioned. The existence of Nantucket Shoals and Georges Bank is best explained by the theory that they are respectively the southern and southeastern moraines deposited by a third glacier called the South Channel Glacier. If such an ice field existed, the westward spreading of its pack certainly contributed to the creation of the region between Chatham and Highland Light, dividing the honors for this achievement with the Cape Cod Glacier on the west. This hypothesis is supported by the presence, in Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro, of a series of parallel valleys, the floors of which slope from east to west. Such valleys may have been formed by glacial rivers flowing out from the west edge of the South Channel Glacier. In fact, it is hard to account for them in any other way.

In brief, then, the Cape is composed of earth piled up by glaciers on top of a preglacial foundation of clay, and then spread out and added to by rivers of melting ice flowing out from under them. This process was doubtless repeated. The quality of the ice varied greatly; it was harder in some spots than in others, and melted more slowly. So it happened that the rivers sometimes encountered in their course isolated blocks of very hard ice from which the glacier itself had melted away. These abandoned glacial fragments were often several acres in extent. In time they were buried under the earth that was washed over them by the rivers, and presented what was to all appearances solid land. But when its ice foundation finally melted, this land sank, forming pockets into which the ground water promptly seeped. These water pockets are to-day the ponds that are found scattered thickly over the whole length and breadth of the Cape.

Of course the retreating glaciers did not leave anything like the smooth and regular shore line that the maps show to-day from Provincetown to Monomoy Point. The coast was ragged and notched with a hundred shapeless coves and spits, most of them composed of loose gravel, just the sort of shore that the sea likes to fall upon and trim smooth. Two of these irregularities, unlike the rest, were of sufficient size to be classed as headlands and had enough rock in their composition to present an obstinate front to the waves. Naturally, therefore, they lasted long after the rest of the coast had been swept smooth. The existence of the first of these, known as Webb’s Island Point, is conjectural, but there is a stubborn local tradition, supported by a certain amount of evidence, that such a body of land once stretched southeast from Chatham several miles into the sea. If it ever did exist, it had certainly been washed away before the first European arrived on the coast. [See notes to Chapter I.] Of the existence of the other headland, called ‘Île Nauset,’ there is no doubt. It projected seaward from Eastham, and remained undemolished long enough to play an important part in New England history, for it was the surf breaking on this promontory that caused the Mayflower to turn back to Provincetown, instead of continuing her voyage to the Hudson. With the exception of these two tongues of land, however, the sea made short work of the irregularities along the outer beach and used the material it dislodged to lengthen the Cape by making the land that is now Provincetown and the miles of barren sand hills that lie behind it.

The process was simple. Every northeaster sent a tremendous surf breaking against the new and loosely packed outer shore of the Cape all the way from Chatham to its original limit at North Truro. The power of these waves bit great pieces out of the invitingly irregular bluffs and sent whole sections of them sliding down to be swept away by the next roller.

‘Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink--’

Once dislodged, this loose sand and gravel was swept in both directions, north and south, and as winter followed winter and century followed century, that which was carried north formed shoals beyond High Head in North Truro. By degrees these shoals were piled higher, attached themselves to the mainland, and finally became dry land. In this way the whole end of the Cape beyond North Truro was built by the sea out of material that it had sliced away from the shores of Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham. The process still goes on. Every winter sees more gravel and sand torn away from the sea front of these towns, and carried north until it comes to anchor on Peaked Hill Bars. These bars will eventually rise from the sea as a low island; the wind will blow its sand into dunes; a beach will form along its outer edge; and our great-grandchildren will see a neck of sand hills and beach grass projecting northeast from the present shore line. Such, at any rate, was the process that built Race Point, and left Race Run as a salt creek splitting it from the mainland. Little by little this creek is being filled with sand blown into it by the northeasters that howl over Race Point. By and by the Run will be entirely obliterated, and Race Point will have become throughout its whole length an integral part of the mainland. And the same end, we may safely assume, awaits Peaked Hill Bars, that embryonic strip of dune and beach that lies still unborn beneath the sea.

