Evening star., 1911-08-20
DOWN ON THE TIP END OF CAPE COD

I E. CURTIS.
ar and the Chicago Record Herald.
| hay after sailing, and the cattle, II is
| said, used to eat them with good appe-
tite instead of fodder, but that l have
never believed. Ii is probably true,
GO out into the fields. as dinner time
approached. and select a Goldfish from
| the stacks. instead of going to the gar
den for vegetables.
Another staple Of Cape Cod was whales.
| The Pilgrims saw lots Of them when the
Mayf1ower was anchored
Whaling in the bay, and would
r.au.4. have begun business
AuuustIy. promptly. but had no
gear. The whale fisheries OF New Eng
| land began at Provincetown, long be-
fore Nantucket or New Bedford forged
| a harpoon. 1t is one of the proudest ira
ditions of the Capers that Ichabod Pad
dock of Truro was sent for by the peo-
pie of Nantucket to teach them whale
craft. About 1889 whaling was the regu-
! lar business of Provincetown. and watch
| men were always stationed on High Pole
| Hill, where the Pilgrim monument now
stands. to give notice by signals to the
whalers down in the town when they saw
| whale in sight In 1888 six whales were
| taken in the harbor of Provincetown
They came in to accommodate their cap
tors. The first whaling expedition to
| the South Atlantic was undertaken In
1774 by two adventuresome shippers of
! Truro.
century ago the village Of Brewster
furnished more masters and mates of YES
sells in the foreign trade than any town
| In New England century ago Ameri-
can seamen were the most famous in the
| world. Before the ,civl war there was
! not town on Cape Cod but was repre-
! sented by half dozen shippers sailing
! the seven seas, and wherever they went
| able, brave, skillful, sef-re1iant and full
| of zeal. Cape Cod was kindergarten for
! sea captains. 1t was the ambition of
| every boy In every village and on every
| farm to command ship. But that pc
| riod has passed. Cape Cod is no longer
| nursery for seamen, and the retired
| shippers are helping their wives to keep
! boarding houses and spinning yarns for
| the entertainment of their guests.
| There Is funny thing at Brewster.
| The town owns a herring brook, and at
| the town meeting every year a commit
| tee Is elected by ballot to catch the fish
o'iN NiopcSC u tIei he yl0lu Is O1I0ll as
much as 300 barrels a year. and the pro-
ceeds are turned into the town treas
| ury.
In early days and for two centuries it
was an unwritten law that every dead
whale cast on shore be ap-
Uerel1ct propriated for the support
u7ho1o, of the ministry, just as in
| Great Britain they belong to
the king. In early days Wellfeet sent
more than hundred vessels to the New
| foundland banks; and every one of them
was built in the village and by local
shipwrights Wellfeet once had more
than fifty whaling schooners, and forty
or fifty vessels were busy every season
/, transporting CLAIMS and oysters to the
| Boston market. but for some reason or
another the trade fell off at the time
of the civil war and has never been re-
vived.
In gale of October II, 1871, forty-sev-
| en- seamen from the little village of
| Truro were lost at sea-
| In 1897 the little village of Dennis had
l52 captains of ships on its census list.
The wealth they brought home was
not great, but 1t was lasting, and evil
dences of it are still to be seen in the
| big white mansions with their wide
porches draped with green vines, and
their comfortable furnishings. Their de-
| scendants have never had 10 work for a
| living. Those old sea rovers left enough
to keep their families comfortable, living
| in a simple, economical way, raising their
own pork and poultry, the. fodder for
the cattle. and the vegetables for the ta-
| bic.
The interiors Of these attractive homes
are, filed with curios from the farthest
ends of the earth, from the South Sea
islands. from China and Japan. You
| often see a chair of carved teakwood or
rare piece of embroidery. a box of
spiceWood or a rare example of carved
ivory, which were brought to the chill
dren when the skipper ca: home.
| There is a legend that the clipper Julia
Costa, under a Portuguese skipper, once
set sail for the fishing grounds at u
| O'Clock in the morning and arrived at
her dock in Boston with 1900 pounds of
| Goldfish before midnight.
| 4
Sunday fishing is forbidden, although
it is often done. The priests will not
give absolution to a
Sunday Portuguese skipper who
| r.l: goes out on the Sabbath.
| and among the Methodists
and Baptists it is the most heinous sin in
the category. But there are times when
public opinion bows to an emergency,
and one of the most popular stories told
| by the old shellback fishermen Of the
Cape describes a prodigious school OF
mackerel that appeared of Great Hollow
one Sabbath morning in 1884. A pious
man saw them while he was rowing to
church in his dory, and whispered his
discovery to the group Of worshipers
| who congregated around the church steps
waiting for service to begin. One by one
| they yielded to the temptation and sneak
ed away until almost every able-bodied
man in the community was in his dory
pulling toward the school. 1t is said that
| even the minister himself Joined the sec
ond platoon which went out after the
! first had come home with boats loaded
to the gunwales. 1t is solemnly asserted
| that the mackerel were SO many and
came so near the shore that the women
tucked up their skirts and raked the
| Hopping fish out of the water onto the
| beach by the millions.
/ This phenomenon was followed by
i sensational ecclesiastical trial in which
! all the church members who had partici-
/ pated In the dissertation of the Sabbath
/ were called to be disciplined. After hear
| ing all that anybody wanted to say on
the subject, and celebrating prayerfully
over the circumstances, the court decided
| that an inscrutable Providence in His
divine wisdom had sent those fish to
/ those shores. Therefore, while it was
In inv1 nf nr1 ,nk h.xy