The Old Coast Road Part 4

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CHAPTER VI

COHa.s.sET LEDGES AND MARSHES[1]

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A sickle-shaped sh.o.r.e--wild, superb! Tawny ledges tumbling out to sea, rearing ma.s.sive heads to search, across three thousand miles of water, for another sh.o.r.e. For it is Spain and Portugal which lie directly yonder, and the same tumultuous sea that crashes and swirls against Coha.s.set's crags laps also on those sunnier, warmer sands.

Back inland, from the bold brown coast which gives Coha.s.set her Riviera-like fame, lie marshes, liquefying into mirrors at high tide, melting into lush green at low tide.

Between the ledges and the marshes winds Jerusalem Road, bearing a continual stream of sight-seers and fringed with estates hidden from the sight-seers; estates with terraces dashed by spindrift, with curving stairways hewn in sheer rock down to the water, with wind-twisted savins, and flowers whose bright bloom is heightened by the tang of salt. For too many a pa.s.sing traveler Coha.s.set is known only as the most fas.h.i.+onable resort on the South Sh.o.r.e. But Coha.s.set's story is a longer one than that, and far more profound.

Coha.s.set is founded upon a rock, and the making of that rock is so honestly and minutely recorded by nature that even those who take alarm at the word "geology" may read this record with ease. These rocky ledges that stare so proudly across the sea underlie, also, every inch of soil, and are of the same kind everywhere--granite. Granite is a rock which is formed under immense pressure and in the presence of confined moisture, needing a weight of fifteen thousand pounds upon every inch. Therefore, wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the granite, a wrinkling so gradual that doubtless if generations of men had lived on top of the wrinkle they would have sworn it did not move. But move it did, and the superimposed rock must have been worn off at a rate of less than a hundredth part of an inch every year in order to lose two or three miles of it in twenty-five million years. As the granite was wrinkled up by the movement of the earth's crust, certain cracks opened and filled with lava, forming dikes. The geologist to-day can glance at these dikes and tell the period of their formation as casually as a jockey looking at a horse's mouth can tell his age. He could also tell of the "faulting," or slipping down, of adjacent ma.s.ses of solid rock, which has occurred often enough to carve the characteristic Coha.s.set coast.

The making of the rock bottom is a story which extends over millions of years: the making of the soil extends over thousands. The gigantic glacier which once formed all over the northern part of North America, and which remained upon it most of the time until about seven thousand years ago, ground up the rock like a huge mill and heaped its grist into hills and plains and meadows. The marks of it are as easy to see as finger prints in putty. There are scratches on the underlying rock in every part of the town, pointing in the southerly direction in which the glacier moved. The gravel and clay belts of the town have all been stretched out in the same direction as the scratches, and many are the boulders which were combed out of the moving glacier by the peaks of the ledges, and are now poised, like the famous Tipping Rock, just where the glacier left them when it melted. Few towns in America possess greater geological interest or a wider variety of glacial phenomena than Coha.s.set--all of which may be studied more fully with the aid of E.

Victor Bigelow's "Narrative History of the Town of Coha.s.set, Ma.s.sachusetts," and William O. Crosby's "Geology of the Boston Basin."

This, then, is briefly the first part of Coha.s.set's ledges. The second part deals with human events, including many s.h.i.+pwrecks and disasters, and more than one romantic episode. Perhaps this human section is best begun with Captain John Smith.

