The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86,
December, 1864, by Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864

Author: Various

Release Date: July 27, 2009 [EBook #29516]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIV.--DECEMBER, 1864.--NO. LXXXVI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT.

This light-house, known to mariners as the Cape Cod or Highland Light,
is one of our "primary sea-coast lights," and is usually the first seen
by those approaching the entrance of Massachusetts Bay from Europe. It
is forty-three miles from Cape Ann Light, and forty-one from Boston
Light. It stands about twenty rods from the edge of the bank, which is
here formed of clay. I borrowed the plane and square, level and
dividers, of a carpenter who was shingling a barn near by, and, using
one of those shingles made of a mast, contrived a rude sort of quadrant,
with pins for sights and pivots, and got the angle of elevation of the
bank opposite the light-house, and with a couple of cod-lines the length
of its slope, and so measured its height on the shingle. It rises one
hundred and ten feet above its immediate base, or about one hundred and
twenty-three feet above mean low water. Graham, who has carefully
surveyed the extremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred and thirty
feet. The mixed sand and clay lay at an angle of forty degrees with the
horizon, where I measured it, but the clay is generally much steeper. No
cow nor hen ever gets down it. Half a mile farther south the bank is
fifteen or twenty-five feet higher, and that appeared to be the highest
land in North Truro.