Monomoy Point and the whole stretch of Nauset Beach were formed in the same way by loose material washed from the coast of Chatham and Orleans and swept south. Prophets delight in foretelling how long it will take at this rate for the Cape to be demolished. One guess is as good or as bad as another. A recent authority predicts that five thousand years will suffice for the waves to eat through from the Clay Pounds at Highland Light to the Bay. He may be right. But the accuracy of such forecasts is interfered with by the whimsical way in which the elements, though they rob Paul one winter, turn the plunder over to Peter the next. Mr. Isaac Morton Small, who has watched the sea’s activity at North Truro for seventy years, makes a statement that should shake the assurance of the most robust seer: ‘Three years ago,’ he writes, ‘the ocean waves were pounding into the base of the cliffs one half mile south of Highland Light, and tearing away great patches of earth. To-day the beach is one hundred yards wide at that point, and the highest tides do not reach to the foot of the bank.’ The British vessel Somerset, which came ashore not far from this spot during the Revolution, has been buried, unburied, and buried again in the century and a half since she was wrecked.

Another geological phenomenon should give the prophets pause. The old glacial shore line of Eastham, which lies well inland from the present beach, has been perfectly protected, and the town has been given a harbor of sorts, by the gradual formation of Nauset Beach, a low-lying barrier of sand dunes built up from material washed away from the bluffs to the north and swept south in perfect conformity with the whole outer shore. Monomoy Point is in fact a prolongation of this beach. The harbor with which Eastham was thus unexpectedly furnished has had many entrances; the sea will break through the beach during a storm, and sweep a channel into existence that in time is washed wide and deep enough to serve small craft. The next storm will completely block this entrance and open a new one somewhere else. In this way the entrance to Nauset Harbor has been shifting from point to point, usually in a southerly direction, until to-day it is not in Eastham at all, but lies well south of it in Orleans. But through all the rains and ruins of a thousand winters, the old original seacoast has lain far inland, in unbattered serenity. In the same way the east shore of Orleans has been protected by a continuation of Nauset Beach that stretches south from the entrance of Nauset Harbor and continues all alongshore.

The Bay shore has seen changes, too, though of a less spectacular nature than those on the exposed Ocean side of the Cape. The most important of these is Long Point, the long and incredibly narrow sand spit that protects Provincetown Harbor on the west and south. The material for this frail barrier was washed into place by waves and currents set in motion by the northerly and northwesterly winds. The powerful allies could not have done a better piece of work if their sole object had been the creation of a perfect harbor. The same southerly wash of sand and gravel appears at other points along the Bay shore. To-day three large islands (Bound Brook, Griffith’s, and Great Islands) stretch out in a northeast and southwest line to form the western boundary of Wellfleet Bay. Originally these were true islands, completely surrounded by the waters of Cape Cod Bay; but now, though still called islands, they are joined with each other and with the mainland by narrow strips of beach that have been washed up in the same way as Long Point. Lest the process become too uniform, however, and tempt us into laying down laws for wind and wave, the northwesters have cut off Billingsgate from this chain of islands, leaving a wide stretch of shoal water between it and Great Island, with which it was formerly connected. By the same token, the waves first chopped off and then obliterated a small island that was once a part of Billingsgate.

Proceeding farther south, we come to Sandy Neck--a seven-mile strip of high and very old dunes that stretch east from the mainland at West Barnstable and make Barnstable Harbor. Sandy Neck is a prolongation of Spring Hill Beach, just as Monomoy is a prolongation of Nauset Beach, and it protects the old glacial shore line of Barnstable in the same way that Nauset Beach protects the high shore of Eastham. Though much older than Monomoy and generously sprinkled with patches of trees, it was formed in the same way from débris washed south and east from the bluffs of Manomet. Like Monomoy it is growing longer year by year, reaching out easterly across the entrance to the harbor toward the Dennis shore; whether or not it will ever reach this goal no one can say. It is true, however, that while the Neck is stretching farther and farther east, the bar across the mouth of Barnstable Harbor is at the same time growing wider and higher, and the channel through it is fast silting up. There is nothing to counteract this combination of forces except the tide, which, as the channel narrows, sweeps in and out of the harbor with terrific and annually increasing force. Perhaps this tremendous scour will be sufficient to keep a channel of some sort open forever; perhaps not. Another thousand years will write the answer.

The marshes which invariably lie between these barrier beaches and the mainland are comparatively recent additions to the Cape scenery. As soon as a beach has grown long enough to provide calm water inside, marshes begin to make their appearance and spread fast or slowly, depending on the proportions of mud and sand that are washed into the embryonic harbor: the more mud, the faster the growth. So it happens that there are as many salt marshes on the Cape as there are sandy necks.