Captain John Smith was born too early. If ever a hero was brought into the world to adorn the moving-picture screen, that hero of the "iron collar," of piratical capture, of wedlock with an Indian princess, was the man. Failing of this high calling he did some serviceable work in discovering and describing many of the inlets on the coast of New England. Among these inlets Coha.s.set acted her part as hostess to the famous navigator and staged a small and vivid encounter with the aborigines. The date of this presentation was in 1614; the scenario may be found in Smith's own diary. Smith and a party of eight or more sailors made the trip between the ledges in a small rowboat. It is believed that they landed somewhere near Hominy Point. Their landing was not carried out without some misadventure, however, for in some way this party of explorers angered the Indians with whom they came in contact, and the result was an attack from bow and arrow. The town of Coha.s.set, in commemorating this encounter by a tablet, has inscribed upon the tablet Smith's own words:

"We found the people on those parts very kind, but in their fury no less valiant: and at Quonhaset falling out there with but one of them, he with three others crossed the harbour in a cannow to certain rocks whereby we must pa.s.s, and there let flie their arrowes for our shot, till we were out of danger, yet one of them was slaine, and the other shot through the thigh."

History follows fast along the ledges: history of gallant deeds and gallant defense during the days of the Revolution and the War of 1812; deeds of disaster along the coast and one especial deed of great engineering skill.

The beauty and the tragedy of Coha.s.set are caught in large measure upon these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land, has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite naturally the business of "wrecking"--that is, saving the pieces--came to be the trade of a number of Coha.s.set citizens, and so expert did Coha.s.set divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain Tower, of Coha.s.set, with a crew of Coha.s.set divers and seamen, who set sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in the enterprise, agreed to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand, however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to a.s.sist them on the same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was recovered--no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!

As the wrecks along the Coha.s.set coast were princ.i.p.ally caused by the dangerous reefs spreading in either direction from what is known as Minot's Ledge, the necessity of a lighthouse on that spot was early evident, and the erecting of the present Minot's Light is one of the most romantic engineering enterprises of our coast history. The original structure was snapped off like a pikestaff in the great storm of 1851, and the present one of Quincy granite is the first of its kind in America to be built on a ledge awash at high tide and with no adjacent dry land. The tremendous difficulties were finally overcome, although in the year 1855 the work could be pursued for only a hundred and thirty hours, and the following year for only a hundred and fifty-seven. To read of the erection of this remarkable lighthouse reminds one of the building of Solomon's temple. The stone was selected with the utmost care, and the Quincy cutters declared that such chiseling had never before left the hand of man. Then every single block for the lower portion was meticulously cut, dovetailed, and set in position on Government Island in Coha.s.set Harbor. The old base, exquisitely laid, where they were thus set up is still visible, as smooth as a billiard table, although gra.s.s-covered. In addition to the flawless cutting and joining of the blocks, the ledge itself was cut into a succession of levels suitable to bear a stone foundation--work which was possible only at certain times of the tide and seasons of the year. The cutting of each stone so that it exactly fitted its neighbor, above, below, and at either side, and precisely conformed to the next inner row upon the same level, was nothing short of a marvel. A miniature of the light--the building of which took two winters, and which was on the scale of an inch to a foot--was in the United States Government Building at the Chicago Exposition, and is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite tower in the Atlantic. Although this is an achievement which belongs in a sense to the whole United States, yet it must always seem, to those who followed it most closely, as belonging peculiarly to Coha.s.set. A famous Coha.s.set rigger made the model for the derrick which was used to raise the stones; the ma.s.sive granite blocks were teamed by one whose proud boast it was that he had never had occasion to s.h.i.+ft a stone twice; a Coha.s.set man captained the first vessel to carry the stone to the ledge, and another a.s.sisted in the selection of the stone.

It is difficult to turn one's eyes away from the spectacular beauty of the Coha.s.set sh.o.r.e, but magnificent as these ledges are, and glittering with infinite romance, yet, rather curiously, it is on the limpid surface of the marshes that we read the most significant episodes of Colonial and pioneer life.

One of the needs which the early settlers were quick to feel was open land which would serve as pasturage for their cattle. With forests pressing down upon them from the rear, and a barrier of granite in front of them, the problem of grazing-lands was important. The Hingham settlement at Bare Cove (Coha.s.set was part of Hingham originally) found the solution in the acres of open marshland which stretched to the east.

