"men of power and deep religious experience," says Mr. Rich, "made these green arches tremble with their eloquence." A local bard sings, with some particularity: "We saw great gatherings in a grove, A grove near Pamet Bay, Where thousands heard the preached word, In 1821, "a Pentecostal year," during the Great Revival in Wellfleet and Truro, over four hundred "professed religion," and two hundred and thirtysix joined the Methodist church. As early as 1813 began the Unitarian schism in the orthodox Congregational churches. A split in the First Parish of Sandwich served as a test case in the division of "temporalities," when the schismatics, being in the majority, were awarded the church estate and the Old Lights, with the parson, withdrew to form a new parish. No doubt the people entered upon these new discussions with something of the gusto they had displayed in past controversies. And in the meantime the nation was laying the solid foundations of its future prosperity; the Cape, with its shipping, its fisheries, and the indomitable spirit of its people, was to recover early in the struggle to right the chaos that war had induced and that might have ruined a young state less vigorous in its vitality. And on the Cape, at least, there was one industry that had been fostered by embargo and blockade. Settlers there, from the first, by one device or another had extracted salt from the sea for their use. Cudworth, friend of the Quakers, was called a "salter" and had set up works at Scituate which he visited frequently after he removed to Barnstable; and whether owned by Cudworth or not, Barnstable also had an early "saltern." As early as 1624 a man was sent to Plymouth to manufacture salt by the evaporation of sea-water in these artificial salt-ponds, a process not favored by Bradford, and though tedious and not too successful seems to have been followed for more than a century. During the Revolution, when no salt could be imported, and the country must rely upon the domestic produce, salt became so scarce that a bushel sold for eight dollars, and a state bounty of three shillings a bushel was offered for salt "manufactured within the State and produced from sea salt." Here was a fine promise of reward for ingenuity, and the low dunes of the north shore of the Cape offered ground made for the enterprise. Men there "tinkered" and "contrived" and improved one upon the work of another, until in 1799 Captain John Sears, of Dennis, who had been early in the field with a device known as "Sears's Folly," patented the perfected machine to obtain pure salt by means of sun evaporation which was to bring wealth to many of his neighbors. The industry ran well into the next century when importation became the cheaper method, and at its height companies from Billingsgate to Yarmouth employed some two millions of capital in the business. Many an old sea-dog, also, ran “saltworks" for his private profit, and the dunes of the inner bay were dotted with groups of the surprising peaked-roof structures on stilts that had the look of Polynesian villages. These roofs capped shallow vats into which the water was pumped by tiny windmills. A simple mechanism borrowed from ship-lore that could be worked by the turn of a hand swung a roof back to expose the vat to the sun, and into place again to protect it from rain and dew. Provincetown made the salt for its fish-curing, and it is said that the crescent shore of the harbor was lined for miles with the whirring windmills. Not many years ago a few of the picturesque little buildings and their mills could still be seen on the dunes; but before the mid-eighteen hundreds, the business, as such, was at an end. II THE First Comers, after they had established their farms, quickly turned to the sea for the profit there was in it: for since Cabot's voyages, and before, men had known of the riches that lay there, and the earliest history of the Atlantic coast is that of its rival fisheries. Cabot encouraged English fishermen by report of "soles above a yard in length and a great abundance of that kind which the savages call baccalos or codfish." France exploited the Newfoundland fisheries, and by 1600 fully ten thousand men were employed catching, curing, and transporting the fish: one old Frenchman boasted that he had made forty voyages to the Banks. Holland pushed into the trade to such effect that men said Amsterdam was built on herring bones and Dutchmen made of |