Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/118

as remains, is smothered under Portuguese and summer boarders; not bad people these, but vastly different. The wind and the sea make minor changes in the Cape itself from year to year, especially this end of it. The waves give and the waves take away sand bars, now making an inlet where none was, now closing one that has existed perhaps for centuries. The winds pack the sands hard in drifts of rounded hills where once was a tiny valley, and again they come and take these away and establish them elsewhere as suits their vagrant fancy. Race Point, within the friendly shelter of whose barb the Mayflower fleet first cast anchor, is Race Point still, but I doubt if anyone can surely locate that pond on the margin of which the Pilgrim mothers did that first tremendous two months' wash. The caprice of the shifting sands may have whelmed and re-dug it a half dozen times since then. A century ago that little creek at what is now North Truro, that blocked the way of doughty Myles Standish and his men, sending them inland on a detour, was open still to the sea and a port of safety for the North Truro fishing boats. A half