"The Cock of the Walk" maltreats his " son and heir," and is tous saluted by the poet:

'To-day, when he had done no harm But stretch his throat, and mock your bawling, You ruffed your neck as big's my arm, And knocked him sprawling.

"Down in a twink, as straight's a rail, Astonished into being civil,

Then up, and off, with head and tail
Both on a level.

"But though your prowess you may boast,
And though in dreary dumps so sad he,
I know not which to pity most,
The son or daddy."

The man who has no ear for music may be forgiven if he cannot distinguish tunes; but he is inexcusable if he tries to compose a symphony. In the same way, it would have been venial in our author to have omitted all humor in his volume, since he evidently has no perception of it. But is it pardonable, especially in a man who is good, when he is grave, to publish such dreary doggrel? We must not leave the volume without showing, once more, how good our author can be. The ballad of "Tuloom" is not unknown to the readers of "Putnam."

"Robert of Gloster, in an old romance

Makes mention of a rich but captious King Whose daughter grew so fair of counte

nance,

That many gallant Knights came worshiping.

All men desired her-both the fool and wise Warmed in the splendor of her lustrous eyes; But the rich captious King withheld, the while,

His child for him whose wit should make him smile;

But all who tried, and failed to make him merry,

Beheaded were in manner sanguinary.
So runs the poet's doom: if he succeed,

To a pure fame we marry him forever;
But if we take no unction of his rede,
We cut his head off for his vain endes
vor."

We are obliged to defer a notice of some other poets, including two young Englishmen, Owen Meredith, the nom de plume of Robert Lytton Bulwer, and Matthew Arnold.

THE next morning, Thursday, October

11th, it rained as hard as ever; but we were determined to proceed on foot, nevertheless. We first made some inquiries with regard to the practicability of walking up the shore on the Atlantic side to Provincetown, whether we should meet with any creeks or marshes to trouble us. Higgins said that there was no obstruction, and that it was not much further than by the road, but he thought that we should find it very "heavy" walking in the sand; it was bad enough in the road, a horse would sink in up to the fetlocks there. But there was one man at the tavern who had walked it, and he said that we could go very well, though it was sometimes inconvenient and even dangerous walking under the bank, when there was a great tide, with an easterly wind, which caused the sand to cave. For the first four or five miles we followed the road, which here turns to the north on the elbow-the narrowest part of the Cape-that we might clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of Nanset Harbor in Orleans, on our right. We found the traveling good enough for walkers on the sides of the road, though it was "heavy" for horses in the middle. We walked with our umbrellas behind us, since it blowed hard as well as rained, with driving mists, as the day before, and the wind helped us over the sand at a rapid rate. Everything indicated that we had reached a strange shore. The road was a mere lane, winding over bare swells of bleak and barren-looking land. The houses were few and far between, besides being small and rusty, though they appeared to be kept in good repair, and their door yards, which were the unfenced Cape, were tidy; or, rather, they looked as if the ground around them was blown clean by the wind. Perhaps the scarcity of wood here, and the consequent absence of the woodpile and other wooden traps, had something to do with this appearance. They seemed, like mariners ashore, to have sat right down to enjoy the firmness of the land, without studying their postures or habiliments. To them it was merely terra firma and cognita, not yet fertilis and jucunda. Every landscape which

