.

Though it was once declared that Providence placed this mass of clay
here on purpose to erect a light-house on, the keeper said that the
light-house should have been erected half a mile farther south, where
the coast begins to bend, and where the light could be seen at the same
time with the Nauset Lights, and distinguished from them. They now talk
of building one there. It happens that the present one is the more
useless now, so near the extremity of the Cape, because other
light-houses have since been erected there.

Among the many regulations of the Light-House Board, hanging against the
wall here, many of them excellent, perhaps, if there were a regiment
stationed here to attend to them, there is one requiring the keeper to
keep an account of the number of vessels which pass his light during the
day. But there are a hundred vessels in sight at once, steering in all
directions, many on the very verge of the horizon, and he must have more
eyes than Argus, and be a good deal farther-sighted, to tell which are
passing his light. It is an employment in some respects best suited to
the habits of the gulls which coast up and down here and circle over the
sea.

I was told by the next keeper, that on the eighth of June following, a
particularly clear and beautiful morning, he rose about half an hour
before sunrise, and, having a little time to spare, for his custom was
to extinguish his lights at sunrise, walked down toward the shore to see
what he might find. When he got to the edge of the bank, he looked up,
and, to his astonishment, saw the sun rising, and already part way above
the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong, he made haste back, and,
though it was still too early by the clock, extinguished his lamps, and
when he had got through and come down, he looked out of the window, and,
to his still greater astonishment, saw the sun just where it was before,
two-thirds above the horizon. He showed me where its rays fell on the
wall across the room. He proceeded to make a fire, and when he had done,
there was the sun still at the same height. Whereupon, not trusting to
his own eyes any longer, he called up his wife to look at it, and she
saw it also. There were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their crews,
too, he said, must have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained
at that height for about fifteen minutes by the clock, and then rose as
usual, and nothing else extraordinary happened during that day.