is extremely narrow, appeared at length
on the Atlantic side, the Cape having rolled over it; and an old woman
said,--"Now, you see, it is true what I told you, that the Cape is
moving."

The bars along the coast shift with every storm, and in many places
there is occasionally none at all. We ourselves observed the effect of a
single storm with a high tide in the night, in July, 1855. It moved the
sand on the beach opposite the light-house to the depth of six feet, and
three rods in width as far as we could see north and south, and carried
it bodily off no one knows exactly where, laying bare in one place a
large rock five feet high which was invisible before, and narrowing the
beach to that extent. There is usually, as I have said, no bathing on
the back side of the Cape, on account of the undertow; but when we were
there last, the sea had, three months before, cast up a bar near this
light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide, over which the tide did
not flow, leaving a narrow cove, then a quarter of a mile long, between
it and the shore, which afforded excellent bathing. This cove had from
time to time been closed up as the bar travelled northward, in one
instance imprisoning four or five hundred whiting and cod, which died
there, and the water as often turned fresh and finally gave place to
sand. This bar, the inhabitants assured us, might be wholly removed, and
the water be six feet deep there in two or three days.

The light-house keeper said, that, when the wind blowed strong on to the
shore, the waves ate fast into the bank, but when it blowed off, they
took no sand away; for in the former case the wind heaped up the surface
of the water next to the beach, and to preserve its equilibrium a strong
undertow immediately set back again into the sea, which carried with it
the sand and whatever else was in the way, and left the beach hard to
walk on; but in the latter case the undertow set on, and carried the
sand with it, so that it was particularly difficult for shipwrecked men
to get to land when the wind blowed on to the shore, but easier when it
blowed off. This undertow, meeting the next surface-wave on the bar
which itself has made, forms part of the dam over which the latter
breaks, as over an upright wall. The sea thus plays with the land,
holding a sand-bar in its mouth awhile before it swallows it, as a cat
plays with a mouse; but the fatal gripe is sure to come at last. The sea
sends its rapacious east