In brief, Cape Cod was created rough-hewn in something like its present shape when the continent emerged out of chaos; later, two or three glaciers gave it a covering of gravel and sand; and wind and tide have been busy ever since putting on the finishing touches--some of them rather extensive and none of them yet complete.

Inland, changes equally extensive but less varied have taken place. One great transformation, indeed, covers them all: to-day no timber of any account grows on the Cape. Formerly it was heavily wooded from end to end with a wide variety of trees. The old records are unanimous on this point. Provincetown itself--the most barren region of all--was once covered with a thick mantle of woods. Mourt’s ‘Relation’ describes the shore front as it looked to the Pilgrims when they saw it for the first time from the deck of the Mayflower: ‘It is comaspsed about, to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras and other sweet woods.’ Bradford says ‘the whole countrie full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage heiw.’ Even the sand hills of Long Point were covered with a layer of good soil that supported considerable vegetation: ‘They found ... the ground or earth sand hills much like the Downes in Holland, but much better all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, some ash, walnut, the wood for the most part open and without underwood, fit to go or ride in.’ Obviously the name ‘Wood End,’ given to a part of this Point, used to mean something.

Not content with these bits of indisputable testimony, tradition--persistent as tradition will always be while men remain greedy for marvels--tradition perseveres in the assertion that large trees once stood well out in what is now Provincetown Harbor, and vanished when the shore line of those days was washed back to its present position. Stranger things have happened in the history of Cape Cod; but the evidence for this theory, consisting of the stumps of a few trees that formerly appeared on the flats in front of Provincetown at low tide, is hardly convincing, particularly when we reflect that the tide--the only agent that could have performed this feat--has acted in quite a different way only a mile or so up the shore, and, instead of washing anything away, has built up a solid bar in front of the entrance to East Harbor. However, tides have ways past finding out, and anything is possible on a sea coast. Furthermore, the local historians of Eastham and Dennis, not to be outdone, have reported similar stumps on the flats off the Bay side of their towns.

There were trees enough on the Cape, anyhow, without going to sea for them. Kendall in his travels took a trip down the Cape in 1807-08, and, on reaching Truro, was sufficiently impressed with its forests to call them ‘lofty.’ It was in Truro, too, that the Pilgrims became lost in one stretch of woods and were torn to pieces by briars in another. Clearly, then, its trees in those times bore small resemblance to the scrub pine and oak that to-day comprise Truro’s ‘lofty’ forests.

The same story is repeated a little farther up the Cape at Wellfleet, where, until the middle of the nineteenth century, the local shipbuilder found plenty of oak and pine growing ready to hand. Many of the fishing vessels and whalers that hailed from this town were made of timber that once covered its present scrubby barrens. Bound Brook Island, which now boasts hardly a tree, was well wooded a hundred years ago. Eastham had all the woods its inhabitants could use for both building and fuel until the end of the seventeenth century, when the town fathers began to show signs of uneasiness at the dwindling supply. It is in Eastham too that the crumbling outer shore has laid bare the edge of a peat bog which for years supplemented its inhabitants’ supply of fuel. There must have been woods enough there once, then.

Champlain reports that Chatham, except for the clearings where the Indians had their villages, was overgrown with walnut, oak, and cedar. Some fifty years later, when William Nickerson arrived there as its first white settler, he found its hills still covered with forests of oak, and the swamps filled with gigantic cedars. Dennis and Yarmouth, like Wellfleet, built their own fishing vessels and packets, as well as some crafts for neighboring towns, from lumber produced on the premises. When the first settlers arrived in Barnstable in 1639, they found, in the words of Amos Otis, ‘almost an unbroken wilderness’; and more than a century later, in 1762, Deacon John Hinckley cut timber for the East Parish Meeting-House at Barnstable in the woods behind the village. Until 1711 there were enough pines on the common lands to allow them to be boxed and milked. The surplus wood from the Shootflying Hill region was exported to Boston by water. The Reverend Timothy Dwight, traveling down the Cape about 1820, makes the startling assertion that thirty vessels in Sandwich were likewise engaged in this traffic. These items, covering most of the early settlements from Provincetown to Sandwich, are enough to show that in its day the Cape boasted a fair share of forests. But with a wanton extravagance that ill accords with their frugality in other respects, the first settlers demolished the timber wholesale. This ruthless conduct, strangely enough, turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for by ruining the soil, it drove the Cape Cod farmer to sea for a livelihood; and there he won fame such as no farmer can ever hope for. But this is trespassing on topics that belong to other chapters.