Life at the Cape flowed on with simple annals to mark its course. In 1687 a mill for grinding corn was set up at Barnstable, to the wonder of the Indians who took it for a monster with arms - the precursor of the winged mills that once dotted the Cape from shoulder to tip and played no small part in the charm of its picture. At Barnstable, too, was the first mill to "full and draw the town's cloth on reasonable terms," to the satisfaction, one may suppose, of busy workers at spinning-wheel and loom. And the erection of a mill at Yarmouth was even celebrated in verse:

"The Baxter boys they built a mill,

Sometimes it went, sometimes stood still;

And when it went, it made no noise,
Because 't was built by Baxter's boys."

In 1694 Harwich was set off from Eastham, and it is said that Patrick Butler walked all the way to Boston to secure the act of incorporation. In 1709 Truro, also, with the usual stipulation that it "procure and settle a learned and godly minister," was set off from Eastham, which, indeed, as Pamet, it had long antedated in settlement. In 1705 there had been an abortive attempt to incorporate this district as Dangerfield, and in 1718 there was a motion to set off the future Wellfleet as Poole; but nothing further was heard of these names. There had always been wrangling over the settlement at Mannomoit, at the elbow of the Cape: first attached to Yarmouth, then to Eastham, in 1688 it was made an independent "constablerick," and in 1712 was incorporated as Chatham. In 1714 the Province Lands became the Precinct of Cape Cod

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under the "constablerick" of Truro, and there was a tax of fourpence for the upkeep of a minister there. But evidently Truro had trouble with her ward the population was a drifting one, for the most part irresponsible fishermen and adventurers - and in 1715 she petitioned the General Court that the new Precinct be "declared either a part of Truro or not a part of Truro, that the town may know how to act in regard to some persons." From the beginning, with a care to the preservation of crops, householders were required to kill blackbirds and crows, and there was a large bounty on wolves. In 1717 there was even talk of building "a high fence of palisades or boards" across the Cape between Sandwich and Wareham "to keep wolves from coming into the county." But there were two points of view for that question, and the scheme, opposed by some within on the score of expense and by others without who did not "wish all the wolves to be shut out of the county upon their own limits," was soon abandoned. In 1721 there was a fearful epidemic of smallpox throughout the State; and Cotton Mather, who favored inoculation, was held by the pious to prefer "the machinations of men to the all-wise providence of God.”

As the Cape became more closely settled, men of the pioneer spirit were again feeling themselves cramped for room; and in 1727 certain lands which the Government had been ready to give as bounty to veterans of King Philip's War, were, at length, granted to their heirs - a township ten miles square to each one hundred and twenty persons where claims

thereto were established within four months of the act. Seven townships were taken up. Number Seven, in Maine, assigned to the heirs of men who had served under Captain John Gorham, was named after him, and his grandson, Shubael, ruined himself in promoting the enterprise. Amos Otis writes that "he lost his property in his endeavors to secure to the officers and soldiers in King Philip's War, or their legal representatives, their just dues. In his strenuous efforts to do justice to others, he was unjust to himself, and involved himself, for the benefit of others, in liabilities which he was unable to meet." Of John Phinney, one of these pioneers of Gorham, a son of one of the conquerors of the Narragansetts, it is recorded that "he disembarked from his canoe on the Presumpscot River, with his axe and a small stock of simple provisions, attended by a son of fourteen years of age, with a design to make a home for himself and family in the then wilderness. Having selected a spot for his future dwelling, that son Edmund, afterwards distinguished as a colonel in the war of the Revolution, felled the first tree for a settlement." Nearly every town on the Cape sent men to the new country, and here the old Cape Cod names were perpetuated: Bacon, Bangs, Bourne, Freeman, Knowles, Paine, Sturgis.

In 1727 the Precinct of Cape Cod was incorporated as Provincetown, with important reservation of rights to the Government in exchange for which the inhabitants were held exempt from all but local taxes and from military duty. The Province held title to the

land; and it was not until 1893, when the State surrendered its holdings in the village that a Provincetown man could be said to own his home, or give more than a quitclaim deed for its transfer. In 1740 Provincetown seems to have added some grazing to her activities by sea, and is presented for so carelessly herding cattle that the "beaches were much broken and damnified, occasioning the moving of the sands into the harbor to the great damage thereof." The French wars were working havoc in the fortunes of her fishermen and the population melting away until, in 1755, there were not more than three houses in the village and then increasing until the Revolution, when there were twenty. In 1763 that part of Eastham known as Billingsgate - Poole it never was to be became Wellfleet. And a year earlier the Mashpee Indians, feeling the push for fuller political rights, petitioned for and obtained their Mashpee District, eight miles by five or six, comprising two hundred and thirty-seven souls and "sixty-three wigwams." To the Yarmouth Indians had been granted the greater part of South Yarmouth on Bass River. Mr. Freeman records that 1749 was known as the year of the Great Drought which destroyed the early crops of hay and feed; but in July the weather broke, the bare earth miraculously put forth its green, and there were as many thanksgivings as there had been intercessions for Divine aid.

Martha's Vineyard had been fonnd particularly adapted to sheep-raising, and wool was ferried over to Falmouth to keep the Cape women busy at their

looms. In 1738 a Barnstable man founded Marston's Mills, and a letter from Newport in a later year speaks of the woollen factory at Barnstable which receives from the spinners it employs sometimes five hundred skeins a day and clears in a year three thousand dollars, "which is the most profitable of any business now carried on in America according to the stock improved in it"; broadcloth "selling for three dollars a yard in London may be had here for a dollar and a half." This public industry supplemented the one that a family conducted on its own account: for nearly every farm had its sheep, and homespun was the wear. The moors of Truro were dotted with sheep, and very likely some of its surplus wool was sent to the Barnstable mills.

That the Cape people, in parsonage or farm, followed the custom of the day and kept slaves is evidenced, among other ways, by many wills. Mr. Bacon, of Barnstable, for instance, directs that in case his negro Dinah be sold, "all she is sold for be improved by my executors in buying Bibles," which are to be distributed among his grandchildren. Mr. Walley had his slaves; the Reverend Mr. Avery, of Truro, whose farm and forge were near Highland Light, was able to bequeath a considerable estate to his children; and among the assets were his negro "girl named Phillis," his Indian girl named Sarah, and the negroes Jack and Hope who were never to be sold out of the family. Old Totoo, slave to Mrs. Gorham, of Barnstable, survived her eight years and, dying, begged that he might be buried at his mistress's feet. In 1678 two