The whole coast of Massachusetts Bay is well worth the study of the traveller. Nothing can be more unlike than the aspect of the northern and southern extremities of the Bay. Of Cape Ann, the northern point, with its bold shores and inexhaustible granite quarries, I have given some account in another book. Not a ledge of rock is to be seen near Cape Cod, the southern extremity; but instead of it, a sand so deep that travellers who have the choice of reaching it by horse or carriage, prefer going over the last twenty miles on horseback: but then the sand-hills are of so dazzling a whiteness as to distress the eyes. The inhabitants are a primitive race of fishermen and saltmen, dwelling in ground-floor houses, which are set down among the sand ridges without plan or order. Some communication is kept up between them and a yet more secluded race of citizens,—the inhabitants of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard,—two islands which lie south of the southern peninsular of the Bay. I much regretted that I had no opportunity of visiting these islands. Some stories that are abroad about the simplicity of the natives are enough to kindle the stranger's curiosity to see so fresh a specimen of human nature.