Coha.s.set to-day may ask where so much grazing-land lay within her borders. By comparison with the old maps and surveying figures, we find that many acres, now covered with the water of Little Harbor and lying within the sandbar at Pleasant Beach, are counted as old grazing-lands.

These, with the sweep of what is now the "Glades," furnished abundant pasturage for neighboring cattle and brought the Hingham settlers quickly to Coha.s.set meadows. Thus it happens that the first history of Coha.s.set is the history of this common pasturage--"Commons," as it was known in the old histories. Although Hingham was early divided up among the pioneers, the marshes were kept undivided for the use of the whole settlement. As a record of 1650 puts it: "It was ordered that any townsman shall have the liberty to put swine to Conoha.s.set without yokes or rings, upon the town's common land."

But the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony was hard-headed as well as pious, and several nave hints creep into the early records of sharers of the Commons who were shrewdly eyeing the salt land of Coha.s.set. A real estate transfer of 1640 has this potential flavor: "Half the lot at Coneha.s.set, if any fall by lot, and half the commons which belong to said lot." And again, four years later, Henry Tuttle sold to John Fearing "what right he had to the Division of Coniha.s.sett Meadows." The first land to come under the measuring chain and wooden stake of surveyors was about the margin of Little Harbor about the middle of the seventeenth century. After that the rest of the towns.h.i.+p was not long in being parceled out. One of the curious methods of land division was in the Beechwood district. The apportionment seems to have had the characteristics of ribbon cake. Sections of differing desirability--to meet the demands of justice and natural conditions--were measured out in long strips, a mile long and twenty-five feet wide. Many an old stone wall marking this early grant is still to be seen in the woods. Could anything but the indomitable spirit of those English settlers and the strong feeling for land owners.h.i.+p have built walls of carted stone about enclosures a mile long and twenty-five feet wide?

Having effected a division of land in Coha.s.set, families soon began to settle away from the mother town of Hingham, and after a prolonged period of government at arm's length, with all its attendant discomforts, the long, bitter struggle resolved itself into Coha.s.set's final separation from Hingham, and its development from a precinct into an independent towns.h.i.+p.

While the marshes to the north were the cause of Coha.s.set being first visited, settled, and made into a towns.h.i.+p, yet the marshes to the south hold an even more vital historical interest. These southern marshes, bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Ba.s.sing Beach, were visited by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not come from the same towns.h.i.+p, nor were they under the same local government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate Harbor and Coha.s.set marks the line of two conflicting grants--the Plymouth Colony and the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony.

In the early days of New England royal grants from the throne or patents from colonial councils in London were deemed necessary before settling in the wilderness. The strong, inherited respect for landed estates must have given such charters their value, as it is hard for us to see now how any one in England could have prevented the pioneers from settling where they pleased. The various patents and grants of the two colonies (indefinite as they seem to us now, as some granted "up to" a hundred acres to each emigrant without defining any boundaries) brought the two colonies face to face at Bound Brook. The result was a dispute over the harvesting of salt hay.

All boundary streams attract to themselves a certain amount of fame--the Rio Grande, the Saint Lawrence, and the Rhine. But surely the little stream of Bound Brook, which was finally taken as the line of division between two colonies of such historical importance as the Plymouth and the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, is worth more than a superficial attention. The dispute lasted many years and occasioned the appointing of numerous commissioners from both sides. That the salt gra.s.s of Ba.s.sing Beach should have a.s.sumed such importance reveals again the sensitiveness to land values of men who had so recently left England. The settling of the dispute was not referred back to England, but was settled by the colonists themselves.

The author of the "Narrative History of Coha.s.set" calls this an event of only less historical importance than that of the pact drawn up in the cabin of the Mayflower. He declares that the confederation of states had its inception there, and adds: "The appointment for this joint commission for the settlement of this intercolonial difficulty was the first step of federation that culminated in the Colonial Congress and then blossomed into the United States." We to-day, to whom the salt gra.s.s of Coha.s.set is little more than a fringe about the two harbors, may find it difficult to agree fully with such a sweeping statement, but certainly this spot and boundary line should always be a.s.sociated with the respect for property which has enn.o.bled the Anglo-Saxon race.