is dreary enough has a certain beauty to my eyes, and in this instance its permanent qualities were enhanced by the weather. Everything told of the sea, even when we did not see its waste or hear its roar. For birds there were gulls, and for carts in the fields, boats turned bottom upward against the houses, and sometimes the rib of a whale was woven into the fence by the road-side. The trees were, if possible, rarer than the houses, excepting apple trees, of which there were a few small orchards in the hollows. These were either narrow and high, with flat tops, having lost their side branches, like huge plum bushes growing in exposed situations, or else dwarfed and branching immediately at the ground, like quince bushes. They suggested that, under like circumstances, all trees would at last acquire like habits of growth. I afterward saw on the Cape many full grown apple trees not higher than a man's head; one whole orchard, indeed, where all the fruit could have been gathered by a man standing on the ground; but you could hardly creep beneath the trees. Some, which the owners told me were twenty years old, were only three and a half feet high, spreading at six inches from the ground five feet each way, and being withal surrounded with boxes of tar to catch the canker worms, they looked like plants in flower pots, and as if they might be taken into the house in the winter. In another place, I saw some not much larger than currant bushes; yet, the owner told me that they had borne a barrel and a half of apples that fall. If they had been placed close together, I could have cleared them all at a jump. This habit of growth should, no doubt, be encouraged; and they should not be trimmed up, as some traveling practitioners have advised. In 1802 there was not a single fruit tree in Chatham, the next town to Orleans, on the south; and the old account of Orleans says:-"Fruit trees cannot be made to grow within a mile of the ocean. Even those which are placed at a greater distance, are injured by the east winds; and, after violent storms in the spring, a

saltish taste is perceptible on their bark." We noticed that they were often covered with a kind of yellow rust, or lichen.

The most foreign and picturesque looking structures on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the salt-works, are the wind-mills--gray looking octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to the ground in the rear, and there resting on a cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned round to face the wind. These appeared, also, to serve in some measure for props against its force. A great circular rut was worn around the building by the wheel. The neighbors, who assemble to turn the mill to the wind, are likely to know which way it blows, without a weathercock. They looked loose and slightly locomotive, like huge wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and reminded one of pictures of the Netherlands. Being on elevated ground, and high in themselves, they serve as landmarks-for there are no tall trees, or other objects commonly, which oan be seen at a distance in the horizon; though the outline of the land itself is so firm and distinct, that an insignificant cone, or even precipice of sand is visible at a great distance from over the sea. Sailors making the land, commonly steer either by the wind-mills or the meeting-houses. In the country, we are obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. Yet, the meeting-house is a kind of wind-mill, which runs one day in seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine or public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of heaven-where another sort of grist is ground, of which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be not plaster, we trust to make bread of life.

There were, here and there, heaps of shells in the fields, where clams had been opened for bait, for Orleans is famous for its shell-fish, especially clams, or, as our author says, "to speak more properly, worms." The shores are more fertile than the dry land. The inhabitants measure their crops, not only by bushels of corn, but by barrels of clams. A thousand barrels of clam-bait are counted as equal in value to six or eight thousand bushels of Indian corn, and once they were procured without more labor or expense, and the supply was thought to be inexhaustible. "For," says the history, "after a portion of the shore has been dug over, and almost all the clams

taken up, at the end of two years, it is said, they are as plenty there as ever. It is even affirmed by many persons, that it is as necessary to stir the clamground frequently as it is to hoe a field of potatoes; because if this labor is omitted, the clams will be crowded too closely together, and will be prevented from increasing in size." But, we were told that the small clam, mya arenaria, was not so plenty here as formerly. Probably the clam-ground has been stirred too frequently, after

all.

We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen rods long, between Orleans and Eastham, called Jeremiah's Gutter. The Atlantic is said sometimes to meet the Bay here, and isolate the northern part of the Cape. The streams of the Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale, since there is no room for them to run, without tumbling immediately into the sea; and beside, we found it difficult to run ourselves in that sand, when there was no want of room. Hence, the East channel where water runs, or may run, is important, and is dignified with a name. We read that there was no running water in Chatham, which is the next town. The barren aspect of the land would hardly be believed if described. It was such soil, or rather land, as, to judge from appearances, no farmer in the interior would think of cultivating or even fencing. Generally the plowed fields of the Cape look white and yellow, like a mixture of salt and Indian meal. This is called soil. All an inlander's notions of soil and fertility will be confounded by a visit to these parts, and he will not be able, for some time afterward, to distinguish soil from sand. The historian of Chatham says of a part of that town, which has been gained from the sea, "there is a doubtful appearance of a soil beginning to be formed. It is styled doubtful, because it would not be observed by every eye, and perhaps not acknowledged by many." We thought that this could not be a bad description of the greater part of the Cape. There is a "beach" on the west side of Eastham, which we crossed the next summer, half a mile wide, and stretching across the township, containing seventeen hundred acres, on which there is not now a particle of vegetable mould, though it formerly produced wheat. All sands are here called "beaches,"

whether they are waves of water, or of air that dash against them, since they commonly have their origin on the shore.

