PREFACE

Some years ago, being idly present at a tiny harbor—a mere nook in the coast of the Cape (for the Cape it is to all good Americans)—I scraped acquaintance with an ancient and solitary fisherman who had just landed and was lunching in the shade. He was so quietly at home in the landscape that I felt a scrupulous and uneasy impulse to authenticate myself as the real thing and not a naturalized colonist or a floating element in the population. I told him, accordingly, that I claimed all the rights and privileges of a native (which, be it remembered, are many and important), because, though I was born in Boston, my mother came from Barnstable and was a direct descendant of the first settlers of 1639. ‘And so,’ I concluded with modest triumph, ‘I may claim to go back pretty far as a Cape man.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, with a slow smile, ‘you have a good claim; and as for me, I go back pretty far too.’ ‘How far?’ I asked. ‘Oh, my great-grandmother was descended from the Hockanom Indians of Yarmouth.’ As Artemus Ward puts it, ‘He had me there!’

The author of this book, it may be inferred from this anecdote, has grown up in propitious nurture and admonition. He, too, in his daily walk, claims with pride the privileges of a native, and he writes with that intimacy and understanding which befit the chronicler of so distinguished a region as Cape Cod. It is ‘a piece of prudence, as well as good manners,’ Swift tells us, ‘to put men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in.’ And so I leave him with confidence to the friendly reader.

George Lyman Kittredge