Between the marshes, which were of such high importance in those early days, and the ledges which have been the cause and the scene of so many Coha.s.set adventures, twists Jerusalem Road, the brilliant beauty of which has been so often--but never too often--remarked. This was the main road from Hingham for many years, and it took full three hours of barbarous jolting in two-wheeled, springless ox carts to make the trip.

Even if a man had a horse the journey was cruelly tedious, for there were only a few stretches where the horse could go faster than a walk--and the way was pock-marked with boulders and mudholes. With no stage-coach before 1815, and being off the highway between Plymouth and Boston, it is small wonder that the early Coha.s.set folk either walked or went by sea to Hingham and thence to Boston.

It has been suggested that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyha.s.sett,"

who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were responsible for the christening of this road and also of the Sea of Galilee--which last has almost dropped into disuse. There does not seem to be any particular suggestion of the land of the Pharaohs and present-day Egypt, but tradition explains that as follows: Old Squire Perce had acc.u.mulated a store of grain in case of drought, and when the drought came and the men hurried to him to buy corn, he greeted them with "Well, boys, so you've come down to Egypt to buy corn." Another proof, if one were needed, of the Biblical familiarity of those days.

It is hard to stop writing about Coha.s.set. There are so many bits of history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her sh.o.r.e. The green in front of the old white meeting-house--one of the prettiest and most perfect meeting-houses on the South Sh.o.r.e--has been pressed by the feet of men a.s.sembling for six wars. It makes Coha.s.set seem venerable, indeed, when one thinks of the march of American history. But to the tawny ledges, tumbling out to sea, these three hundred years are as but a day; for the story of the stones, like the story of the stars, is measured in terms of milliards. To such immemorial keepers of the coast the life of man is a brief tale that is soon told, and fades as swiftly as the fading leaf.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] For much of this chapter I am indebted to my friend Alice C. Hyde.

CHAPTER VII

THE SCITUATE Sh.o.r.e

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Scituate is different: different from Coha.s.set, with its superbly bold coast and its fas.h.i.+onable folk; different from Hingham, with its air of settled inland dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are refres.h.i.+ngly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality.

Scituate life has always been along the sh.o.r.e. It is from the sh.o.r.e that coot-shooting used to furnish a livelihood to many a Scituate man, and still lures the huntsmen in the fine fall weather. It is the peculiar formation of the sh.o.r.e which has developed a small, clinker-built boat, and made the town famous for day fis.h.i.+ng. It is along the sh.o.r.e that the unique and picturesque mossing industry is still carried on, and along the sh.o.r.e that the well-known colony of literary folk have settled.

Scituate's history is really a fis.h.i.+ng history, for as early as 1633 a fis.h.i.+ng station was established here, and in course of time the North River, winding twenty miles through green meadows to the sea, was once the scene of more s.h.i.+pbuilding than any other river in New England.

There is nothing more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and economic potentialities of the fis.h.i.+ng-trade. The Spaniard sought for gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander promptly applied himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel.

Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England,"

says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never such idlers, may turne, carry, and returne fish without shame or either great pain: he is very idle that is past twelve years of age and cannot doe so much: and shee is very old that cannot spin a thread to catch them."