But, notwithstanding the real and apparent barrenness, we were surprised to hear of the great crops of corn which are still raised in Eastham. Our landlord in Orleans had told us that he raised three or four hundred bushels of corn annually, and also of the great number of pigs which he fattened. It was here that the Pilgrims, to quote their own words, "bought eight or ten hogsheads of corn and beans," of the Nanset Indians, in 1622, to keep themselves from starving. "In 1667 the town [of Eastham,] voted that every housekeeper should kill twelve blackbirds, or three crows, which did great damage to the corn; and this vote was repeated for many years." In 1695, an additional order was passed, namely, that "every unmarried man in the township shall kill six blackbirds, or three crows, while he remains single; as a penalty for not doing it, shall not be married until he obey this order." The blackbirds, however, still molest the corn. I saw them at it the next summer, and there were many scare-crows, if not scare-blackbirds, in the fields, which I often mistook for men. From which I concluded, that either many men were not married, or many blackbirds were. Yet they put but three or four kernels in a hill, and let fewer plants remain than we do. In the account of Eastham in the "Historical Collections," printed in 1802, it is said that "more corn is produced than the inhabitants consume, and above a thousand bushels are annually sent to market. The soil being free from stones, a plow passes through it speedily; and after the corn has come up, a small Cape horse, somewhat larger than a goat, will, with the assistance of two boys, easily hoe three or four acres in a day; several farmers are accustomed to produce five hundred bushels of grain annually, and not long since one raised eight hundred bushels on sixty acres." Similar accounts are given today; indeed, the recent accounts are in some instances suspectable repetitions of the old, and I have no doubt that their statements are as often founded on the exception as the rule, and that by far the greater number of acres are as barren as they appear to be. It is sufficiently remarkable that any crops can

be raised here, and it may be owing, as others have suggested, to the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, the warmth of the sand, and the rareness of frosts. A miller, who was sharpening his stones, told me that, forty years ago, he had been to a husking here, where five hundred bushels were husked in one evening, and the corn was piled six feet high or more, in the midst, but now, fifteen or eighteen bushels to an acre were an average yield. I never saw fields of such puny and unpromising looking corn, as in this town. Probably the inhabitants are contented with small crops from a great surface easily cultivated. It is not always the most fertile land that is the most profitable, and this sand may repay cultivation, as well as the fertile bottoms of the West. It is said, moreover, that the vegetables raised in the sand, without manure, are remarkably sweet, the pumpkins especially, though, when their seed is planted in the interior, they soon degenerate. I can testify that the vegetables here, when they succeed at all, look remarkably green and healthy, though perhaps it is partly by contrast with the sand. Yet the inhabitants of the Cape towns, generally, do not raise their own meal or pork. Their gardens are commonly little patches, that have been redeemed from the edges of the marshes and swamps.

All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant; for it still felt the effects of the storm in which the St. John was wrecked,-though a schoolboy, whom we overtook, hardly knew what we meant, his ears were so used to it. He would have more, plainly heard the same sound in a shell. It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape! On the whole, we were glad of the storm, which would show us the ocean in its angriest mood. We conversed with the boy we have mentioned, who might have been eight years old, making him walk, the while, under the lee of our umbrella; for we thought it as important to know what was life on the Cape to a boy as to a man. learned from him where the best grapes were to be found in that neighborhood.

We