onds, is the origin of the name. Water is found in the clay quite
near the surface; but we heard of one man who had sunk a well in the
sand close by, "till he could see stars at noonday," without finding
any.

Over this bare highland the wind has full sweep. Even in July it blows
the wings over the heads of the young turkeys, which do not know enough
to head against it; and in gales the doors and windows are blown in, and
you must hold on to the light-house to prevent being blown into the
Atlantic. They who merely keep out on the beach in a storm in the winter
are sometimes rewarded by the Humane Society. If you would feel the full
force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount
Washington, or at the Highland Light in Truro.

It was said in 1794 that more vessels were cast away on the east shore
of Truro than anywhere in Barnstable County. Notwithstanding this
light-house has since been erected, after almost every storm we read of
one or more vessels wrecked here, and sometimes more than a dozen wrecks
are visible from this point at one time. The inhabitants hear the crash
of vessels going to pieces as they sit round their hearths, and they
commonly date from some memorable shipwreck. If the history of this
beach could be written from beginning to end, it would be a thrilling
page in the history of commerce.

Truro was settled in the year 1700 as _Dangerfield_. This was a very
appropriate name, for I read on a monument in the graveyard near Pamet
River the following inscription:--

Sacred
to the memory of
57 citizens of Truro,
who were lost in seven
vessels, which
foundered at sea in
the memorable gale
of Oct. 3d, 1841.

Their names and ages by families were recorded on different sides of the
stone. They are said to have been lost on George's Bank, and I was told
that only one vessel drifted ashore on the back side of the Cape, with
the boys locked into the cabin and drowned. It is said that the homes of
all were "within a circuit of two miles." Twenty-eight inhabitants of
Dennis were lost in the same gale; and I read that "in one day,
immediately after this storm, nearly or quite one hundred bodies were
taken up and buried on Cape Cod." The Truro Insurance Company failed for
want of skippers to take charge of its vessels. But the surviving
inhabitants went a-fishing again the next year as usual. I found that it
would not do to speak of shipwrecks th