It began when Squanto the Indian showed the amazed colonists how he could tread the eels out of the mud with his feet and catch them with his hands. This was convenient, to be sure, but the colonists did not long content themselves with such primitive methods. They sent to England for cod hooks and lines; mackerel hooks and lines; herring nets and seines; shark hooks, ba.s.s nets, squid lines, and eel pots; and in a short time they had established a trade which meant more money than the gold mines of Guiana or Potosi. The modern financier who makes a fortune from the invention of a collar b.u.t.ton or the sale of countless penny packages of gum is the lineal descendant of that first thrifty New Englander who did not scorn the humble cod because it was cheap and plentiful (you remember how these same cod "pestered" the s.h.i.+ps of Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter, and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish was--twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound, and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish for a penny--yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of the Roman Catholic Church abroad opened an immense demand, and in a short time quant.i.ties of various kinds of fish (Josselyn in 1672 enumerates over two hundred caught in New England waters) were dried and salted and sent to England.

This constant and steadily increasing trade radically affected the whole economic structure and history of New England for two centuries. s.h.i.+ps and all the s.h.i.+pyard industries; the farm, on which fish was used not only as a medium of exchange, but also as a valuable fertilizer; the home, where the many operations of curing and salting were carried on--all of those were developed directly by the growth of this particular trade. Laws were made and continually revised regarding the fisheries and safeguarding their rights in every conceivable fas.h.i.+on; s.h.i.+p carpenters were exempt from military service, and many special exemptions were extended to fishermen under the general statutes.

The oyster is now a dish for the epicure and the lobster for the millionaire. But in the old days when oysters a foot long were not uncommon, and lobsters sometimes grew to six feet, every one had all he wanted, and sometimes more than he wanted, of these delicacies. The stranger in New England may notice how certain customs still prevail, such as the Friday night fish dinner and the Sunday morning fish-cakes; and also that New Englanders as a whole have a rather fastidious taste in regard to the preparation of both salt- and fresh-water products.

The food of any region is characteristic of that region, and to travel along the Old Coast Road and not partake of one of the delicious fish dinners, is as absurd as it would be to omit rice from a menu in China or roast beef from an English dinner.

While the fis.h.i.+ng trade was highly important in all the South Sh.o.r.e towns, yet it was especially so in Scituate. In 1770 more than thirty vessels, princ.i.p.ally for mackerel, were fitted out in this one village, and these vessels not infrequently took a thousand barrels in a season.

In winter they were used for Southern coasting, carrying lumber and fish and returning with grain and flour. The reason why fis.h.i.+ng was so persistently and exclusively followed in this particular spot is not hard to seek. The sea yielded a far more profitable and ready crop than the land, and, besides, had a jealous way of nibbling away at the land wherever it could. It is estimated that it wastes away from twelve to fourteen inches of Fourth Cliff every year.

But in spite of the sea's readily accessible crop it was natural that the "men of Kent" who settled the town should demand some portion of dry land as well. These men of Kent were not mermen, able to live in and on the water indefinitely, but decidedly gallant fellows, rather more courtly than their neighbors, and more polished than the race which succeeded them. Gilson, Va.s.sal, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, h.o.a.r, Foster, Stedman, and Hinckley had all been accustomed to the elegancies of life in England as their names testify. The first land they used was on the cliffs, for it had already been improved by Indian planting; then the salt marshes, covered with a natural crop of gra.s.s, and then the mellow intervales near the river. When the sea was forced to the regretful realization that she could not monopolize the entire attention of her fellows, she was persuaded to yield up some very excellent fertilizer in the way of seaweed. But she still nags away at the cliffs and sh.o.r.e, and proclaims with every flaunting wave and ripple that it is the water, not the land, which makes Scituate what it is.

And, after all, the sea is right. It is along the sh.o.r.e that one sees Scituate most truly. Here the characteristic industry of mossing is still carried on in primitive fas.h.i.+on. The mossers work from dories, gathering with long-handled rakes the seaweed from the rocks and ledges along the sh.o.r.e. They bring it in, a heavy, dark, inert ma.s.s, all sleek and dripping, and spread it out to dry in the sun. As it lies there, neatly arranged on beds of smoothest pebbles, the sun bleaches it. One can easily differentiate the different days' haul, for the moss which is just spread out is almost black and that of yesterday is a dark purple.